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we happened to be occupying in order to catch a glimpse of my brothers. They would always call out, “Hi, Mother Osmond!!!” whenever she would enter or exit. I guess because they always called her “Mother,” she felt she had the go-ahead to advise them in the same way she did all of her children. I would sometimes see her walk over to the fence or sidewalk where the girls lined up, and with a broad smile on her face and gentleness in her voice, say, “Stop wasting your time, girls. Think of how much good you could be doing to help other people with all these hours you spend standing here. Go be of service by reading to the blind, or helping out a handicapped child. You could be working in a food pantry or visiting the elderly. Now, get going, girls. Then report back to me on what you accomplished!”
    I know quite a few girls did report back to my mother over the years how she had changed their lives, often by her encouragement to “not waste a moment of this precious life.”
    The idea for Children’s Miracle Network, scribbled out on that legal pad over twenty-five years ago, was to help as many kids as possible by supporting the hospitals that cared for them. Through funds raised by individuals, media outlets, and wonderful corporate sponsorship, as well as through the dedication of amazing doctors, nurses, and researchers who have donated countless hours of their time, Children’s Miracle Network is now able to provide state-of-the-art care and facilities to 17 million children every year. To date, $3.4 billion worth of free medical care has been given away to families who need help in making sure their child receives the best possible chance at life.
    A couple of years ago, I was stopped in an airport by a darling man who wanted to shake my hand.
    “I wanted to say hello and to thank you,” he said shyly. “I was a Children’s Miracle Network Champion about twenty years ago. I was fourteen then, and had undergone three rounds of chemotherapy for lymphoma.”
    I’m always thrilled to meet one of the Champion kids again.
    “Then I was bald from the chemo,” he continued. “Now I’m just getting bald from middle age!”
    I told him, “I’ll be smiling about this success story for weeks.”
    The money CMN has raised has helped millions of families. And for me, the opportunity to be in the presence of these incredible children over the years has helped me in countless ways as well: teaching me, expanding my thinking, increasing my gratitude. I’ve heard this same sentiment from everyone who works with Children’s Miracle Network, from the most brilliant surgeon to the high school volunteers who help out by doing fund-raising dance-a-thons.
    I’ve never once met a sick or injured child who had a “why me?” outlook on life, even when their condition appeared to be incurable. One small boy, whom I’ll call Blake, was no exception.
    I met Blake and his parents during a radio interview about the Children’s Miracle Network fund-raising gala at a Florida resort a couple of years ago. Blake has brittle bone disease, and though he was seven years old at the time, he was about the size of a three-year-old due to the disease. He wore Harry Potter-type glasses along with his adorable grin, and had his wheelchair decorated with various stickers, mostly Disney characters. It was not the first time my heart has been captured, but when he burst into giggles at my one and only pirate joke (What’s a pirate’s favorite letter of the alphabet? R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r), I just had to hijack his wheelchair and run away with him.
    With his parents in close pursuit, we got as far as the resort gift store, which was featuring toys from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
    “I want to get you something fun. Pick out a toy just for you,” I told him as we took a tour of everything available.
    After doing two laps of the entire store, Blake reached up to a rack to choose a plastic pirate’s sword that lit up and