Heartmade Blessings, a Worthy Cause
I opened it to find a hand-stitched bag inside. My friends and I are used to sending each other homemade gifts, but no one had notified me to expect a package. The mystery thickened.
I opened the bag and saw a heck of a lot of yarn. This narrowed it down considerably. There is only so much one can do with yarn, and it had been made into something. I pulled it out of the bag.
A beautiful afghan unfolded onto my lap, and there was a tag on every square. Individual women had crocheted these 12 by 12 inch squares to make a afghan for me. Someone else had crocheted all of these squares together to form a afghan, but why? Why me?
A letter had fallen onto the floor. I opened it and read it.
The afghan was a Comfort Afghan made by the volunteers of Heartmade Blessings. They had crocheted all of these squares and sent them to a single person to crochet together so that I could know that the pain of losing my daughter 5.5 months ago wasn’t my burden to bear alone. So that I could know that people cared about us, who were praying for us and reaching out to us. The volunteers at Heartmade Blessings found a way to help ease my pain.
I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t expected it. Still, it was here.
This hit me doubly hard because I had made memorial quilts for several of my friends who lost their children and I knew how I had poured all of my sympathy for them into every single stitch, hoping that it would be enough to help heal their pain. To let them know that I, and others like me, cared about their loss and wanted them to know that they were not alone. I was feeling first-hand the impact that my work had had on others, in an afghan sent by Heartmade Blessings..
It’s one of those “life moments”, you know? Where someone makes such an impact that you have the driving need to laugh or cry or help someone or do whatever you can to say thank you in a way that really matters.
The link to their website was on the bottom of the letter, so I went there. Here is what I found:
According to their home page, Heartmade Blessings is a not-for-profit. Volunteers from around the world have gotten together to hand-craft items for people who have suffered tragedy, loss, or who are going through a rough time. The items made by and distributed through Heartmade Blessings are varied. They include the Comfort Afghan, like the one I got. They also include baby afghans or shawls, pins, cuddles, and other hand-crafted items. Heartmade Blessings has been doing their work since at least 2001. They have orbanized projects like America United, which was for families affected by the September 11th tragedy, Operation Purple Heart, to comfort families who have lost someone in the War on Terror, and Operation Columbia, for the people who were affected by the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster.
Though their website isn’t updated much, the volunteers at Heartmade Blessings are still helping people like me to cope with unspeakable loss in a very real way.
If you’re looking for a worthy cause, please consider Heartmade Blessings. They’re looking for donations of time, money, and supplies (like postage and yarn). If you can crochet or learn to crochet, maybe someday a mother, wife, husband, patient, or child can look at a name tag from you through tear-stained eyes.
It is so sad to see volunteering get shoved aside as our lives become so busy and cluttered with things that don’t really matter in the long run. Heartmade Blessings reaffirmed my faith that some people still take the time to show that they care. We can still make a difference in the lives of others. It just takes effort.
