“My kindness is all you need. My power is strongest when you are weak.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 CEV

A girl out of my past commented after she viewed a photo I posted on my blog. Okay, I’m a little free with the word girl –Charlotte is now a grandma –but I picture her as the kid she was when we grew up together in State College.

My Mom was one of Charlotte’s junior high teachers. The message I received said:

“Thank you for the challenge to drink in God’s word before I drink my morning cup of coffee. I noticed your hands in the picture of you holding the mug. Your hands look so much like your precious mother’s beautiful hands. I was blessed to have her for English and whenever she stopped and leaned over my desk, I would look at her beautiful hands.”

To say I’m honored is an understatement. Seventy years ago those hands taught me to fold my small ones in prayer. Mother’s hands shaped my character like a potter shapes a vessel.

Her hands were always engaged in acts of kindness, caring for her brood. They prepared thousands of meals, soothed away my tears and fears, guided my own as I cut out Simplicity® patterns and sugar cookies, and tucked me in at night.

I dreaded her determined hands, though, when she gave me Toni ® permanents. The worst part was the odor of ammonia that filled the kitchen. I perched on a Sears Roebuck catalog draped in a towel while she pulled curlers tight, making sure the perm was set. Ouch!

More than once Mom used her hands to create prize-winning Halloween costumes. When I was old enough to notice I asked Mom why she wore the same skirts and blouses for house work that she wore in public. Back then most neighbor ladies wore house dresses, but not Mom. She was surprised I noticed. Calmly stacking canned goods on the shelf, she replied it was a way to save money for more important things, meaning the needs of her family.

I can see her thoughtfully holding a pen, writing letters. Like me, Mother was left-handed and understood my frustration at smearing ink dipped from an inkwell on my papers as a first grader back before ballpoint pens came into common use. With aging, chemo and weight loss my bony hands are swathed in skin that resembles crepe paper but when I fold them together for warmth they still feel a bit like Mother’s in her later years.

Charlotte’s unspoken message in her post is that it’s always the right time to be kind. Hers was a small kindness; those are often the ones that linger with us. Conversely, people remember when I’ve been a grump. . . and I do, too.

Kindness is in short supply lately.

It’s a crucial shortage –nothing ripples more throughout our kids lives than what they learn through acts of kindness. In a letter to the Little Sisters of Charity Mother Teresa wrote, “I prefer you make mistakes in kindness than that you work miracles in unkindness.”

St. Paul listed kindness as a mark of the Spirit-led life. Hundreds of years earlier the prophet Jeremiah said,

This is what the Lord says:
Stand by the roadways and look.
Ask about the ancient paths:
Which is the way to what is good?
(Jeremiah 6:16A, HCSB)

We’re more than lucky if we have a guide to show us timeworn ways in which to walk. Mother instilled in her children that our choices matter, demonstrating by her own that the godly way is also the way of kindness.

No one has perfect parents or a perfect childhood. Mine was touched by emotional trauma that still haunts me. But Mother was my role model and defender, a gentle mama hen whose feathers could fly if anything threatened her chicks.

Knowing I won’t be around forever, I try be that for my kids and grandkids, thankful God’s kindness is greatest when I’m weakest.

Sometimes it seems like our different generations live on different planets, but little victories taste sweet. Last weekend Josiah and I created an original recipe, red velvet cherry crisp; on his last visit I taught Eli to play Chinese checkers. Delighted, he beat me in the second game.

We keep a round ice cream container from the 50s filled with antique toy figures in a dining room corner. When young ones visit they’re free to set up wild scenes, taking over the Queen Anne maple table that belonged to my folks.

And they still hold my hand, praise God.

Small moments are magnified by an undercurrent of urgency—pinpoint flashes, like stars in the night to guide them on the way of kindness, as Mother guided me.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette indianagazette.com