Stories of Kindness from Around the World

Matthew's Story (a True Story)


--by Alisamom, posted Oct 20, 2016

maybe days like these days make it necessary — for us all to be little kinder than necessary?

Maybe there are times when private independent acts become more important every day — because there are public actions that are breaking all of us every day.

That’s exactly what Jamie-Lynne Knighten found out when she stood at the checkout aisle of Trader Joe’s with a baby slung on her hip and couldn’t find even a dime in her purse.

She needed an even $200 for the bill and her cart of groceries.

Her debit card was at home. Her credit card was declined. Her phone was somewhere at the bottom of her purse. She had to call the bank. And the baby had to be howling in her ear like some distraught coyote caught in some relentless trap.

Matthew Jackson stepped out of the growing, waiting line and into the baby’s howl and Jamie-Lynn’s frantic search for her phone.

“Let me cover it.”

Let me cover it, was all the guy said. You know — let the shortcomings be covered with long kindnesses, let the messiness of things be covered with amazing grace, let the multitude of problems be covered with an avalanche of love.

Jamie-Lynn refused.

Why can it be the hardest to let yourself be the least bit loved?

Matthews insisted. “Please — let me cover it.”

Who doesn’t want to be covered? Who doesn’t need people to make themselves into a roof for our storms? Who doesn’t need people to make themselves into a roof for our storms?
When we cover each other with caring — we destroy the crisis.

Jamie-Lynn would say she looked up and she’d say could see it in Matthew Jackson’s eyes. He meant it. The kid meant it.

“Look, you don’t have to pay me back.” Matthew Jackson pulled out his wallet. “Just give it forward.”

Truth is: We can’t pay the cosmos back — we can only give it forward. And this is the same thing.

Maybe our most convincing, persuasive argument for how we envision the cultural landscape of tomorrow — is mostly our profound kindness today.

Sometimes when it gets mighty hard to find solutions to the headlines… turns out that lines of hope and change are found in hearts.

Sometimes —- there are times, in the face of no easy solutions, we get to restore each other to the strength of unlikely revolutions.

Yes, Jamie-Lynn said, yes, she said — she would give it forward —- and she scribbled down Matthew Jackson’s name and where he worked — so she could thank him again. Somehow.

A week later, Jamie-Lynn picked up the phone and rung up Matthew’s boss because she had to tell him what the kid had done.

Could she stop by to somehow thank Matthew — some kind of gift of thanks?

This time it was the cry of Matthew’s boss that broke and shattered at Jamie-Lynn’s ear.

“Matthew’s dead. Car accident. His Ford struck a tree at the end of West Vista Way last week— not far from that Trader Joe’s.”

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Less than 24 hours after Matthew had stood in that same Trader Joe’s and paid Jamie-Lynn’s bill, his car wrapped around a tree and his heart slammed to a deafening stop.

But Matthew Jackson didn’t die when he struck that tree because this is how the universe works:

Give love and you always stay alive, even after you are gone.

Each act of kindness is a revolutionary act that turns time and distance on its head.

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2016/10/in-an-angry-debating-broken-world-we-could-join-hands-in-a-revolution-of-kindness-the-best-gift-list/



999 Reads
  • Posted by Alisamom
  • Oct 20, 2016
  • 24 Smiles, 8 Comments



Please Log In To View/Add Comments, and Much More. :)