How Your Words and Actions Affect Others
You never really know how your words and your actions affect other people. That's been our experience anyway.
Here's a practical example of something that happened recently to illustrate this point...
Susie's mother passed a couple of weeks ago and among the beautiful cards and sentiments that she received after her mother's death was a letter from a former neighbor who had lived next door to her childhood home.
In this woman's letter, she described how much Susie's mom's kindness and love had meant to her during a particular time in her life.
One of the memories that this woman wrote about was this...
It was a Christmas eve many years ago, the first Christmas that she had spent away from her family. She had two babies, twins, and her husband was conducting the Christmas eve service at the church where he was the pastor--and she felt very alone. In her words, she was experiencing a "pity party."
She heard a knock at the door and there was Susie's mom who said that she knew that this woman was alone and she wanted to come over to spend some time with her until her husband came home.
This woman never forgot this simple yet beautiful act of kindness from Susie's mom and even "repaid" that kindness by being there for Susie's sister when she was alone with a small child, away from her family.
You just never know when one phone call, one visit or even one card will make a difference in someone's life.
Susie was recently at a workshop and talked in front of the group about the passing of her mom and what that had meant to her.Another woman in the group was touched by what Susie had shared and was able to talk about her own situation with her mom. She told Susie later that what she had said had helped her.
You just never know when one word or action from you will help someone to feel more love or to resolve some difficulty within them.
So what this letter from Susie's previous neighbor reminded us of is when you get an impulse to phone someone or to visit someone or even to send a card to someone--don't put it off. Your outreach may be very important to that person atthat time in their life and may cause a chain reaction of kindness and love that you may not have dreamed possible.
One of our favorite movies is "Pay it Forward" and if you haven't seen it or haven't seen it in awhile, we suggest
that you do. You will be inspired to act on your impulses of kindness and won't let the excuses of "I'll do it later" or "I'd like to but I don't have time right now" stand in your way.
Susie's mother's kindness that Christmas eve made all the difference in her neighbor's life.
Whether it's with your partner, your kids, your family members, friends, co-workers--yours can too.
