Pay It Forward...

All last week I worried about hail killing my tomato plants.  I spent all that time and effort nurturing those babies from seeds to plants, and BAM!  Mother Nature gets a wild burr up her butt and drops 15 minutes of hail and 6 inches of rain on us last night.  Quickly my tomato count went from 129 plants in the ground to 3 survivors.  (Bum, bum, bum...)  She gave us quite the gift of water, I tell yeah!  We had 5 feet of water in our basement, our furnace is a complete loss as it was completely submerged, we have no flood insurance and the house smells terrible!  If I sit around and think about it, it is down right depressing.  And anyone who knows me knows, when I get depressed I eat.

So tonight, I got called into work, and on my way home I decided to stop at Chipotle.  There was a guy behind me in line, and as I watched him I thought to myself:  "You know, I have had a crappy day.  I am going to turn that around and buy this guy's dinner." (Nothing makes me feel better than giving to someone else!)

As we got up to the cashier, I turned to the man, asked if he wanted something to drink and explained I was buying his meal.  What happened next was a God moment.

He looked at me, and said: "Are you serious?!"

I smiled and said: "Yes.  Absolutely!"

He quickly picked me up in a sort of bear hug and exclaimed:  "You have no idea how much this means to me!  My house flooded last night. we have no renter's insurance and my wife and I lost everything.  We were hungry so I decided to come here to eat, and I was just counting my money to see how much I would have left.  God bless you!"

I smiled, and told him I hoped things would start to look up for him.

He hugged me again, and thanked me once more.

I was reminded today the value of being kind to others, of just how important random acts of kindness are, because you never know what hell the other person might be walking through....