Donating Clothes to the Poor

I bet none of you remember anymore that, way back in July, I mentioned I had bags of kids' clothes that I had decluttered after feeling like God wanted me to give things away to the poor.

Well, they sat in my bedroom for months as I tried to finish getting them all cleaned and sorted. A dozen times during that period, I thought to myself that I should just dump them off at the local thrift store when the clothes were all ready. It's what I usually do when I want to give stuff away. But somehow that didn't feel right; God had told me to give things away to the poor, not hand them over to someone who would sell them (albeit at a cheap price).

Then, some months ago, a trio of women gave a presentation to my prayer group about different aspects of the Right to Life movement in Portland, such as the 40 Days for Life campaign. Because of that presentation, I ended up getting the name and address of a local crisis pregnancy center.

I was thrilled.

The pro-life movement lies very close to my heart; I am often pained at the thought of all the abortions that happen. There is little I can do about it, though, beyond simply raising my own children. To have this chance, this opportunity, to actually help women (and babies) who would otherwise be at risk for an abortion, even if just by donating used kids' clothes, gives me great joy.


^{Which didn't stop me from taking forever to actually get the clothes to them. It was only yesterday that I finally delivered the clothes, and the only reason I finally got around to it was that the light in my bedroom went out, and I didn't want my neat-freak landlord to see the bedroom that messy, and the only other place to put the clothes was in the van. And then the kids had a dentist appointment in the general vicinity of the center, so it was reasonably convenient to just drop them off.}