As we head into the holiday season this week and in light of recent events, there is one word that keeps finding itself in conversations with my children.  Kindness.

Here are a few ways it pops up in our conversations at home:

• Be kind to others.
• If it’s kind, say it.  It it isn’t kind, keep it to yourself.
• A good friend is someone who is kind to you and to others.
• Always be kind to your friends and classmates.  You never know what’s going on in their life.
• How can your kindness help someone else have a better day?
• Smiling at someone is one of the easiest ways to be kind.
• Sometimes you just have to take the high road…Be kind and walk away from the drama.

If for no other reason at all, I am thankful for our family’s cancer journey over the past 3 years because of all the kindness we witnessed first hand.  When they saw there was a need, friends, family, strangers, neighbors, men, women, young, old, democrat, republican, religious, non-religious came together to help our family.  We will forever be thankful for the army of people God used to lift us up during a really tough time.

As the saying goes, “Be kind to everyone because each of us are facing battles others know nothing about.”  I’ve become aware of this more over the past few years than any other time in my life.  Maybe that’s one reason God allowed our family to travel the childhood cancer road–I don’t know.  But, whatever the reason(s), the experience has been empowering for me as a wife, mother and friend.

I’m sure some of you can attest to feeling more understanding and sympathetic to someone else’s situation after trudging through your own “trenches” of health concerns/treatment, death of a loved one, loss of a job/financial security, etc… If you’ve been delivered from your tough situation, I hope you feel empowered to go out and help others who are needing a little extra support right now.  Your experience doesn’t just have to be a bad dream you’d like to forget.  You can use your experience to help others.

In lieu of our traditional Christmas countdown, our family is planning to do a 25 Day Christmas Kindness Challenge.  Our kids hope people from all over the world will get involved and start showing more kindness.  Within the next week, we will set up a Christmas Kindness Challenge Facebook page where people can share their random acts of kindness (RAK).  In turn, we will write everyone’s RAKs on “ornaments” and decorate a large Christmas tree-type structure near our home as a way to show how much GOOD is happening.  Stay tuned for more details!  Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!