Seeing Beyond Ourselves

Lessons Learned…

From The Heart Of A Giver

She was an educated woman born in the late eighteen hundreds.  She was well-read, well-traveled, spoke fluent French and dreamed of teaching high school English. Immediately following college graduation, she married her childhood sweetheart, the love of her life, and so began their life together of promise and adventure. Within but a couple of years, her beloved young husband unexpectedly passed away, leaving her with a heart full of despair and broken promises. Devastation.  Anger. Loneliness.  Fear. Time. More time. Re-focus. Re-commitment. New strength.  She, indeed, taught high school English and changed countless lives with her excellence and full devotion.  She continued to travel and absorb the beauty and the wonder of our amazing world.  She never remarried, but she fell in love with the children at an orphanage in Taiwan, whom she had encountered during her travels. Every school year she loved, challenged, and served her very fortunate high school students, saving every penny she made, so that every summer, inTaiwan, she could offer her hands and her heart to the children there. For years and years and years, this was her life; a life of service and endless giving.  Time and age have an unkind way of ravaging our dreams and caging our plans, leaving us to gaze longingly upon that which we can no longer do. A retreat to bitterness would surely be understood, but Maybeth selected a different option than this. If she herself could no longer travel to her loved little ones in Taiwan, she would work from home to package up her love to send across the world to them in large boxes. Tirelessly, she sewed dresses, shorts, shirts, and pants for these children who had nothing. Hundreds and hundreds of clothing items were packed in hundreds of boxes as a steady stream of love continued to pour into that orphanage. She continued this work, this joy until the day she died.  Her legacy of selfless, generous, endless giving humbled, taught, and inspired each one blessed with the great opportunity of being able to peer into the window of her heart.