19/10/2022
Something happened yesterday that left me in a puddle of tears. 😭
Happy, joyful tears. 🥰
I was having a stressful morning. One of those mornings where you’re just at a total loss, and the only thing you know to do is pray. 🙏🏼
I was praying for several people and situations, and then I began to pray for myself.🙇🏻♀️
I prayed that God would lead me, and allow me to be a light and helper to the people around me that I love so dearly. 💛
I prayed that He would help me, help them. 🛐
I went on about my morning, doing all the things on my to do list. Then around lunchtime, I decided to break and take some Amazon returns to the UPS store. (I may or may not have a tiny Amazon addiction.) 👀
Anyway, after dropping my returns, I pulled up my Chick-fil-A app to place an order for lunch, then headed over to pick up my food in the drive-thru. 🥙
Now, if you’re a regular at CFA, you know that if you hit those prime breakfast, lunch, or dinner hours, you’re going to have a long line. Thankfully, because of CFA’s standard of customer satisfaction, their lines usually move incredibly fast. And no, this is not an ad for CFA, but I do like their food, and even more so, admire their founder and his model of business ethics. 💙📉
I digress. 🤔
The line was long, and at this particular restaurant there are three ways to enter from the highway, so you have traffic coming in from every direction. I was entering from the turning lane of one direction, and there were cars coming from the opposite direction, trying to work their way into the line. The only way for them to do this was for people coming in from my direction to let them in. 🚙
Now keep in mind, these people have to turn across the lane of on-coming traffic as they enter and hope someone lets them in. 🚦
Unfortunately, nobody in front of me was letting these people in, so when it got to me, I let someone merge in front of me, hoping the next person behind me would follow my lead. When they didn’t, I decided to let one more person get in front of me. It was a young girl and I could tell she was really nervous about trying to merge in. 😬
Well, when I let this young girl merge in front of me, the person behind me (that didn’t let her in) got so mad they started beating on their steering wheel, and actually left the line. 😳
Oh well. No chicken sandwich for them. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn’t think anything else of it, and then as we approached the drive-thru window, one of the CFA workers came back to my window and handed me a note and said “the girl in front of you wanted me to give this to you.” I smiled, took the note and thanked her. ☺️
When I opened the note it read: “thank you for letting me get in front of you! I was actually hit in June by a semi so I was freaking out. I can’t write much in the drive through but please text me because you just saved my day!” 📝
Y’all, first of all, this made me tear up because it touched my heart that she even took the time to write a note to thank me, but even more that me letting her in line actually meant so much to her. 😌
I immediately shot her a text while I was in line, told her my name, and told her how sweet it was that she took the time to write me a thank you note. ✏️
She texts me back and says “You have no idea how much you just helped me out by such a little thing! I would love to meet if you have a moment!” 😊
At this point, I had already gotten my food and left the restaurant, but felt so compelled to pull over and meet this young lady. I texted her back and we decided to pull into a nearby parking lot to meet each other. 🤝
She gets out of the car and starts telling me how she hopes I don’t think she’s weird or following me, but she just really wanted to meet me in person and tell me how thankful she was. She tells me that her parents had divorced, her dad had recently passed away, and she’d just moved here with her mom from South Carolina. She then tells me that the day she moved, she was hit in the side by a semi truck, then proceeds to show me a picture of how smashed up her car was after the accident. 😳
Then she tells me how she was so nervous turning in front of all that traffic to try and merge in to CFA, and when I let her pull in front of me, it just meant the world to her. 💚
She was so sweet and sincere, and it was all I could do to keep it together. 🥺
We talked for a few more minutes about how little acts of kindness can mean so much to people, and how we wanted to stay in touch because we believed we met for a reason. 😍
We then went our separate ways, but I received these texts a few minutes later: 📲
“i’m literally crying right now because that meant so much. it’s been a very hard and crappy past year and that small act of kindness brought me so much hope that God still cares.” 🙏🏼
Y’all, that’s when I lost it. 🥺
Big. Ugly. Happy. Crying. 😭
It’s like I could hear God whispering in my ear “I heard your prayer this morning, and I’ll not only help you help the people in your circle that you love, I’ll help you help complete strangers if you let me…” 💜
Talk about a faith booster. I still feel that peaceful assurance deep in my soul as I write this story to share with you. 😇
Oh, and guess what? I’m having lunch with my new friend next week! I don’t know what will become of the relationship, but I do know that God used the tiniest act of kindness to not only strengthen my own faith in a huge way, but also that of a complete stranger. 🥰
It just doesn’t get any better than that! 🎉
May we always find peace in knowing that God hears our prayers, and will use us in the most amazing ways if we only let Him. ✨
Your friend,
Christie 🖤
