Kudos to My Wife….(She's Gonna Kill Me for this)

Dr. Seuss-themed
Read-A-Thon my
wife organized

Next month my wife and I will celebrate 16 years of marriage.  During that time, she has been a faithful and loving confidant, companion and soul mate.  Specifically, she has been a constant support through a wide-ranging array of professional ventures, activities and job changes for me – some have been failures, while others have been very successful for our family. 

Regardless, she has been a resolute constant through it all.  When I started this blog nearly a year ago she made it clear that she supported it, but that she was reluctant for me to write about her. I tried to honor that request, until today.

I have to share with you a glimpse at the totality of her maximum awesomeness.

Aside from her dedication to our daughters and church, she volunteers at the girl’s elementary school several times a week AND is the volunteer coordinator for the school’s PTA.

This last bit is a thankless job that requires a great deal of coordination, relationship management, and sales ability because she’s constantly recruiting people to do or give “something for nothing.”

She’s spent the past several months working from scratch on a school-wide Dr. Seuss-themed “Read-a-Thon” fundraiser to benefit the students, where the students have to commit to a certain number of minutes of reading every day and secure sponsorship for those minutes.

Thus far, her month long event has achieved a 70 percent participation rate amongst the students and a near 100 percent participation rate by teachers.  In my estimation – that’s unprecedented.  It’s tough for me to get a cross-functional group of seven people at my workplace to meet for 20 minutes to discuss a project let alone sustain the daily requirements of a month-long initiative.

Given the financial challenges that most school districts face and the fundraising fatigue that parents endure buying loads of gift-wrapping paper, popcorn, frozen cookie dough, pizza and other myriad of sundries – it’s refreshing to see a fundraiser that educates kids AND 100 percent of the proceeds stay at the school as opposed to the other types of fundraisers that take a normative 50-60 percent cut to cover the cost of goods.

Ultimately, my wife’s unyielding efforts are intended for all of the school kids – including our girls.  Yet, despite that incentive it’s not only the herculean work she does that counts but HOW she accomplishes it.

My wife is a certified elementary and secondary teacher, so she knows the challenges that school instructors face everyday.  All of her activities flow through that filter of understanding to foster a seamless collaboration with the school’s administration, staff and parents creating a truly virtual cycle that benefits everyone.

I know that there are a lot of good people who do a lot of good things, but I see firsthand how my wife deftly strives to do all of this hyperactivity with kindness, grace, poise and a scrappy Rottweiler-esque determination to finish every task.

It’s both humbling and inspiring.  I just wanted to share that with you, because she never would otherwise.  I’m blessed to have her in my life as my wife!