By Amy Anguish
When I started contemplating which acts of kindness stuck out in my head enough to write about, I came up with all sorts of ideas. There are the daily acts, like my husband making sure I get to take a shower BY MYSELF without small children bombarding me during that time.
To me, that is more than kind. Or there was the time the church helped us pay for car repairs when the vehicle we had purchased only months before suddenly needed a whole new engine. Yeah. And of course, all the meals they brought after the deaths of my grandparents and mother-in-law, or after the births of our children. Very kind.
But those all seemed rather “normal” to me. After all, you can find stories like that all the time. So, I stretched further in my memory and came up with two different times that really stuck with me. Maybe these will also seem rather expected to you, but to me, they made my day when they happened.
The first one was a day when both my husband and I were sick, to the point of not being able to leave the house for any length of time. All I wanted that day was something fizzy to help settle my stomach. But with both of us ill and no family around, it wasn’t going to happen. A friend found out and showed up at my front door with a 2-liter. He simply handed it off, said he hoped I felt better soon, and went on his way. It wasn’t anything profound, but it was exactly what I had been needing at that moment. And to me, that means more than a million dollars.
Another day was one where it seemed everything had gone badly. It was in the time of my husband and I finding out we were going to have to face infertility treatments and find a new job and several other things all at once. A coworker knew my day had not been great, happened to be near my house, and surprised me with a chocolate milkshake. I hadn’t even known I wanted one until she handed me the Styrofoam cup full of thick, creamy goodness. That was the best shake I ever had, simply because my friend had known I needed something to cheer me and had come up with that as the thing she could do.
Acts of kindness can be big, like helping to pay for bills. Or they can be small, like a soda or a milkshake. Even Jesus, in Matthew 10:42, says, “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” It doesn’t really matter what the act of kindness is. It’s the spirit it’s given in that means the most.
Amy Anguish
Author of An Unexpected Legacy
Amy Anguish grew up a preacher’s kid, and in spite of having lived in seven different states that are all south of the Mason Dixon line, she is not a football fan. Currently, she resides in Tennessee with her husband, daughter, and son, and usually a cat or two. Amy graduated with a degree in English from Freed-Hardeman University and hopes in all her creative endeavors to glorify God, but especially in her writing. She wants her stories to show that while Christians face real struggles, it can still work out for good.
Follow her at http://abitofanguish.weebly.com or http://www.facebook.com/amyanguishauthor
“Smoothies brought them together, but would the past tear them apart?”
When Chad Manning introduces himself to Jessica Garcia at her favorite smoothie shop, it’s like he stepped out of one of her romance novels. But as she tentatively walks into a relationship with this man of her dreams, secrets from their past threaten to shatter their already fragile bond. Chad and Jessica must struggle to figure out if their relationship has a chance or if there is nothing between them but a love of smoothies.
The Five Times I Met Myself is another great novel by James L. Rubart. The struggles of the characters mirrored my own and touched me. Like all his books, it is very well-written. Make sure you have a box of tissue nearby!
Have you seen the meme on Facebook or Pinterest of the little girl with a purple hairbrush? You haven’t? Go to Google and look for ‘tantrum girl with purple hairbrush,’ It’ is totally worth it. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Daughter, sister, friend, huge nerd, procrastinator… All are words Cammi Woodall uses to describe her self. A new one she is using is writer. That is scary! Cammi is a writer. Her hands shake when she says it or writes those words.
It was my wedding, well, it was my second wedding. I never dreamt I would have been divorced, much less get married a second time, but here I was, and ever so thankful to be here after such a long and difficult road.
Sarah Van Diest is a writer and editor. She’s the mother of two boys, stepmother to three more, and wife to David. Sarah wrote this book as letters to a dear friend whose life was turning upside down. She’s done this for years for numerous friends and will continue to, Lord willing. It’s her gift to them. It’s hope written down.
Jennifer Hallmark 