It’s time! Time to share the lovely things that you’ve been doing this month to help others. Each December we run a few Random Acts of Kindness blog contests, to encourage you to keep your eyes open for ways that you can help others. I know that many of you are aware of this all year long (just because you’re nice like that.) For others, this is always a good reminder that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of extra time or money to help make someone’s day, and to be an encouragement to them. On Friday’s blog, I gave you links to the contest from last year, in case you wanted to read some of the comments for ideas.
What am I doing? This year, our church has been talking about encouraging people to give more, spend less, worship more, and love all. I like that idea. How do you give more, but spend less? Give your time. Give things that you no longer use. Give encouragement and support. Have you knit some of your gifts this year? Then you’ve given time to each of the people who will be getting those gifts. I’ve made several gifts this year, and hope to do that each year. I’m also going to go through the overabundance of scarves that College Girl and I have knit up, and we’ll be washing those up and taking them to a local homeless shelter. While we’re at it, we’ll go through our winter coat closet and see what else we can add to the pile. While I love cold weather, I don’t like to BE cold. I like to be all bundled up. There are plenty of people in all of our communities who don’t have the luxury of being bundled up, so hopefully a few warm items will help.
What random acts have you done to spread holiday cheer and encouragement? Leave it in the comments and we’ll do a random drawing for prizes that we’ll announce next week. (Do you do these things for the publicity and the drawings? No, of course not. But your comments help to give ideas to others, and the drawings make it a little more fun.) 🙂 We’ll do a second Random Acts contest next Monday, and the last contest the Monday after that, so keep looking for ways to commit some acts be a blessing to others. Speaking of contests – have you joined our Facebook and Twitter pages? I put up one of our 24 Hour Quick Contests this morning, so it runs through tomorrow morning. Pop over and enter. The prize is a Loopy Ewe Gift Certificate!
Sheri justaddinginafewre-stocksandupdateslatertoday.
NotafullblownSneakUp.However…moreontheway…
Acknowledging that it may seem rather silly, but for an entire day I yielded the right-of-way to other cars during my daily driving (I live in one of the larger cities in California). Too often merging on the roadways is an aggressive act, but I elected to let others in with a polite way and smile. It may have taken me a minute or two longer to reach my destination, but I found that my mood was so much better that I think I’ll incorporate this small random act of kindness more often.
Diane
Every year since my children were babies we have made gingerbread boys and girls and decorated them. It has become a family tradition. It has become more and more difficult as my disability worsens. The older grandchildren are ok with my not participating but my youngest, Jake, was sooooo disappointed at the thought of not doing it this year.
I guess my act of kindness is accomodating Jake in doing the Gingerbread boys and girls because it’s clearly very important to him.
My first attempt failed! I found a lady (~ 80 years old) outside the shipping place with two big boxes. She refused to let me help carry them in. Told me it keeps her young…
Success followed, however. This week I’ve caught someone at work struggling to get a room set for a meeting and helped, gave away 3 skeins of sock yarn to financially struggling knitters, found a new realease of a co-workers favorite author and secretly santa’d the book, and more little random things (letting someone else go ahead of me in line).
It’s the little random things that make the difference in the world. I’m hoping now to run across something bigger 🙂
On the last day of school before break, I saw my neighbor at the school bus stop in the morning with his little boy. It was a cold day and the Dad was not wearing a hat. He smiled and said he did not have a hat but, that he was hoping to get one for Christmas. After the children got on the bus, I went home and knitted him a hat. I brought it back to the bus stop at noon when we went to pick up the kids.
He seemd so thankful.
My family and I served meals at a shelter. We went during a time that we knew they would be short on help, and having 6 of us there really helped them out!
Also, on our way out of the store after Christmas shopping we found someone’s debit card in the parking lot. Immediately my 10 year old daughter picked it up and ran it inside to customer service. The person who had lost it was inside looking for it. That person gave my daughter a small monetary reward. On the way out of the store, my darling kid, unprompted, put the cash into the Salvation Army kettle. (I love my kid!!)
While most everyone was warm inside Christmas shopping and baking before the holidays, my son and I were volunteers for Wreaths Across America. Our home town had never participated so we coordinated the marking and placing of the wreaths on the veteran’s graves. Then we traveled to Iowa City and placed wreaths in one section of the Oakland Cemetery. My son was chosen as the Johnson Co Youth Ambassador and gave a speech during the ceremony. It was a cold day and we had to kneel down on every grave, dig away the snow, and break the ice off of the graves markers. It was a moving experience and one that left us feeling warm inside.