What is the kindest thing someone has done for you in the past year?

During one of my worst days, someone I highly regard didn’t just listen or give advice, but took time to find something that will not only distract me but improve our friendship too and we played a game very similar to these cards. Allowing us to laugh, almost cry, but also get closer on a deeper level.

It meant a lot to me but it also helped me shift my focus.

I grew up in a family where verbal abuse was a daily thing. This passed year my husband has encouraged and loved me in ways that I never expected from anyone. We have just welcomed our little boy into our world and knowing that my husband is his father gives me great comfort in knowing he will be raised well. Not like I was ♡

My mother and I don’t always get along and often she has made me feel unhappy about my body and figure. I was shopping with her one day and saw and tried on a dress that I absolutely fell in love with and felt so beautiful in. My mother then made some unkind remarks that made me feel ugly so I didn’t buy the dress. Later that week, after telling my boyfriend about what had happened on the day with my mother, I arrived home and my boyfriend gifted me with the dress and told me that “no one should ever make me feel like that again”.

After my luggage got lost somewhere in Europe for my ENTIRE holiday and landed back in Lisbon after I had already gone home – I spent weeks back in SA trying to get the airport to release it and send it to Cape Town. Lo and behold while talking to a friend after another frustrating teary day on hold with Portuguese customer services 30 days after the bag went missing – she mentioned that her brother who I had only met a handful of times had RANDOMLY landed in Lisbon that day. He went to the airport for me to stand in long queues, spoke his way through lost and found, paid for extra luggage, checked my bag in via London and JHB and eventually to Cape Town and brought it back to me safely – what a legendary admin filled thing to do for someone you barely knew. The best human.

My husband and I have been married for just over a year and while reflecting on kindness I came to realise that the kindest thing someone has done is for him to show me grace day after day, from the small things (misplacing EVERYTHING) to the big (unkind words and silly offenses). I’m someone who really doesn’t like to make mistakes, so to be shown grace upon grace in this way has been such a humbling lesson in love and gratitude! There’s something about continuing-kindness that unravels our pride and teaches us to live in/live from grace.

My friends have sat and listened to me talk about the same trauma the whooooole year and never once made me feel like I was burdening them. No matter when, they would sit with me and unpack the same situations time and time again until I felt better. They helped me fixed a heart they didn’t break and I couldn’t be more grateful to them for that.

Flew from Joburg to George just to drive me back to Joburg over the next two days, so that I didn’t have to do the 14-hour drive alone. Plus, while in George, helped me pack up my house, carried boxes to the attic and storage facility, fetched a bakkie for me, strapped my mattress to the roof and transported it, plus helped my dad whose car wouldn’t start. Which meant they had to work late into the night after helping me and driving me all day. Acts of service much.

Someone in my life was struggling with the passing of their dad, so decided to be there to help them as a family honour their dad on his birthday