Is Kindness Ever an Inconvenience?

Let me start off by saying I've not generally been eager to "inconvenience" myself just to be kind. If there is an opportunity right in front of me, no problem, I will respond with kindness. But go out of my way or disrupt MY plans? ... Hmm, I'll have to think about that for awhile … what’s in it for me?

Hopefully, writing this Blog and changing the way I think about opportunities to be kind will help fix that character deficit.

When I heard my best friend’s mother had died, just 5 days before Christmas, I knew that I should go visit him (as he had selflessly done for me when my dad died 9 years earlier). But it was Christmas week and he lives over 2000 miles away! Not to mention the cost of last-minute airline tickets during Christmas week! A phone call and nice card (maybe going to visit in a few months, when it was more "convenient") should be acceptable ... right??? Wrong! I had to go.

So I enjoyed a condensed Christmas with my family on the 24th and early on Christmas day I was heading to Texas to be with another family. 9 hours later … after a white-knuckle drive through heavy snowfall and equipment problems (the Air Conditioner had to be fixed as they de-iced the wings, huh?) with the airplane … I was warmly greeted by my friend and his 2 wonderful daughters. There was no doubt that I had made the right decision by coming.

Knowing how to act when someone loses a loved one is never easy for me. What can I say? What can I do? What does kindness look like? There are no right answers. Sometimes the only kindness that can be shown is simply your presence. So for the next 3 days I gave them my presence … trying to be both a distraction (comic relief?) and a comfort, without being an added burden.

Did I succeed in my mission? You’ll have to ask them to be sure, but I think in some miniscule way my efforts to sow a little kindness reaped a good harvest. Maybe the best thing to come from this was the change in my own heart … the realization that showing kindness is never really an inconvenience.