Life Experiences

I have been reading a book called Reflections on the Magic of Writing, by Diana Wynne Jones. It is a fantastic book, I mean for someone like me who loves reading about why and how people write. It is a book of essays that challenge and motivate me to be a better writer. Yesterday as I was reading through it and she was recounting the odd people she encountered in her life. As I read what she wrote, I thought about the many people I have come in contact with and how each one has changed my life.

As  I have shared when I was seventeen, I started working in my Dad's grocery store. I was shy, a little backward and had no people skills. Being in a grocery store, you learn quickly that you are for all intents and purposes, invisible. In that situation, you learn to observe. You learn that some people are just mean, but most are kind. For the most part, so wrapped up in themselves they just never notice.

One woman that used to come in was like a wounded animal. She would never look at me but she watched what I did like hawk and made me reweigh her produce sometimes 3 or 4 times. I liked to play this game. If I could get a person to smile at me they would see me and become my friend for life. I decided I was going to be as nice as I could, I would weigh her produce as much as she wanted and I would be bend over backward to make her smile.

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, she never did smile. She never got nice. She never got over being scared. One day though, as she reached for the change I was handing to her, her sleeve rode up a little higher on her forearm. There on her arm was the tattoo of the numbers from a concentration camp. In that second, I stared, I looked up into her face, she immediately pulled the sleeve down to cover up what I had saw. She ducked her head and turned to go out of the store. I stood and watched as she left. As a young girl, I had never known pain like that poor woman had experienced. It became one of those life changing experiences for me.

As a young kid, I would make snap judgements. My grandpa, would say to me over and over, " Kim,
never judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes." I learned that when I was working in that grocery store that people I thought were mean, really weren't they just were trying to live life the best way they could. I decided after that when I would see her, I would go in the back room to the walk in case and I would get her special produce or if I could I would save things I thought she might like. Most of the time she wouldn't take it, she was afraid. But I began to notice she came through my line more and more.

Now at the age I am now and I hear my kids talk about the different people they come in contact with each day at their jobs. I have tried to tell them about making each person a divine appointment. They just "Oh, Mom" me. So I guess that it has to be something that you learn on your own.

Even though I was doing that job for the money, I am so thankful that working in that store was really about education. God was teaching me that no matter what, each person is special and each one is for that tiny moment in time, a gift to hold in my hands.

Reading this book has made me think about how without the people brought in my life, my life would have no color. I am thankful for the color.

~Kim~