It has been years since I have written a blog post. I have really missed it and a still small voice has been encouraging me to start writing again.  Rather than struggle over what I have written, making sure the punctuation is perfect and everything sounds cohesive, I have decided to simply write and ask for forgiveness for the rawness of each post. I hope you enjoy the read…

Be Kind To One Another. Okay, this is not my original saying. It’s Ellen’s. But it is a very good mantra to live by. It is a life lesson that one of our daughters inadvertently taught me one fall.

Our girls were on a cheer squad when they were younger; first and fourth grade respectively. After school they would meet at the park for cheer practice and belt their cheers out for what seemed like an eternity, but it was just until supper time.  As football season rolled into autumn the fall weather came along with it. One of the mottos at our house is ‘better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.’ But more on that one in another chapter.

True to our motto, the girls would take a jacket with them to practice even though they didn’t need it for the beginning of practice. One early evening as I picked up the girls from cheer practice, I noticed our older daughter was wearing the shell of her The North Face jacket, but the insert was missing. When I asked her where it was, she said she lent it to one of the other cheerleaders that didn’t have a jacket and was cold. (insert angry emoji and steam coming out of mom’s ears) You what??  The thoughts that were going through my head and then came out of my mouth went something like this… ‘you know we are never going to see that jacket again, right?’ ‘Do you know how much we paid for the jacket and we need your younger sister to be able to wear it someday, as well!’ ‘Why should her lack of planning bringing a jacket mean you have to sacrifice yours?’ I could continue but I don’t want to embarrass myself further. My poor daughter. All of her life we have been telling her to be kind. Encouraging her to share with others. To live the Golden Rule, do to others what you would want done to you. She was doing exactly what we had taught her. Was this an exception?  Should she not share when it means it’s an expensive jacket or something else of value? What I have learned over the years is that when you give to others it comes back to you in one form or another.

I apologized to my daughter for my selfishness. I wasn’t practicing living out what I had been teaching her to do all of her life. It was still really hard to think about the possibility of not getting the insert for the jacket returned to us, but I resolved to let it go. She wasn’t going to freeze to death this winter. Our daughters act of kindness was far more important than any amount of money. Oh, and by the way. A few days later the girl remembered to bring the jacket back to practice and returned it to our daughter.