Thirty One Dresses

Happy Sunday. How was your World Kindness Week celebration?

Our friends down the road at Ross Elementary hosted a Character Crusade on Friday night and it was a huge success. They partnered with the Bay Area Alliance and made 120 gift baskets for a residents at a nearby nursing home. Students who attended went home with a heart full of happiness and a spirit stick like this:

Kindness is so much bigger than a hashtag;

life is better when we make kindness a habit.

Look at all of the words that engulf the word kind.

Ponder their meaning ...

and reflect on Mr. Maraboli's wise words:

With one kind gesture you can change a life. One person at a time you can change the word. One day at a time we can change everything.

It doesn't have to be huge, just done with great love. Look around and you'll see kind acts all around you. As you watch, pay attention to the glow of their aftermath. Keep the flame glowing and feel the warmth of their ripple.

Then, find a way pay it forward, like what Heather's doing.

She was in the second grade when I got that job at Westwood Elementary. Fourteen years later I probably wouldn't remember that, but it's so vividly etched in my heart because that year, right after school started, one of her classmates was killed in a hit and run and I found myself in her classroom sharing the news that their friend had died. He was buried on 9/11.

Truthfully, she's really one of the only ones I remember from that class, in part because her mom reached out to me that day to offer not only a word of prayer, but to also come and sit with me while I talked with the class. That endeared me to both of them and created a special bond, one that would really be important when this little girl lost her mom in a accident just two and a half years later.