On that same note, a little while ago I was watching the national news, and I saw a story about
This Blog
This man challenged himself to perform one random act of kindness every day this entire year and blog about every experience. Impressed, I added the link above to my blogs that I follow, and I have been following his experiences.
I woke up this morning having a desire to add some "quality" to some of the family activities we do in conjunction with holidays. I contemplated visiting the Care Center where I used to work to hand out some Valentine treats to the patrons of the facility. This would also have been fun, but I knew we would be into that about 3 hours, and we needed to go to Parent Teacher Conferences tonight.
Amidst my contemplation, I checked the "Random Acts of Kindness" blog. His act today was to give Valentines to total strangers in downtown Chicago. I had an idea!!!!! I decided that we would go and buy Valentines candy to hand out in front of the Road Home (A family Homeless shelter).
We went for an early dinner to avoid the crowds, and headed into the downtown area right around the time large numbers of people were arriving for dinner at the shelter.
I was actually surprised by the amount of people that were down there. We all became a little intimidated as we realized there was not as many children as we had hoped for. While I was totally fine with us giving the candy to adults, I expected them to be very uninterested in a 33 cent box of hearts.
We drove around, trying to find a place to park, and contemplating who was going to get out of the car (and if any of us would actually get out the car). At this point, Josh comically chastised all of us for being "scared". He flipped a U turn, and pulled up to a man: "excuse me sir", he exclaimed. "Happy Valentines Day dude!" and he handed him the Candy through the window of the car. Us girls were all a little uneasy (just something different. I have never done something like this before).
Finally, I took the plunge. We handed out some candy through the window, and then got out, and visited large groups of adults SO HAPPY to receive something so small.
It was actually rather beautiful. I teared up a couple of times. I learned some great lessons tonight:
-We take A LOT for granted!!! Initially, I didn't want to hand these out to adults because I expected to be snubbed or rejected at such an offering. I was surprised to find the opposite in most cases. These people were so thankful. They were thrilled to be remembered. We all have so much to be thankful for.
-None of us is any better than another: On the way home I told Josh that in some cases it wouldn't take more than one choice (not a bad choice, maybe just one lacking thorough judgement) to put any of us in such a situation. The opportunity to work and provide for ourselves is a tremendous blessing.
-That Heavenly Father loves all of us: One group of individuals wanted hugs in return for the boxes of candy. I admit, initially, this made me a bit uncomfortable. But, their souls are sincere, and their appreciation and kindness unconditional and pure.
-Little things can truly mean a lot!!!!
It made me sad to see little kids in this type of situation. Parents who love their little ones as much as we all do have no way in their current situation to provide for the most basic of needs. This was an eye opening thing for my kids to see. Josh explained to them that Heavenly Father loves them as much as he loves us, and is mindful of their situation.
Everyone we came in contact with seemed surprised to receive a "Valentine Greeting". How would we feel if there wasn't anyone in our circle to offer even the smallest and simplest Valentine Greeting?
This was a neat experience for our family. I contemplated about whether or not to put this experience out on cyber space, so as to avoid making a skeptical of service. However, we can all learn a lot from these types of experiences. I think we will be finding more ways to serve others as part of our Holiday Traditions. A wonderful current lesson taught to me by the spirit has been this: If you want to pull yourself out of any selfish issue, and find true happiness, spend some time lifting someone else's spirits.
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