Charity
I was asked if I wanted to make a donation to the Ronald McDonald house. I said yes. The woman told me about how every time I contributed would go to the house, and not a penny of it to McDonald's or any other for profit corporation. She told me about all of the great things the house does. She started to cry a little, which I politely ignored, and I let her talk, because it seemed like she really needed to say it.
When my son was born with a heart defect, he was put into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU. We spent every waking hour there, holding him, rocking him, and singing to him during his wakeful times. One of the most heartbreaking things was that in this room full of sick newborns, about ten of them in our area, we saw almost no other parents. Many of these babies, I learned, weren't expected to survive.
There was one other family there as much as we were. Their baby, Noah, was extremely premature. They were hundreds of miles away from home, in the only hospital in the region equipped for babies born so early. They held him, rocked him, sang to him during his wakeful times. He was given a 30-40% chance of survival, and he made it. I will always believe that part of that was because his parents were able to be there for him.
That family stayed in the Ronald McDonald House. If not for that, they wouldn't have been able to see Noah.