Sometimes the helping hand you need is the one attached to your own arm

Thank God for this blog, or else I would put my foot in my mouth on a routine basis. I would speak my mind and say things to people that probably should be left unsaid. I would hurt people’s feelings without blinking an eye, and it wouldn’t bother me one bit.

I have a Facebook friend, and I use the term ‘friend’ loosely and lightly. We all have those ‘friends’ don’t we? Those casual acquaintances, those people that add us as friends, that we don’t talk to anymore, but we keep them on our ‘friends’ list just because we are too lazy or too busy or too whatever to delete them.

Anyways, like I said… I have this Facebook friend. She’s one of these people that is constantly in need. (Feel free to read about my previous mention of her “need”.) She can’t keep a job, she’s always struggling financially. She has too many kids to count, and one or all of them are always having problems. Her Facebook statuses consist of prayers asking God to lay His hands on her and heal her, heal her kids, take care of her, give her more hours at work, find her a new job, find her husband a job, blah, blah-blibbidy-blabbidy-blah.

*sigh*

It takes everything in my power to just ignore it and move past her posts on Facebook and ignore her. I don’t know why I don’t just delete her as a friend (and I think after writing this post, I probably WILL). I don’t believe that begging God for help needs to be broadcasted in a Facebook status update to hundreds of people.

But today’s status was the last straw. Today’s was the one that prompted me to lose my cool. Rather than unleashing my political diatribe onto this person, I’ve decided to write it here– semi-anonymously. HA!

This morning her status reads:

Can’t believe in sevens day my daughter will be an eighth grader. How am i suppose to buy everything to get her ready for school when I haven’t worked in a month. Then they had to go to stupid uniforms. Another expense I CAN’T AFFORD. WHERE IS MY STIMULAS PACKAGE MR. PRESIDENT!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and freakin’ tired of our nation being in the freakin’ toilet. Pardon my language boys and girls, but since when did it become the duty and job of our President to bail our asses out of the situation we’ve put ourselves in? We as a nation have gotten GREEDY. We have gotten greedy and corrupt and we need to stop it. NOW. If this person can’t buy her kids school supplies, she needs to get a job or find some stuff in her house to sell. Please don’t drain any more resources from MY TAX DOLLARS to STIMULATE YOUR HOUSEHOLD INCOME!!!

Have we really gotten to a collective point in time that when we as a society get in a bind and we simply cry out “Help!” Then, this stimulus check arrives in the mailbox and everything is OK for another month or so? Isn’t that kinda like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound? Yet, here’s some person asking our President to bail her out because she needs school supplies for her kids.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but studies may have shown that logging off of Facebook and actually looking for a job have resulted in one actually finding said job and earning some MONEY to pay for those needed school supplies.

Maybe if everyone in our country started helping THEMSELVES rather than relying on the Government and our President to bail them out, we wouldn’t be in such a mess right now. Like I said, the helping hand you need might just be the one attached to your own arm.

Note: I have a heart, people. I truly do. If I thought that this person was truly in need, I would go out right now and buy this family a whole truckload of school supplies. But I know in my heart that if I walked in their front door, I would see a $50 carton of cigarettes on their kitchen counter and a case of beer in their fridge and that negates my willingness to give. When people have money to buy ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES, I do not feel sorry for them.

Now I’m going to to into Facebook and do some deleting.

Throwback literally means THROW IT BACK. PLEASE.

I tried the AWESOME! AMAZING! YUMMY! FRESH-TASTING! CLASSICALLY VINTAGE! Pepsi Throwback today. (I know you’re sensing my enthusiasm is dripping with sarcasm.  Or maybe it’s SUGAR.)

All I can say is…

Meh. I’ve had better.

I’d rather have the fake sugar.

Maybe I’m not old enough (sah-WEET!) to remember Mountain Dew cans looking like that, either. I remember the Pepsi cans, but that Mountain Dew doesn’t even look remotely familiar.

This will be the only thing I will ask of you. Pinky swear.

I am asking for your support in a very special cause. As you all know, this is a cause that is very near and dear to my heart, as my husband Mark was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes over 23 years ago.

This year, I’ll be taking part in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes along with a half-million other walkers across the country. Our goal: To raise $105 million to help fund research for a cure for type 1 diabetes and its complications.

Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, is a devastating, often deadly disease that affects millions of people–a large and growing percentage of them children.

Many people think type 1 diabetes can be controlled by insulin. While insulin does keep people with type 1 diabetes alive, it is NOT a cure. Aside from the daily challenges of living with type 1 diabetes, there are many severe, often fatal, complications caused by the disease.

That’s the bad news… and yes, it’s pretty bad.

The good news, though, is that a cure for type 1 diabetes is within reach. In fact, JDRF funding and leadership is associated with most major scientific breakthroughs in type 1 diabetes research to date. And JDRF funds a major portion of all type 1 diabetes research worldwide, more than any other charity.
I’m writing to ask for your support because now more than ever, EACH of us can be a part of bringing about a cure. Each of us can make a real difference

Won’t you please give to JDRF as generously as you’re able? Whether it’s $1 or $100, every little bit helps.

Together, we can make the cure a reality.

SINCERELY, JENNI

Please visit my Walk Web page if you would like to donate online or see how close I am to reaching my personal goal:
http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=87614454

We need more people like this in the world…

I promise not to turn my blog into a bunch of YouTube videos, but this one makes me cry. Thought I would share, because we need more people like this in the world.

Kinda makes you stop and think about what YOU can do for others, doesn’t it?

Yes, Virginia

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

(Reprinted from Newseum. The response to Virginia’s question was written by newsman Francis P. Church)

You can view the actual news clipping here.