Alert

Describe someone you have seen in the last two weeks who has done something kind, loving or commendable?

Our Experience

This is an easy prompt to ignore or dismiss.

Congratulations if you got this far.

Personally, I have been distracted by current events which include tragedies, accusations, and unspeakable destruction around the world. It is hard to be alert to kind people.

To easily see kindness around us requires a slow pace and an open heart.

I noticed kindness among some construction workers finishing up a day at a large site behind our neighborhood. Seventy-five houses are going to be built on this site.

Since they started clearing trees almost a year ago, my six-year-old grandson, Grey and I have pretended to be weekend inspectors. We have watched every step of the civil engineering and have seen huge excavators, bull dozers and dump trucks.

Yesterday we rode our bikes to the end of a street that will connect to the new neighborhood and there were several workers sitting on the edge of a recently cut road. We said hello and asked how they were doing. They had finished for the day. A young one was friendly and was glad to talk with us, beginning with, “Yes, you are going to have a lot of new neighbors.” We asked him some questions about the work and he told us that some of the pipes had been buried thirty feet deep. I told him that I had thought about hiring out Grey for Saturday trash pick-up and they all laughed.

It was not a big deal but we felt welcomed by the workers. I did my best to imitate Mr. Rogers as I asked questions that made their work special. Libby’s observation of kindness came when she was asked to do a favor for a friend, a single-mom who has two kids away in college and an eighth-grader with severe disabilities. The friend needed someone to go with her and her daughter to drop their car off for a repair.

“I know she was tired,” Libby said, “but she was so kind to her daughter.”

“And she was kind to me,” wanting to know how our family is doing.”

Something happens to us when we stop and consider the kindness of others. And something happens to our marriages as well.

Imagine what would happen in your marriage if every week you had a set time for a Kindness Check-In. If you included the kindnesses of each other it would be transforming.