Totally Obsessed Tuesday--The Difference a Dollar Can Make

Well, it's Tuesday again.  I actually was proactive and started writing this post last night, and I had it all planned out.  I was going to talk to you about the benefits of coconut oil, my new favorite beauty product, and another awesome app.

However, something a little less frivolous came to my attention today, and I decided that those things could wait.  Your life will not be drastically altered if you have to wait a week to learn about lip pencils and how much more delicious your brownies could be if you made them with coconut oil.  So instead, I'm going to reach out today and ask everyone I know to help drastically alter someone else's life for the better.

I know.  Sounds heavy and serious and hard, right?  Just bear with me.

If you've read my other Totally Obsessed Tuesday posts, you know that I follow a lot of Mom Blogs.  Some of them are funny, some are crafty, and some are heart-wrenchingly inspirational.  My favorite of the latter category is Hands Free Mama, whose blog I follow by email.  I haven't really mentioned Rachel before, because I know she's not quite everyone's cup of tea.  She's very God-centered, and her urgings that we put down our goddamn cell phones and pay attention to our children are hard to swallow in our technology-obsessed age.  However, she is one of my favorites.

Today, Rachel wrote about her old friend Amanda, who used to babysit her now ten-year-old daughter Natalie. Amanda and her husband Johnny are trying to adopt a boy from Uganda.  Due to the rather outrageous amount of money it costs to adopt a child from another country, Amanda sent out a plea to her friends and family to help her raise enough money to bring her son home.

You can read the full blog post here, but here it is in a nutshell: Ten-year-old Natalie wanted to help her old family friend, but only had a single dollar bill in her wallet.  She was concerned that a dollar wouldn't make a difference, but her mother told her to imagine what would happen if everyone Amanda knew sent her a single dollar.  You don't have to imagine: Amanda posted the same query on a social media site when she received the dollar from Natalie, and within just a few hours, over three hundred dollars had been raised. That means THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE, who may or may not even know Amanda, donated a dollar to help the couple bring their new son home.  Rachel took it a step further, and in her post today, asked everyone to continue the trend and send a single dollar to Amanda. 

I don't know why this story hit me so hard.  Maybe because it shows the incredible impact of one little girl's huge heart.  Maybe because I find this display of how good and kind people can be to be inspiring.  Maybe just because I hope people would be so willing to help me if I were in the same situation.  No matter the reason, Amanda and her soon-to-be son have been all I can think about this afternoon.

I know you don't know Amanda or her husband.  I don't either.  And I know there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of deserving couples in this same situation.  And I know there are a million other things you could do with that crumpled dollar bill in your wallet or at the bottom of your purse.  But I'm asking you, as my friend, to do something more meaningful with that dollar than buy yourself a chicken sandwich or a new tube of Chapstick.  I'm asking you to help this couple, that none of us know, to become a family.  Amanda and Johnny's story can be found here if you'd like to read it for yourself.

If you are as inspired by ten-year-old Natalie as I am, you can send Amanda and Johnny an envelope with a dollar in it at this address:

Amanda Campbell
300 N. 38th Ave, Apt. 13,
Hattiesburg, MS, 39401

If you decide to send them a dollar, or even if you don't, all I ask is that you pass the message on to any family and friends you have who might take up the challenge themselves.

Either way, I promise to return to frivolity next Tuesday and tell you all about my coconut oil brownies.