Did you hear about the guy who traded in his gun at eight years old to buy his grandma a washing machine?<\/p>\n
About 50 years ago, Terry felt sorry for his grandmother because she didn’t have one. He decided to take the only think he owned that was worth anything to a local pawn shop and trade it for that machine for his grandma.<\/p>\n
When it was delivered, she almost didn’t take it. It was only after she found out her grandson had sold his prized possession that she would let them in the house with it.<\/p>\n
Eight years old.<\/p>\n
I was riding bikes and playing baseball with the boys at my family’s country home 50 years ago. My parents encouraged me to be good, but I’m just not sure I would have done something like that.<\/p>\n
We know, as parents, it’s a good thing to teach our children to share with others. To start teaching this early to our children, and to practice these kinds of “random acts of kindness” ourselves, gives us a sense of purpose. It reminds us there’s something bigger than us in the world.<\/p>\n
You just never know what kind of lasting impact you will have by giving like this. It may be years in the making before you know. Or, you may never realize the impact -other than knowing it made you feel good to do it.<\/p>\n
Terry is 57 today. Recently a new acquaintance realized he had actually acquired the very gun Terry sold years ago for that washing machine. He drove to Terry’s home to give it back to him. Terry gladly accepted it and tells the story with humility today.<\/p>\n
My wish for you today<\/strong>: That you will practice at least one random act of kindness and vow to make it a daily ritual in your life. The world will be a little bit better place because of you.<\/p>\n ~Joellen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you hear about the guy who traded in his gun at eight years old to buy his grandma a washing machine? About 50 years ago, Terry felt sorry for his grandmother because she didn’t have one. He decided to take the only think he owned that was worth anything to a local pawn shop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,30,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-events","category-parenting-families","category-teenagers","category-serving-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}