by Amy Newmark
• Good morning! Still no power or running water, and another tree went down yesterday. The night was by candlelight. But I woke up this morning blessed — not stressed, because I know my real power source. So I am going to my car to charge this phone and listen to the radio, with some fruit. Thank God for options. Happy Thankful Thursday! (7-11-13)
• Oh, happy day! It’s Thankful Thursday! I was thinking about TRUE friendship because of something that was said to me this week. It made me think of friendship as a math equation. Friends add to, not take away. We build up, not tear down. We make each other smile, not frown. We wipe tears, not create tears. We celebrate one another because we are more than, not less than. All of that equals (=) TRUE friendship, plus more! Think about a true friend, and he or she should make you smile. It did for me. It’s a blessing. Have a wonderful day! (2-20-14)
• I had to learn that if I didn’t like the taste of life, I had to stir in new ingredients. Be your own chef, and change the flavor of life to your desired taste. It may take time, but some things are worth simmering until perfection. Have a blessed Thankful Thursday! Can you taste it? (4-17-14)
• On Wednesday, I was gliding up the highway on cruise control. It’s a nice feature that allows comfort to set in while driving. Well, after about 65 miles, I had to snap out of comfort on a sunny day and stop to get more gas. It made me reflect on life and why it’s not good, nor smart, to remain in a comfortable position. It is always necessary to stop and refill, re-group, re-position… and stretch! Our bones are made to move, and our mind is made to develop. It truly makes a difference. #LessgasLessdistance #MoregasMoredistance Happy #ThankfulThursday! (5-18-17)
After a few years of sharing Thankful Thursday messages, I considered stopping, thinking that maybe my Facebook friends had had enough of my thoughts. Oh, dear, was I wrong. There were responses like, “I look forward to your messages,” and “I love Thankful Thursday!” These wonderful responses made me decide to keep going and even extend the messages via Instagram and Twitter. The feedback has been fantastic, and people are honestly happy. Friends often share their comments each week when they can identify with the message or it motivates them to do something. The sharing of comments makes me happy because the weekly messages are not about me; it’s about public expressions of gratitude, which ignite the chain of happiness among hundreds of people.
When we realize that happiness comes from within, and being thankful is an expression from the heart, we unleash an attitude of gratitude. Making it a habit to say “thank you” to all the people who have made a difference in our lives can catapult us into a state of happiness. Happiness is contagious!
— LaTonya Branham —
A Bethany Blessing
Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.
~Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life
December 12th should have been a day to celebrate. But after our daughter, Bethany, passed away from a brain tumor, it was a day of mourning. It was her birthday and I didn’t know how I would survive it that first year after she was gone. It had only been two months and my grief was still so raw.
Bethany was our only daughter. She had brought the “pink” into our lives in a household with two boys. She was a fireball of activity and interests, but her most outstanding quality was her big heart. She was a friend to the friendless, the one who could speak to anybody and cheer them up. In high school, she began a group that visited the elderly in a nursing home. She called and made all the arrangements and rallied her friends at church to join the endeavor.
How would I get through that birthday? And then it occurred to me: I would celebrate another baby girl born on December 12th. I would go to our local hospital, where I used to work as a nurse, and find a baby girl in the maternity wing. I worked as a school nurse now, but my friend Sarah still worked at the hospital.
I put together a bag with a pink toy and a gift card for a local store. The note on the outside said: “For the first baby girl born on December 12th.” The card was signed, “A Bethany Blessing.”
I took it to Sarah and asked, “Can you deliver this to the mother/ baby unit?”
Sarah had been Bethany’s close friend, and we both fought back tears. “Of course,” she said with a brave smile.
We hugged, and I was amazed I made it back to the elevator, through the foyer and out to my car with my blurred vision.
Through the years, I’ve continued the tradition. The money I would have used to buy my daughter a birthday gift is used instead as a blessing for another little girl and her mom. I started praying that the recipient would be someone who very much needed the help of that gift card.
After the first couple of years, I grew brave enough to deliver the gift bag to the nurses on the floor in person. I told them what it was and asked them to deliver it to the right mom. With patient privacy, I did not wish to intrude on the patient. Besides, I wanted to remain anonymous to the recipient.
The head nurse remembered me for several years. She’d greet me with a sympathetic hug and thank me. “I know just who this is going to,” she’d say. I’d smile, fight back the tears and thank her.
One year took me completely by surprise. As I approached the desk of the maternity unit — which by now had greater security — I handed the gift bag to the clerk. “This is a Bethany Blessing for the first baby girl born today.”
“Wait. This is for you.” She grinned and handed me an envelope.
“For me?” Stunned, I took the thick envelope and thanked her. She just kept smiling, and I turned to go. All the way down in the elevator, I wondered what on earth it was. I trudged through the snow and ice in the parking lot, climbed in my freezing car, and opened the envelope.
The card read: “You don’t know me, but your Bethany Blessing was so special to my daughter and me.” The young mom expressed how she had been going through a very difficult time when her baby was born and how the gift card was truly a blessing for them. She included several photos of her now three-year-old daughter. The child’s contagious smile put a smile on my own face.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” the card continued.
I’m so grateful that I was able to look past my own pain to reach out to others. This note reminded me that we may never know the impact of a kindness, however small, but our action can be the answer to a prayer for someone else.
I survive every December 12th with another “Bethany Blessing,” knowing my daughter’s legacy of giving lives on.
— Elaine Marie Cooper —
Operation Sunshine
Your abundance is not measured by what you have; it is created by what you share.
~Heidi Catherine Culbertson, Wisdom and Recipes
I was a single mother of two preteens, working three part-time jobs so I would have the flexibility to take my mother to the dialysis clinic for treatments three times a week. One day, as we sat in the waiting room at the clinic, my mother leaned closer to me and said, “You know, honey, barring getting a kidney transplant, every single person in this room is terminal.”
Immediately, I understood what she was saying. The average lifespan for a dialysis patient is only about five to ten years, although some people can take treatments for decades. Once treatment is initiated, however, it is extremely unlikely that a person’s kidney function will ever improve to the point at which he or she will be able to discontinue the treatments and live.
Glancing around the room again, I thought about the people who were there. There was “Aunt Tootsie,” a retired schoolteacher who loved to talk to everyone. And Colonel Hooper, a retired military hero. There was Mr. Coble, a retired police detective from Detroit. When he found out that my late father had been a police officer, he loved to sit beside me and tell me about some of his more interesting cases. There was also Mr. Miller, a Mennonite man, who came from a small community an hour and fifteen minutes away from the clinic for his treatments.
The dialysis patients weren’t all older people, however. There was Jimmy, a thirtyish man, who was not a viable candidate for a transplant because his body produced too many antibodies. Talking to him was an even younger man, a relatively new patient whose name I hadn’t learned yet, who had already undergone a heart/double lung transplant and was now waiting for a new kidney. Each one of these people came into the clinic and endured a physically demanding three- to four-anda-half-hour dialysis treatment.
My mother was gently pointing out to me that at least I still had my entire life ahead of me, unlike most of these wonderful people whom we had come to know.
I mulled over her words during her entire four-hour treatment. I kept thinking that I wanted — no, I needed — to do something to let these patients know that someone realized their struggles and cared about what happened to them.
Later, I went to the dollar store and a craft store, looking for some inspiration. It was September, so I bought some miniature apples, pumpkins, and leaves for a fall theme. When I arrived home, I put them into small, individual Ziploc bags.
The next time I took Mom to dialysis, I waited until after she had gone to the back for her treatment. Then I snuck back to my car and retrieved the bags of treats from where I had hidden them on the back seat. I rang the door buzzer, and when a nurse came to the door, I handed her the bags and asked her to pass them out among the patients.
“What’s this?” she asked with a surprised smile.
“I’m calling it… Operation Sunshine,” I said, smiling in return.
In October, I made non-edible treat bags for Halloween. In November, there was something for Thanksgiving. For Christmas, I gave all of the patients on Mom’s shift a Christmas ornament chosen specifically for them.
If a patient’s port was blocked, requiring him or her to go to Nashville for surgery and post-operative dialysis, I sent a card to them. If a patient passed away, the family received a card or an angel Christmas ornament. These were always sent from “Operation Sunshine” — I never signed my real name.
It was several months before my mother realized who was behind Operation Sunshine. She had recognized my handwriting on a card given to someone else and asked pointblank if it was me. I admitted that it was, but I asked her to keep my secret, as the nurses who came to the door to take my gifts back to the patients were the only ones who knew my identity.
Sometime after the first of the year, one of the nurses pulled me aside and said that some of the patients on other shifts had heard about Operation Sunshine. They wanted to know why only one shift was getting these treats.
So, I expanded my project to include the later shift on Mom’s Monday–Wednesday–Friday rotation and both shifts on the alternating days. I bought kids’ paper Valentines, gold “coins” for St. Patrick’s Day, flag-themed items for the Fourth of July, and something for all of the major holidays. If a month didn’t have a holiday, such as August, I bought items to represent the season. The challenge became being able to buy so many treats without spending a lot of money that I did not have. But by buying when items were on clearance one year for use on next year’s Operation Sunshine, I was able to keep things affordable.
Five years after I began this project, my mother passed away suddenly. It was the first weekend in May. The very next week, I showed up at the dialysis clinic with artificial roses for Mother’s Day Operation Sunshine.
The nurse who greeted me at the door had tears in her eyes.
“You didn’t have to, Jan. No one expected you to do it this month,” she said as she took the large shopping bag from me.
“This was the most important one,” I said determinedly. “Otherwise, I might not be able to come back in here.”
My mother has been gone twelve years, but I still continue to do Operation Sunshine at the same dialysis clinic. Due to the HIPAA Privacy Rule, I can no longer send cards to patients in the hospital, and it is impossible to find out when a patient dies so I can send a sympathy card. In fact, I don’t know if anyone who was a patient while my mother was there is still living, but I continue to try to do what I can to brighten these patients’ days because they showed me what courage is and the importance of making a difference in people’s lives.
— Jan Hopkins-Campbell —
#MakeaStrangersDay
As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.
~Mary Anne Radmacher
Physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted, I pushed my cart like a zombie. After a double shift on my feet at a job that made me miserable, my day ended with a text message from my boss informing me that he was letting me go. No reason was given — just “goodbye.” All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry. However, as the matriarch of a household of six, I knew that since I’d been gone the majority of the day, none of my family had eaten dinner. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I faced the dreaded grocery store.
Shopping for what could be our last solid meal for a while, I walked around trying to pick up whatever staples would get us through. My cart contained eggs, milk, ramen and the makings for a casserole to fill the hungry masses I would encounter when I returned home. Passing the meat, wistful that it was not in the budget, I noticed a package of ground beef that was marked half off because it was due to expire. Snatching it up, I headed toward the checkout. Not two steps away, something yellow buried in the meat section caught my eye. Curious, I went to investigate. It was an envelope that read: “Open Me.” So I did. Inside, I found a small piece of paper with the words: “Everything is going to be okay. Just continue to be a good person. Keep strong, and you will be fine.”
I began to cry right there. Somehow, the universe was giving me a pep talk after such a horrid day. I rushed to the customer-service station with the note. “Did you do this? Do you know who did?” I asked, showing them the piece of paper. The teenagers behind the counter looked at me blankly.
Somehow, the universe was giving me a pep talk after such a horrid day.
“How can I help you, ma’am? We are about to close,” said the pimple-faced kid.
“Do you have an envelope and a piece of paper?” I asked in hopes of returning the favor.
“Stationery is in aisle 8,” he responded with a bored tone. With the wind slightly taken out of my sails, I let him ring up my items so that he could go home.
Waking up the next morning, I was not quite sure if the letter had been a dream. Then I settled down at my computer, and there it was — that bright yellow envelope. It did happen. And it did affect me. The note was right. Everything was going to be okay. No longer was I feeling like my world was caving in. Instead, I was inspired to reach higher. I knew then and there what I had to do.
Quickly, I went to social media to share the story. People were touched, and comments of “I’m going to do that” filled my heart. I gathered up the rest of my quarters to buy envelopes and note cards. I wrote out one hundred inspirational notes and announced loudly to anyone who would listen that April was now national #makeastrangersday month. A woman on a mission, it felt good to think that I could help others for even a second. If even one of these one hundred cards helped even one person, then it was worth doing.
Everywhere I went for the next month — stores, restaurants, parks — I left a note. When I took a road trip, I left a note at every stop. I was determined to build positive energy at every turn.
“Did you leave this for me?” I once overheard a waitress asking a regular.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he responded.
I had left a note in the server station reading simply: “You are doing a good job in a difficult field. Keep it up. #makeastrangersday.” I went to the drugstore and left a letter in the feminine-hygiene area stating, “Don’t forget to get yourself some chocolate and something to make you feel pretty. You deserve it!” I actually went out once and forgot one of my pre-written notes, so I asked the waitress for a pen and a piece of paper and left a note in the women’
s bathroom, only to see the same note again in the same bathroom a few weeks later with replies of “Thank you.”
I began texting my friends daily asking, “Did you make a stranger’s day?” The answer was usually “yes,” and they would tell me excitedly about what they had done, where they had left a note, or how they had paid for the coffee of the person behind them in line or helped an elderly woman with her groceries.
Within a few weeks, I started getting letters or comments about a friend of a friend who had found a #makeastrangersday note, not just in my area, but all over the country. My heart swelled with joy as I listened to all the stories of others boosting morale. I may not have started the kindness, but I was confident that I had helped inspire others to pay it forward.
The month of April ended, and we all went back to our normal lives — now (hopefully) with a little more compassion toward our fellow humans. Once in a while, I would still leave notes for strangers, but admittedly I was not as vigilant about it as I was during those first thirty days.
One day, my phone rang. “Jodi, I have someone on the line you are going to want to talk to,” my friend said.
“Hi, Jodi. My name is Nancy,” the unknown voice began.
“Hi, Nancy,” I replied, confused.
“I’m the woman who wrote that note in the grocery store,” her voice continued. She described the color of the envelope, where it was and what it had said, just to make it clear she really was my benefactor. “I just had a feeling that someone needed a pep talk that day,” she finished. Tears welled in my eyes as I thanked her for her kindness and gushed over how much it had affected me. “I heard you turned it into quite a movement,” she complimented.