priorities

[Guest guest]

As for judging others about priorities, while I didn't like being

judged for my own priorities (i.e. owning a boat), sometimes we

(myself included) are all guilty of do the same thing. Except, we

generally keep our opinions to ourselves but that is the beauty

(sarcasm) of an anonymous forum; people can say the things to you

that they normally wouldn't say if you knew who they were.

A perfect example of judging others without knowing the whole story:

Acquaintences of ours have a 3 year old boy who is paralyzed from the

waist down and is in kidney failure. He is completely dependant on a

wheel chair and will be all his life however, he is " hell on wheels "

literally and his mother has taught him to be an advocate for

himself. Nothing stops this kid. Nothing stops his mother either.

Rhonda was faced with the expense of completely remodelling her home

to include an inside garage elevator (so they don't have to shovel the

ramp in winter), a chair car for the stairs, a handicapped accessible

bathroom with a " roll in " shower, a " shower/water " wheel chair, and

widening the doors. She also needed a van with a wheel chair lift.

To pay for these expenses, she held fun raising dances and casino

nights. She worked for months pounding down doors and asking for

donations. She even got a donation of season tickets from the

Patriots! She invested a lot of time contacting local papers to get

her son's story in the paper and she did a lot of word of mouth

advertising. She raised $60,000 dollars!!! She got the elevator put

in, is working on the other projects and purchased a van with a lift.

I said to Rhonda how I wish I had the abiltiy to raise money for my

needs the way she did but I felt guilty since I own a fairly nice

house in a decent neighbor hood, we have two cars (although one is on

it last leg), and we own a boat (although it is a wreck!). I said I

didn't feel right asking for charity unless I was absolutely

destitute.

Rhonda infomed me that she too owned a nice house in a nice section of

town, two cars and a camper which is about equal in value/expense to

a boat but she didn't have any problem raising money for their

unexpected needs because she was doing this to maintain the quality of

her son's life. She said she is sure people judge her because she has

nice things and is asking for charity but if she didn't raise these

funds, she wouldn't have a house to modify. I think she made a good

point.

Rhonda has inspired me to look to other sources for funding our

unexpected expenses in much the same manner that she did especially if

that expense could result in changing my childs quality of life by

selling something important to her like the boat. Last year, we

needed a ramp. I considered selling the boat to fund it if we had

to. Fortunately, we have a lot of good people in our town who

pitched in to fund and build the ramp so Alycia got to keep her boat

for that year. Now the hearing aid expense has popped up but I am

going to do everything in my power not to compromise our life sytle

for this. Rhonda has taught me how to advocate for my child's needs

and she has informed me that there are agencies out there whose sole

purpose is to help kids like ours... " Use them! That is why they are

there! " she said. And if I have to, I will run a fund raiser just

like Rhonda did if I can't find any other resources. Rhonda has

taught me a lot about being an advocate for my family.

So the moral of the story is, get your facts strait before you judge

and keep your judgements to yourself because chances are, you have

judged wrongly. It is impossible to know the full story of people you

barely know.

Have a good day.