It's A Wonderful, Wonderful Blogging World

You know, most days are pretty dry days for blogging and I'm just not sure what to write about. Plus, the busyness of life gets in the way of regular updates. This morning, I've been sitting here blog-hopping. This seems to be one of my favorite past times these days. I sit far too long hop- hop-hopping all over the place. However, today my post is about just how far-reaching this blogging world can be. I'm going to introduce you to just two blogging worlds. The first is Dave, the second is NieNie. I do not know either of them. I've just "met" them through other people's blogs. It just goes to show how small our world really is.

First, I'd like to tell you about Dave from Toronto, Canada. I found him through a comment he left on someone's blog. The comment made me curious enough to find out more of the story behind the comment. This eventually led me to his two blogs. The first blog he discontinued as a result of extreme disappointment in the human condition (brought about by his comment that I had found). The whole situation made me sad, so being the extrovert and people-person that I am, I emailed him some encouragement. He emailed me back. That's the extent of it. However, Dave's profile made me curious enough to follow up on him from time to time. You see, Dave woke up one day last year to find that he had become profoundly deaf as the result of a stroke and meningitis. His first blog is an interesting read of his journey into deafness as well as his wife's struggle with cancer. One, two, punch! Man, that family has been hit hard. Anyway, Dave was to have his second cochlear implant to help bring him back into the world of the hearing again. All has not gone well since the surgery in August. The wonderful thing about this blog is the number of people who keep leaving comments on his blog with words of encouragement during a long time of blog-silence. Some know him well, some not at all, like me.

Another example of love extended through blogging is NieNie. As I blog-hopped, I kept seeing this link about Nie Recovery. So, I checked it out. Stephanie Nielsen and her husband, Christian, were in a private airplane accident on August 16. The pilot died in the crash. Christian sustained burns on 30% of his body. Stephanie is burned over 80%. Can you imagine the pain? She has been blogging since 2005 and seems to have quite a following (there have been 65, 397 hits on her profile. Yikes!) The amazing thing has been the blog world's response to her accident. There are fundraisers going on all over the place. Bloggers are holding auctions with all proceeds going to their recovery. They have four small children who are being cared for by a sister in Provo, Utah. They were interviewed by Matt Lauer on Sept. 9. It just amazes me how frequently I find a link about them on random posts I find.

So, these are just two examples of how small the world can seem. It makes me happy to think that so many strangers can come together from so faraway, never ever meet, yet do awe-inspiring feats of great kindness for another unmet individual. It also makes me wonder---do we do this in our own backyards and neighborhoods? Or is it safer to love others from behind the door of the internet where we can control how much of ourselves we give away?

During a month long event sponsored by my guidance department, our theme was "Make your mark---give away your heart." It's a good theme to live by. Long distance or local, I love watching it happen.

jdm