On Sunday, Christopher and I tried a church in our new town. I'll tell you a secret: I hate trying new churches. I love finding a good church, but I hate trying them. Mostly because I'm pretty introverted and meeting new people stresses me out. But I'm trying to push myself to meet people in our new city, so we went to church.
As we were leaving, I told a lady who was standing by the doors saying goodbye to people that I liked her necklace. She said thank you, and Chris and I walked to the car. We got Jack all packed in and started to leave when I realized that the same lady had chased us across the parking lot and was waving at my window. I rolled it down.
"You said you liked my necklace!"
I'll be honest-I thought she was going to try to sell me something. Like, oh, you like my necklace? I actually sell them! But she didn't.
"Sorry, I had my hands full back there. Here you go!" And she took her necklace off and gave it to me.
She had nothing to gain from me. For all she knows, I'll never be back to that church again. She could have done a kind deed in front of a bunch of people right when I told her I liked it, but she didn't. She waited until it was just Chris and me. She just did something out of pure kindness, and it touched my heart so much.
So much, in fact, that I'm still thinking about it five days later.
Here's the thing about what she did...it didn't just make me feel loved and happy. It challenged me to be better. It challenged me to want to make others feel the same way.
Churches are supposed to be a safe place, a place of love and kindness. But, as we've sadly all seen, that isn't always the case. Sometimes, it's the opposite. Sometimes, a church looks nice from the outside, but from the inside, they're not so great, because they're full of people, and sometimes, people aren't so great.
But here was this lady, doing her part to make the inside just as good as the out.
Wouldn't it be nice if everything was like that?
I don't know who she is, but I want to be like her. I want to brighten other people's days, even when I have nothing to gain from them. I want to throw kindness around like confetti. I want to shower people with love, just because I can. And I want people to leave encounters with me feeling so loved, that they want to go love on other people. This stranger was living out love, and I want to be like her.
Happy Friday, friends! Cheers to a weekend full of kindness.
