Friday, June 3, 2011

ARK - Acts of Random Kindness

Sometimes I am amazed at where my thoughts go, but they always take me where I need to be.

The other morning, as I was driving to work, my thoughts went in a direction I wasn’t prepared for. I was feeling down on the fact that I haven’t done much exercise lately. After my marathon, I was burned out, but at the beginning of this year I started going to some group classes. They were hard and I loved the challenge of them. Then, around March, I gave up sugar. I started to feel sick and it lasted a couple of weeks. I don’t know if it was my body protesting no sugar or if it was truly a virus. But I didn’t want to exercise so I didn’t. I’ve started adding exercise back, but not as much as I want.

So I’m driving and all of a sudden I’m crying. I’m sad and embarrassed that my marathon time wasn’t better. What? Why this? Why now? It was an amazing accomplishment. I was proud of it, wasn’t I? Damn PMS!

I pulled into my coffee place (Cafe Expresso on 900 S and 1100 E.) I love that place. I know all of them, not really by name, but I see them regularly, they remember my drink and always have a smile.

Now, I go to this place at least once a week, and I’ve had my 26.2 sticker on the window for 6 months, but this was the first morning that anyone asked me about it. My coffee friend asked me if I had done a marathon. Why this morning?

All of a sudden, I’m proud of my accomplishment again. Thank you. Thank you. We talked about it for a minute and then she was off to the next customer and I was off to work feeling good about me. It could have made me feel worse, if I would have let myself go there, but I didn’t. Kindness must be acknowledged.

You get what you need, when you don’t expect it, but you have to be open to accepting it.

Have you experienced an ARK lately that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about it.

1 comment:

Angie K. Millgate said...

OH!!!! This is DELICIOUS!!! Thank you for sharing this. I feel so happy that you were the recipient of an ARK! YES!!!! And this is a particularly wonderful one - so divinely timed. I am appreciating that ARKs happen all the time. We just have to recognize them. Thank you, again, for sharing.