Problems? She Can Relate

SLOWLY THIS TIME, I reread the e-mail on my phone. “We’re going to be evicted from our apartment unless we can come up with $1,000 in four hours. If there’s any way you could help, we’d be so grateful.” Teresa, a woman I’d never met, had sent it to me in New Jersey—from Maryland. She’d lost her legs in an auto accident. Every day was a struggle for her and her husband. It broke my heart.

It was 2017 and I’d told a few friends I wanted to do something good for people in need, to feel as if I was making a difference in this world. Word had spread, and thus this e-mail. But it was too much. One thousand dollars? In a single afternoon. It might as well have been a million dollars.

I was barely getting by myself. A 30-year-old single mom, raising a seven-year-old son with