RAOK

So I was playing around the other day on Pinterest (instead of you know my kids, doing laundry, cleaning up toys etc LOL) and ran across a pin titled "YOU HAVE BEEN RAOK'ED. I opened it and it was all these ways to commit Random Acts of Kindness. So that's what our family started yesterday. That is our goal as a family to commit RAOK's as often as we can. These opportunities present themselves so often in our lives like that little angel sitting on your shoulder and most times we just don't listen.

Yesterday I was in line at Kroger checking out and the man behind me was buying like 8 boxes of Cheerios and 8 boxes of juice and I thought maybe he had several children or ran a day care of something. So I got done and the coupon that printed out was for $1 off General Mills products. So I just turned and gave it to him. He looked at me like he had a couple of heads but said thank you and I moved on.

Cut to after school and after playing at the park we ran out to Barns and Noble to get 2 books for Bella, Shayne had found a gift card in his wallet he had forgotten about and Bella is in LOVE with this series of books called "I Survived...." and we are in LOVE with her wanting to read so off to the bookstore we go. As we are walking up to pay the young man working behind the counter asks the young lady with him if she had a dollar, he wanted a paper and he was going to have to put .98 cents on his debit card. So as he was ringing up our books I asked for a paper. He finished I payed and then handed him the paper. He got this stunned look on his face and grinned from ear to ear and said WELL AREN'T YOU THE MOST! it made me giggle. I just said you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  and we left. He was still talking to the girl about it when we left. It made me feel so good to see that look of surprise and excitement on his face.

I think this is so important to do year round but more so as we head into this holiday season where people seem to have forgotten about Thanksgiving and the reason its so important to sit back with the people we love and reflect on how blessed we all really are and then moving into Christmas where it seems like its more about this and that instead of that sweet baby born all those years ago who gave everything He had to save us from ourselves. I think its so important for our kids to see us doing these simple things that make others happy just because. Its not a special occasion or a tip or whatever its just because this little thing, handing someone a coupon, paying for a paper, buying someone a cup of coffee, giving a scarf and a pair of gloves to someone who is cold, handing someone standing at a bus stop in the rain a poncho things that are easy to do don't take to much time and don't need to cost a lot of money but to that person, that moment well that moment could change everything. We all walk through our lives telling people we are Christians but a lot of times don't show people we are Christians and that is my challenge. Not only to those few of you who read this blog but to all my friends and family and mostly to me. Live the words, be that light in the world be that change you want to see. so go on get out there and commit some RAOK!