Stories of Kindness from Around the World

In the past 24 hours, I have been gifted with two amazing opportunities for kindness. The first happened yesterday. I was on my way home after running some errands and saw a small dog running across the last three lanes of the very busy street I was traveling on.

He scampered off into the neighborhood, so I went off in search of him in hopes I could reunite him with his owners. After a bit of a cat and mouse game, he finally decided I was worthy of at least a little of his trust and came close enough to me for me to grab him.

After taking him to be scanned for a microchip, I learned that he had disappeared eight months ago from his owners who lived a half an hour away. As I had some free time before my other commitments, I drove him back to his rightful owners. He was in good condition so someone had been caring for him, but not the people from whom he was stolen. He and his human mommy were so glad to see one another! It gave me a good smile to end the year with.

This morning my family and I went to a friend's home to help her get things back in order. She was one of the unfortunate people whose home was recently destroyed by the Rowlett, TX tornado. She was luckier than some of her neighbors, thankfully. Her interior walls were largely intact, though one side of her home fell off and the roof was gone over a large portion of the house. Torrential rain fell the rest of the night and all of the next day following the tornado, creating even more damage to the interior and to her belongings. The home is a total loss. Still, there is much that is salvageable, and our job today was to help her sort through the debris and find anything with sentimental or actual value that she may want to take with her.

My fiancee helped to move furniture and other things to storage while our younger children helped clean up the yard. My oldest daughter and her boyfriend helped as well, him helping with the moving, and my daughter tag-teaming with me, sweeping up all of the areas of debris, sorting it for things that are important, and getting the rest into big contractor trash bags and then to the trash pile out front.

We worked systematically, clearing the main living spaces first, then moving on to the kitchen, laundry area, then the master bedroom while other friends helped pack her kitchen items, clear out her office area, get her damaged garage door off and out of the way and a path cleared through the garage, and prepare things for storage. By the time we were done today, though there was no denying the home had met with disaster, we had gone far to restore order from the chaos that had been there before.

My thought in entering the day was that our friend, who had been having trouble sleeping, was being affected by that chaos negatively. I hoped that if we could restore order, she would finally start to feel some sense of peace and her mind would quiet and allow her the much-needed rest she so deserves.

She posted on Facebook just a little while ago that for the first time she is sleeping at night. For me, that is the greatest gift I could have given her, as it means that for the first time since the tornado struck, tearing her house apart around her while she hid in the bathtub, she is finally feeling some semblance of peace and seeing a clear path ahead of her rather than being completely overwhelmed by the tasks at hand. What a wonderful and deeply meaningful way to begin the year! I am hoping this sets the tone for even greater things to come!