I can’t say what should be your family motto, but only can share what is probably my personal family’s motto.
“in this family we love others as ourselves, but we do it first” my husband used to say.
By the last phrase, he meant that we don’t wait for others to be kind and loving, we are loving and kind regardless. I’m lucky enough to have an enthusiam that makes things speak directly to others, in person. It’s just one of the characteristics of my family, not a virtue. But one can get away with more if one is famale.If there is a kind thing to say even to those we briefly encounter, we both do so, he no less than I.
Ad I do recall a Reader’s Digest story, “How will you know if I never tell you” … written by a teacher who felt discouraged after a lifetime of work, wondering if she’d ever really made a difference in any student’s life. However, a former student who enncountered her shared what a difference to life choices as a result of this teacher, and this sharing was a gift that gave hope and joy to the teacher.
Sometimes any of us can notice something in another’s life or nature that no one has every acknowledged, "no one ever told me that’ and so even in little things like this, not to discount innumerable ways of contributing to others’ lives, we can love others creatively.
We never know.
My sister and I for some years used to visit elderly persons care homes each month, carrying huge bunches of flowers. We’d give one to each person, and even the old gentlemen. Sometimes even they got tears in their eyes. At one nursing home there was a fragile old lady, skin and bone, in fetal position. She was deaf and blind. A staff member said, no need to give her one. She understood nothing. I quietly ignored that of course, and put one in her hand.She pulled if up to her face and sniffed. “Chrysamthemum”, she said clearly. I stumble over that word sometimes. But we don’t always know what our small gestures can mean to others.
There was a nursing home I lived near at another time, and I used to go in most days and spend a little time with everyone in the sunroom. There was one old lady who used to spit at and scratch the nurses, but for some reason she liked me, 'You are a good person" Once she confided, “it’s very lonely to be old and not have your mother and father.” That’s about all she said in the many days I visited. One morning I came in, and the dear old soul waited till I got to her, and she grabbed my arm and held it. She had a small pancake in front of her, partly eaten and was chewing, looking up at me. She began to choke, so I gently hooked the cake out of her mouth. She let me, as if I was a mother, then no longer coughing, her old face turned black. I felt so privileged that I was able to be there for this lonely cranky old lady in her last moments. God ensured she was with the only person staff members acknowledged that she didn’t feel alienated from, and that person was able to give a little motherly care. She held one hand and had her other arm laid over my left arm. It all took barely a minute
God does these things if we try to love others as we would wish to be loved, even if there is no familial connection.
