Day 21: The Power of Being Kind (When the World Isn't)

Today started with smoky skies, a heartfelt love letter from my friend Rebecca, and an unexpected conversation with a cashier at Meijer that reminded me just how powerful simple kindness can be.

In this episode, I share another one of Rebecca's beautiful February Love Letters before reflecting on the small moments that often make the biggest impact. In a world where anger, division, and negativity seem louder than ever, maybe the greatest thing we can do is intentionally choose kindness.

Sometimes a smile...
Sometimes a conversation...
Sometimes simply slowing down long enough to truly see another person...

Those moments matter more than we realize.

If today's episode encourages you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who could use a reminder that kindness still has the power to change lives.

♥️

Transcript

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Good morning everyone. Welcome to another edition of 10 unedited minutes with Marlena. It is Friday, July 17th, and boy is it smoky out there. So today's episode is going to be about the power of being nice. Okay. And um before we get into it, let's uh this is why this is unedited because I'm trying to like think while I speak. But anyway, today's episode is brought to you by my dear friend Rebecca Conklin Kleibomer. Excuse me. Rebecca has agreed to sponsor my podcast for two months. And as a way to say thank you, I want to honor her through each episode. And I decided to dedicate 60 episodes to Rebecca. And we would do that by starting out saying something nice about her, loving on her a little bit, sharing favorite memories of her. And we are in on day three of sharing love letters that Rebecca has written to each of her friends. Back in February of 2017, uh Rebecca decided to take the whole month and dedicate one day to a dear friend that has touched her life in some way and write a love letter. So I saved each one of those with the intention of putting them into a book, and I decided this is the perfect time to share them. If you are on YouTube, that you can see my light flickering. So let's see what happens here. Hang on. Oh my gosh, I might have to just not use that light. Anyway, where were we? So um, yeah, so if you guys want to, or if somebody wants to sponsor this podcast, it's a small um investment each month. I just ask for $25 just to cover my BuzzSprout subscription. And um BuzzSprout is the uh streaming service that I use to push this podcast out to um Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the other ones, and then I also record it for YouTube. So I'm looking for another sponsor. I think it would be really cool. I have some really cool ideas up my sleeve that I want to um where that I want to take this podcast to. So um if anybody feels the need to want to sponsor me, reach out to me. So, like I said in the beginning, today's podcast is all about being kind and showing kindness. And it's funny how the love letter that Rebecca wrote, the very third love letter that Rebecca wrote, is all about intentionally being kind and intentionally loving someone. So let's get into it. Love letter February 3rd, hashtag February Love Letters RCK. Dear Sherry, I knew I would write one of these letters to you at some point the moment I thought of the project. I cannot count the ways I love thee, but I woke up this morning with the intention of writing to a different person today. Then I got online. I found myself on a knitting page, absolutely seething at the perversion of the gospel and the celebration of discrimination. I tried to write the letter I had intended, but I could not focus. I instead followed links to the most horrible of blog posts with twisted logic and two media outlets that offered no counterpoint to a woman's viral sensation denigrating other women. In the name of the Lord Jesus, no less. I wrecked my manicure, pounding out furious replies and comments of my own. And then I saw your comments. They were a virtual ukulele strumming, a psalm repeated, a prayer and a whisper returned to me. Your friendship, your witness, your hospitality, your music, your marriage, your community service, your profession, your presence. You connect me to the one who claims us for mission and ministry, the one who gives us those gifts, not as means to their own righteous ends, but always as tools bent to a purpose of loving service to and advocacy for others. You show me how to be most effective. You never tell me that I have to be just like you. You always uplift what's best about me, and you sharpen my teeth, or in this case my nails, when I'm tearing into something that needs it. You help me recast others' words and find the meaning and the motive. You remind me to do no harm but take no shit either. You show me how to love the unlovable. You are no saint. Woo! Love you all the more for that. But I have seen you curl your toes deep into the centering love of Christ when every fiber of your being would have you fly off into angst and anger. That you ever would reach out a hand to me, threatening more strain on the grip, but trusting that the current of love will flow through that connection is amazing. And I fully expect you now to shuffle your feet on the carpet and zap me during a passing of the piece, because you're hilarious like that. Your partner in this life is someone I love as well. When Jason told me about composing the tune Sweet Rebecca, the only word I could have used to describe my feeling was cradled. Sure, I was excited and humbled and grateful too, but I became weightless, lifted up and rocked into the arms of friendship where nothing would trouble me. If only for as long as the song lasts. That's enough, and often more than we get to experience as adults. So here I am, at the end of this love letter to you, and I am calm, centered, caring again. All because I've taken some time to tell a friend how much I love her. All because she has dared to love me, all because of the one who died for us, and because of the one who was raised out of God's unending and faithful love for us. I might have to tell you that I loved you upwards of 70 times seven times today. So let's get started. I love you. Always Rebecca. Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca. You have just a beautiful way with words. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That letter was amazing. Thank you for um being raw and honest in that moment of how you felt and how you worked through those feelings. So this kind of leads straight into what I have wanted to talk about today. And this has been on my mind. Uh I s as I was uh scrolling through TikTok yesterday, I started noticing this, and then um something happened today that completely made my day. Let me tell you what happened today first. So this morning, my husband and I decided to go to Meyer and get groceries. And um, I hate, I hate grocery shopping. Just so you all know, I absolutely hate grocery shopping. I used to do grocery pickup and then I morphed it into grocery delivery. But um the last few times with grocery delivery, I have gotten um not gotten everything I wanted, and I truly felt like it was the person picking the groceries was just not wanting to go across the store and get something. So they just marked it empty. So I said, enough of that. We're just gonna get our own groceries. So today we're in Meyer, and we load up our entire cart with what we needed, and it was heavy because I had a lot of produce in there. Um, we get all done. And if you've been in Meyer recently, well, you probably know this, but there's a self-checkout. They have an express self-checkout, they have a big self-checkout with like 20 uh cash registers where you can, you know, push your $300 worth of groceries cart up there and check out all your groceries yourself. They have a few lanes where a clerk actually still rings up your groceries, and then there's a smaller one over on the pharmacy, a smaller self-checkout area over by the pharmacy that's never busy. So my husband and I, we parked on the uh pharmacy side of Meyer. So I said, let's just go down there and um check out. It's usually not that busy. So as we're walking down there, one of the clerks uh was standing at the end of her line of her line lane, whatever you call it, and she was just waiting uh to uh help a customer, right? And I first walked by her, but you know, my husband, of course, started chatting her up. And I said, you know what? I said, you're looking for something to do. Let's let's I'll let you ring up my groceries. And she kind of laughed. So we pushed my card up there, and the whole time she's ringing up my groceries. We're, you know, just having a very pleasant conversation with her. Um, I rang up the uh bluey fruit snacks, and those are obviously for my granddaughter an interruption by my daughter. If you're on YouTube, you saw that. Anyway, I rang up the the bluey fruit snacks, which is a purchase for my granddaughter, and she specifically asked me the last time she was here, Grammy, can you get me some bluey fruit snacks? And I promised her the next time I went grocery shopping, I would get her bluey fruit fruit snacks. So, anyway, I digress. So the cashier gets to the bluey fruit snacks, and my husband, of course, had to tell her that those are not for us, those are for our granddaughter. And so then we started talking about children and how amazing they are and how amazing it is to be grandparents, and we just love, love, love, love, love it. And she said, Oh, yeah, I have one on the way. And I said, A grandchild? And I said it just like that. She said, No, no, I'm pregnant. And I said, Oh, because you look way too young to be a grandma. And so then she we started talking about how she has three boys at home, and she's really hoping this fourth one's a girl. And I really hope it's a girl for her too, because that's what she wants. Um, but we get all done, and she she says, you know what? I'm gonna give you $10 off your groceries today just because you were nice. And I said, What? Like, you're gonna like now, you're gonna give it to me now? And she goes, Yeah. I said, Oh my, I just I almost started crying, guys, over ten dollars off my groceries. It was these sweet and it wasn't even about the ten dollars, it was about the gesture, right? God showed us in that moment that it pays to just be uh nice, to just be nice, and look, he rewarded us for that. And she saw how touched I was, and she saw how happy that made me, and she said, You guys just totally made my day. And I said, We made your day, you made our day, you gave us 10 bucks off our groceries, and she's like, No, no, you made my day. Uh she didn't get a monetary reward for that, she got a faithful reward for that, and uh, it was just a beautiful moment, and it just it really did just make my entire day. Just it just shows that it just pays to be kind. Just be kind, be kind. And the other thing I was gonna kind of work this into today, we're kind of getting over our 10 minutes, but um, if you live in like uh Midwest United States, you're probably experiencing some foggy, smoggy, smoky conditions right now. And I guess Canada is having some pretty hellacious wildfires up there, and the smoke is getting into the jet stream and it's coming down, and it's causing some very, very poor air quality for us down here. And I keep seeing these people making comments on social media about, oh Canada, you gotta get your shit together. Canada, do better, do better, Canada. And I'm sitting here the whole time going, first of all, I don't know how these wildfires started, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What do you expect them to do? Build a fucking bubble over their country so their air doesn't get out? Like give me a break, people. Just be kind, be kind. And I saw this other um video from the other side of that spectrum to where people are like, let's pray for these people up there because they're exp and they are, they are these hellacious wildfires. I saw a train conductor like right in the middle of it, and he was terrified that he was gonna get overcome by these flames. Oh, it's just horrible, horrible. So come on, guys, Canada. I don't know what they expect them to do on that, but let's instead of bitching about it, let's pray for them and be kind. And just deal with it. It's gonna go away. At least your house isn't burning. At least the hundred acres of woods you have isn't on fire. Like give me a break. Anyway, be kind. That's that's the whole premise of this episode. Be kind and it pays. It paid me ten bucks today. Anyway, thank you for Rebecca. Thank you for um letting me share these love letters that you wrote um nine years ago. They're absolutely beautiful. I just love reminiscing um with them. I can't see, I can't wait to see where this takes us. And thank you everybody for listening to this podcast, for supporting this podcast. Um, if you want to sponsor this podcast, we can do fun things too. So reach out to me, send me a message, send me a Venmo. I don't even care. Um, but yeah. You guys have the best day. I love you. Pray for me. I definitely will pray for you, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.