Kindness of Strangers

I love those events or things that happen in life that make you realize that there are good people in the world. People that will go out of their way for perfect strangers to help them out or make their day a little bit better. There are two recent events that made me very happy because they were unnecessary acts of kindness.

1) Mailing out wedding invitations comes with a mix of emotions. These range from excitement that your wedding is getting close, relief that the invitations are out the door, and anxiety...because you realize now that is done....you have 17 billion other things to do before the big day and you start to freak out. So after the invites go out, the RSVP cards start coming in, which is fun! You see who is able to make it and then you is not...but the other day, I got an unexpected letter in the mail, along with a large bundle of green envelopes. It was a letter, from a lady that received a wedding invitation that was addressed to one of my dad's cousins in California and it looks like we had the incorrect address. She wrote me a personal letter, beginning with, "Ms Bruns, first of all congratulations on your upcoming wedding!" and then going into detail how she opened up the invitation, not looking at the name on the envelope and commented on how nice the invites were and how sorry she was that she didn't look first! But that she put everything back together and took the reassembled invitation to the post office so they could send it to the correct address. I literally was reading the letter and almost dropped it in shock. What a nice and wonderful and thoughtful person. Not only did she forward the letter to the correct address, but she wrote me a letter to ensure that I knew it didn't get to the correct person initially. In my opinion she went absolutely above and beyond what the normal person would have done if they received an invitation in their mail box in error! I just thought that it was so nice---there is a thank you note in the mail on the way to California with her name on it. So nice, so sweet, and makes me love people like her!

Here is a picture of the letter she wrote me!



2) Runaway dog, saved by my main man, JC (Jimmy). One Tuesday night after our marriage class, he was headed back to his parents house after dropping me off at my parents house (where my dogs were). After I was already back at our house, getting ready to go to sleep, I get a phone call with him and he's yelling and semi out of breath.."Brittany---I just saved a dog!! Oh my gosh!". He then goes into details about how he was driving up Pflumm and there was a little dog (about 35-35 lbs) that was running across that busy road. Jimmy said he saw him, but figured he would find his way home...but then he felt bad and turned back around to try and get him. When he did, he saw him almost get hit by a car. He was really upset because he thought he was hit, but luckily he wasn't---and Jimmy went after him. He tried to coax him in the car, but was afraid at first and kept running away (hmmm...sounds like Toby). Finally Jimmy did get him in the car and called the 800 number for pet finder on his collar. They said they would contact the owner and then the owner called Jimmy. The owner said he must have gotten out of the backyard and they met for the exchange. The owner was very thankful, of course. As Jimmy's telling me this story he's just saying how happy he was to be able to save this dog's life and he can only hope that someone else would do the same for our dogs....particularly Toby, as he takes a little more effort to track down :) But I hung up the phone a few minutes later, just thinking how nice of a thing that was to do by going out of his way to pick up that dog and return him home. And I can only hope that people look at that as an example for random acts of kindness :)

Overall, I just love remembering and witnessing these random acts of kindness. It's so easy to get so wrapped up and upset about the mean things people do and say...and I can let those drag me down. But overall, when I remember these things, I realize that there are 2 different types of people out there. One type that lives for random acts of kindness and truly does love their neighbors as they love themselves. The second, just the opposite...and I know that at this point in my life, I realize how important is to surround myself with the first type of people and am thankful for those in my life right now!!!

Goal this week: Perform a random act of kindness each day :)