Woke up this morning with realization that again I haven't written in a while. I need to speak in church this morning, so I figured this might be a good time to do so as I need to organize my thoughts to speak.
Many of you can imagine, life with three teenagers in the house is never boring. This week alone, we experienced the boomerang effect as our oldest because quite ill (now much better) and moved back into our home, our middle son earned his driving learner's license, and our youngest was sick again and so has a backlog of homework about citizenship to take care of that I am sure is going to raise more interesting discussions later today. All this as I continued to enjoy running my bookkeeping business, attended an eye-opening presentation about human trafficking happened in our community, enjoyed a Dave Gunning concert, and worked on what is going to be the topic of my presentation in church this morning.
As I reflect about what to say in church, I cannot help but recall and reflect on the talk I did two years ago, where I shared some of my family's experiences with mental disorder:
http://isitaspergerssyn.blogspot.com/2018/02/audio-of-walking-together-on-coldest.html
A lot has changed in our household since then, but a lot has stayed the same as well. As I know is true for many people in this crazy world we live in, we continue to face what seems to be daily struggles with mental disorder, and so again I was given reason last night to be very proud to be part of my church family. You see, last night was our annual participation in the Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser. All week long, as I observed my own teenagers going through their normal daily struggles, I just could not help but think... What if they were going through their challenges and had no support at home to help them?!
That is why I think this fundraiser is such a worthwhile cause to support. This event was to help Roots for Youth raise $25,000. The money raised will help them serve youth 16-24 in our community… Youth who need a place to eat, to get online, to do laundry, to grab a shower, or even just to find a sympathetic listening ear. With your support, youth will continue to be able to go to a 4-bed shelter open daily from 4:30 to 8 pm. Also, since September 2017, they also can be placed in one of 2 transition houses, so they have access to safe and affordable housing while rebuilding their lives and making use of supports available through Roots staff and programs.
For the 6th year (5 with my church family), I have participated in this fundraiser that I feel is so important here. We call ourselves the "Coldest Night Warmest Hearts" team, and you can see in our team photo that we have fun:
We had 18 people serve as "walkers" this year, and also 66 people sponsored us so far, so overall we have 84 people to thank. As a result of our efforts, so far we have raised $2225 toward our goal of $3000 for Roots for Youth. While we didn't meet our goal yet, I think we can still be very proud of our accomplishment. Overall, as a team we have raised over $15,000 for Roots for Youth in the past 6 years!
It's not too late to help either! If you would like to help us meet our goal, you can "donate to team" here: https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/TeamFundraisingPage.aspx?teamID=885857
Still, they say pride goes before the fall, right? As I was leaving the event, I was handed a pin. After all these years dealing with mental disorder, it finally happened. I have been co-mitt-ed - I couldn't help but smile at this!
If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more written by me in future, you are invited to go to my page in Facebook as well, to follow and "Like" the page so you will get notifications in your Facebook feed when I write posts in future:
https://www.facebook.com/Christine.Marie.MacKenzie/
Thanks for reading!
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