Making a small splash

“What difference, really, is my life making?” It’s a question we ask of ourselves on occasions, usually as we meet another of life’s milestones. For charity’s, it can be a question that haunts.

In recent weeks two of our team followed up a donation of furniture we had made to a local organisation working with the vision-impaired.  The man that met them at the door was built, powerful shoulders, thickened neck and dark glasses. Wrong door perhaps?

“No, come in, we’re the charity you’re looking for.” 

The office was smallish. 

“We don’t do a great deal,” the man behind the glasses began. “We host events for those we know who are vision-impaired, provide them with legal help, material assistance, we advocate for their rights. We try to help how we can…. “

He pauses, drifts, and begins to tell a story of a girl they had helped (in a matter of fact way, in as many words):

“But then there’s Anastasia. She’d always swum, since she was a girl, she clearly had talent. Then this guy came along, swept her off her feet. They married. And then the scandal. I don’ t know the details, only that they fought and he beat her. Badly. So badly she lost her sight. She was inconsolable. Threw everything away, including her swimming and she spiralled pretty badly. That’s about the time we met her. One of our staff got alongside her, encouraged her to get in the pool again. She didn’t want to at first. But after a little more encouragement, she did. She started to swim again. By the way, she got first place at some special games in Czech Republic. She’s married now as well to an amazing man.”

“In other words he turned her life around with his encouragement!” I didn’t say. I had to wonder what would this swimmer’s story may have been had a guy in dark glasses not given her a little cheering on during those black days.

The organisation serves hundreds of vision-impaired people. We rejoice that we were able to place a small donation of furniture in this smallish office beside a man who had a few small words with a woman in a dark place that changed a life.