A WORD OF THANKS - By Janie DeVos

   

        I’ve been both moved and inspired by the many videos I’ve seen on the news, as well as on YouTube lately.  People never cease to amaze me with their little—and big—acts of kindness, their sense of humor, and their creativity. 

Take for instance the man who had spotted a woman from his apartment building as she danced on her own apartment’s rooftop to music playing in the street below.  He waved to her and then sent a drone over with his name and number.  They shared dinner at a distance on their respective rooftops while chatting to each other on their cell phones.  A couple of days later, he climbed inside a gigantic inflated ball he’d made then rolled it down the street to meet her in person. 

There have been people singing to each other from balconies, and families standing outside assisted living facilities holding up signs of love and even a newborn to their elderly loved ones sitting at the window.  There have been people driving by with horns blowing to wish a just-married couple well.  And who hasn’t seen the funny videos people have posted on YouTube that make us all laugh when we might do nothing but cry these days? 

Most inspiring of all are the heroes.  They are the ones working overtime at the grocery stores, as well as the truck drivers making haul after long haul to those stores to keep them stocked.  There are the postal workers, garbage collectors, fast-food workers, bank tellers, and the Fed X and UPS drivers, just to name a few.  And, of course, we can’t forget the countless volunteers who keep our world going without expecting a paycheck or much in the way of accolades for doing so.  But, topping the list of the heroes are the healthcare workers and the first responders who keep putting their lives on the line day after day to care for those stricken with Covid-19.  They have families, too, but they walk away from them everyday in order to take care of ours. Needless to say, they are Earth angels, and there are not enough words to fully express our depth of gratitude to them.   Sometimes, though, words can be a small, much-needed blessing for someone, and maybe even more so if they seem to come out of the blue.

During a church service a couple of years ago, my minister passed out blank thank-you notes and envelopes to everyone in our congregation.  We looked around at each other with faces as blank as our cards were trying to imagine what valuable message was about to be given.  And though I can’t recall what the scripture was that day, or how the sermon went, I remember that the bottom line was that a kind word of thanks that is unexpected can make all the difference in someone’s world.  Now, our minister wasn’t merely talking about thanking your husband for taking out the trash, or thanking your neighbor for returning some Tupperware container.  He was talking about thanking someone who has done something for you either directly or indirectly who didn’t really realize the importance of their action, and certainly wasn’t expecting a thank-you note as a result of it.  So, I went home from the sermon knowing exactly who I wanted to send mine to: my editor. 

When my editor brought me into the foal of a large publishing house, I’d had no experience as a writer of novels.  Up until that time, I’d only written children’s books, but this wonderful woman gave me the chance, and, in return for her faith in me, I produced five novels.  Of course, I’d thanked her profusely on the day I signed a contract with her, but, still, I felt like she deserved words of gratitude again, just to let her know how important and life-changing her simple act of saying “yes” to me had been.  And so I wrote to her on that blank card.

Several days later, I got an email from her thanking me for my note.  She said that she had been so moved by it that she’d had to stop in the middle of what she’d been doing to tell me how much it meant to her.  And so, that cycle of thanks giving was returned to me.

In this difficult time we’re going through, I’ve come to realize how very large those seemingly small things we do for each other are.  To make someone laugh, to share a dinner across rooftops, to hold up a sign of love or to reach out to someone when that person least expects it can help us find our way through this time of fear and uncertainty.  If we shine a light for each other, we’ll illuminate the darkened pathway we’re on and make our way down it just fine.