What does "deserving" mean?

I’ve recently had a good old clearout of stash that I know I won’t use. A lot of it has come to me in kits and magazines (as freebies) and while it looked great when I first got it, on second look I admitted to myself that it isn’t my style and I won’t be using it.

As I hate having useless things lying around, I gathered all these things together in one big bag and decided to give it to whoever most deserves it. So I posted a message on a UK scrapping forum and told people to write to me and tell me why they deserve this stash. The messages soon flooded in!

I have now a very difficult task – choosing a winner. I decided that the kit isn’t worth splitting (it is large but not quite THAT large) so there can only be one winner, or else there would be several slightly disappointed people rather than one very delighted one. This of course makes my job harder as I have to decide which of these people deserve it the most.

I have received the most heart warming stories from different people: stories of teachers that struggle to get money to fund their crafty projects yet the kids love them, of women that run craft clubs for underprivileged people and could do with some help, of scrappers that generously nominated not themselves but a needy friend or family member. How on EARTH can I choose? I feel like going on a massive shopping spree now and giving something to everyone!

But I can’t really do that – the point of the exercise was to get rid of the “dead weight” in my stash and give it to someone that really deserves it for whatever reason. I now have a list of candidates longer than I expected and need to start the painful process of ranking them – but how can I meaningfully rank people’s needs? How can I arbitrarily decide that a needy child is more “deserving” than a needy adult?

I’ve got myself into a right pickle, haven’t I?!

I need to somehow pick the one message that touched me more than most and decide that this person is the “winner”. That sounds like a relatively easy part – the hardest part is to then have to let the others know that they didn’t “win”. I have to do it in a way that doesn’t belittle their needs or problems… THAT is the bit I am not sure how to do.

I am starting to feel like a small-scale Oprah – I have the power to change someone’s life (if only a little bit) and this power should not be used lightly. I feel like I have a huge responsibility and it’s making me the tiniest bit nervous. I hope that a greater power will take over and guide my heart into making the right choice.

All I wanted was some more room in my stash cupboard and ended up with a moral debate with myself!!