Live United by Ann Austin

 

It’s December! The month means different things to different people. It’s year-end, health insurance enrollment time and for the past decade it has been the end of the United Way campaign for me.

But for most of us, throughout our lives, it has been Christmas — or one of many traditions and celebrations that honor togetherness, love for our family and friends and the many things we can be thankful for.

For people who celebrate Christmas, we honor Jesus and the role he has in helping us understand his sacrifice and the potential we all have to live with unconditional love, which is harder than we realize.

Back in 2010, during one of the hardest years of my life, I embraced humility — and with that came unconditional love.

There is a difference between conditional and unconditional love. I would define this difference as a level of commitment. When we love people conditionally, it’s based on their behavior or how they make us feel, what they do for us, maybe how much money they have. The commitment to a relationship based on conditional love isn’t deep — when someone hurts us or disappoints us, we end our relationship with them or create distance.

With unconditional love, the commitment is deeper.

Unconditional love means no matter how much people hurt us — intentionally or otherwise — we are committed to loving them. Think of Jesus on the cross — people cursed him, threw stones at him, hurt him physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually — in every possible way. Yet, he still loved them. And he called for us to love each other in the same way. It’s not easy, but I believe it’s possible if at some point of vulnerability, we allow our hearts to crack open more than we ever knew they could.

Often, when we face challenges, we resort to narratives — the stories we tell ourselves or each other about the conditions we are living in. There are many narratives in our community. These stories we tell create distance from each other — it’s so much easier to turn away, than to face each other and talk — really talk.

I’ve been paying attention to some of the stories that exist — which are not fair or representative of reality. These stories are not mine to own, however, I do question them — and try to offer perspective (as others have done for me — and I am eternally grateful).

I would like to address some of the narratives that exist about our United Way — and many United Ways:

1. Donations stay local: They really do. It’s what United Way was founded on, and what we will continue to focus on. United Way is a large system now — but we are bottom-up, which means we are governed locally, have local staff and 98 percent of our funds stay in our community. (One percent is designated by donors to other areas, 1 percent goes toward United Way membership, which allows us to benefit from designations from outside our area — as well as many other benefits)

2. United Ways fund local programs: We will fund 22 programs next year. With previous campaign shortfalls, we have had to cut back on support. There are many conditions out of our control, and we have adapted our expenses as much as possible to extend more funds to local programs. If you want to know more about how funding decisions are made, please feel free to contact me at 507-373-8670.

There is a month left in our campaign — you can still give! Visit our website at www.unitedwayfc.org/give to give online, send a check to our office at 314 S. Broadway Ave., Albert Lea, or simply drop by!

3. Our campaigns are successful: I’ve heard comments about needing a campaign chair again recently. It’s always great to have local people who can voice the importance of giving to area programs. However, it’s not sustainable to ask one person (or even a few) to bear that burden. We couldn’t find a chair after the Great Recession and adapted our practices. The years following were our most successful campaigns because there were (and still are) wonderful advocates at local workplaces. The challenges we face now will take more than any one person — or group of people can do. We truly do need the community to step up. We need everyone to share stories with each other — about how important local programs are, what they have meant to our community and why we should support them. If you don’t give local, shop local or be locally focused, we won’t have the same quality of services or products and our whole community suffers.

We can’t work against these narratives, the e-mail forwards or the social media posts. I realized is all I can do is come from a place of love — and I’m still on the journey of loving others unconditionally. I believe, and will always believe, that love is the strongest force in the universe.

I love our community — I love us, with all of our struggles, with the challenges we face — the people who care or don’t (feel like they can) care. Because these struggles, challenges and the people are ours. We have each other — and we are gifts to each other. We need to realize this on a deep level.

During my time at our United Way, I have been gifted with people’s honesty, their concerns, their love of our community and the worry and fear that comes from the perception that they have no control.

We have more control over our conditions that we are aware of. But we need to be committed to each other. I would challenge that we need to find a way to love each other unconditionally.

We can’t allow barriers to become so big that we stop talking to each other or finding solutions to the problems we face. We need you — we need each other.

Ann Austin is the executive director of the United Way of Freeborn County.