a great big THANK YOU

i just wanted to give a great big giant shout out to all of my friends and family tonight.....we held our first ever Funds for Friends at the Green Turtle to help raise money for our breast cancer walk....and the turnout was amazing!!  i am always so impressed by how willing people are to HELP.....i think we get sidetracked by all of the negative news and information floating around, that we forget that people are basically KIND and GENEROUS at heart....and i am truly blessed to be surrounded by these people every day.....

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.   Martin Luther King, Jr.

tonight was a beautiful reminder of how people can come together HAPPILY to support a cause that may or may not affect them personally, but they realize is an important part of our WHOLE community....  we do what we can, because we can....i only wish it were always so easy to create something positive....

i'm hoping that is something that will continue to get better with the next generation....i absolutely LOVE that not only the students of LPHS unplugged performed tonight, but that so many of the students came out to support them....and us.....our young people WANT to help....they want to feel EMPOWERED to affect change....they just need the opportunity.....

its in looking outside of ourselves that we get a clearer picture of "reality".....what we have to deal with often doesn't seem nearly as bad when faced with others are going thru.....i spent some time talking with a young woman tonight who lost her mother to kidney cancer....she is already so active in the FIGHT against this terrible disease - but doesnt yet have the experience or knowledge to get as much done as she would like....

so my take away from tonight was not only how awesome my friends are, but also how important it is that we MENTOR our young people....i came home to a long discussion with jake about the current KONY 2012 movement - and our responsibilities as a nation.....long story short,  KIDS today are so AWARE of what is happening- they have exposure to information 24/7....and they have opinions and feelings just like the adults.....what we need to teach them is how to CHANNEL those emotions into POSITIVE action....activism at its core is amazing....and with the tools our kids have at their disposal, creating AWARENESS of injustice or rallying for cause are much easier than they ever have been before.....BUT with that opportunity also comes responsibility - to KNOW what to do with the information....how to generate the appropriate activity to garner results....these are the things we can HELP each other with!!  we need to stop treating our young adults like children, and start respecting what they can bring to the table....THEY will be in charge when we are not, and the sooner we start sharing our ideas, our movements, our concerns with them - the sooner they can decide how to HELP!!

so the next time i work on a fundraiser, i know that not only will i ask jalyn to help me, but i will also TEACH her how to do it on her own.....so that she can go out and make her OWN difference.....and someday pay it forward!!  THAT is how we truly make an impact....i'm sorry i didnt see sooner how much our kids WANT to be involved...but you can bet from this point forward, i will make sure i enlist their help!!

Because that's what kindness is.  It's not doing something for someone else because they can't, but because you can. 

 ~Andrew Iskander