There's a lot of hate and meanness in the world, a lot of
hurt and disappointment, but the past few days I've found myself thinking of
just the opposite. There is a lot of
goodness and kindness in this world too.
Perhaps it was the excellent lesson on service taught in my ward's
Relief Society last Sunday that got me thinking along these lines. Maybe it was being able to at last begin
returning to the temple. Or it might have been a kindness shown a friend of
mine during this sloppy stormy weather this week that added to my thoughts. A
mother of three small children, she found she needed to make a trip to the
grocery store. When she got there she
couldn't find a parking spot anywhere near the building. Dragging three small children through a foot
of slush is no fun! When she finally spotted a parking spot near the building,
she discovered another shopper had found it first and was ready to pull into it. She pulled back and the other driver motioned
for her to roll down her window. Instead
of the rude comment she probably expected, the other driver said it looked like
my friend needed the spot more than she did so she'd just block the spot so no
one else could get it while my friend circled around and came back to where she
could pull into it.
Like everyone else I've been the recipient of kindness and
service. I've had doors slammed in my
face too--literally. There was a time
when I left a doctor's office carrying two crying two-year-olds, a diaper bag,
and my purse. On reaching the outside
door and discovering it didn't have a push door opener, I was relieved to see a
man walk toward us, and being a bit on the naive side, I expected he would open
the door for me. He opened it alright,
but slammed it behind him, sending me and my babies sprawling.
Women tend to think of service as providing meals for those
who are sick or who have just given birth.
I only know of one occasion when a meal wasn't appreciated. I remember as a small child accompanying my
mother to a neighbor's house when she went to deliver a meal she'd prepared for
the family whose mother had just been hospitalized. The children, who were old enough to have
better manners, informed my mother they didn't like the main course she'd
prepared and that they didn't like spice cake; she should have made chocolate
cake for them. That aside, sharing a
meal is a wonderful act of service, but there are other ways to provide
kindness to friends, family, or neighbors.
Right now I'm aware of a woman who is driving a neighbor's children to
school each day so their mother can stay at the hospital with their critically
ill baby sister. There are people who
shovel or snow blow neighbor's walks and driveways. I've often taken books to people who were
incapacitated. I once had a neighbor who
routinely picked up an extra gallon of milk when she went shopping to give to
someone who might need it. The gift of
an hour or two of time to free a caregiver to shop or take a breather is a huge
gift. The small courtesies of a smile or pleasant word should not be
underestimated.
When my daughter and her husband adopted their first baby,
the proceedings required that she take the baby to Utah until the adoption was
formalized. Though Utah is her home
state and where the application originated, she was living on a military base
in Washington and her husband was in Iraq.
She hadn't expected to be unable to return to her base home and had left
their dog in the care of a neighbor. A
dear friend offered to drive to Washington to get the dog for her. I consider that truly going the second mile.
During the past five months I've been the recipient of many
large and small services and I appreciate each one, so thank you to some very
special people. There will continue to
be a lot of things wrong in our society and I don't expect to see a sudden end
to cruelty, spitefulness, and plain meanness, but I am convinced that if some
of us work to hush the strident tones of our voices, look for opportunities to
serve, and applaud the kind acts of others we'll create a world much closer to
the one we want to live in.
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