Have you ever seen one of those funny sentences where all the letters are jumbled and yet you can still read it?
It’s amzanig rlealy hw teh hmuan brian cn d0 tht!
Except when you don’t want it to happen…
I was on Day 3 of handing out kindness tokens when I was talking to my friend, Paul. You might know him as The Muffler Man on Columbus Road in Athens. Paul is just a super sweetie. Seriously, big, tough looking guy and all sugar on the inside.
Anywho, I wanted to give a kindness token to Paul because he’s always so good to me.
I walked into his shop and smiled as he held up two large greasy bear paws. He was trying to tell me above the noise of the garage that he couldn’t shake my hand. I gave him a little squeeze around the neck and and then gingerly tucked a coin into his pocket.
As the coin was sliding from my fingers, I had one of those slow-motion movie moments. Nnnnooooooooo!
From the corner of my eye, I could see that something was wrong with the coin. I couldn’t see exactly what it was and the token was already in his pocket. At that point, it seemed a touch inappropriate to try and retrieve it.
As I was walking back to the car, I had a desperate hope: Maybe it was just that one coin. Maybe somehow the machine just misprinted one letter on one token. Could it be?
I grabbed a handful from the box. Nope. Every last one of them said, “KINDESS is Contagious” instead of “KINDNESS is Contagious.”
I started to laugh at myself. Claerly proofraeding ins’t my specaility.
Then I remembered a story someone told me once about the Amish people. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s beautiful. They told me that when Amish women are making a quilt, they will leave one mistake in it to remind themselves that only God is perfect.
Isn’t that lovely? And humbling?
I’ve ordered new tokens (spelled correctly), but I have to say, I love giving out the “defective” ones because it opens the door to remind people of God’s great love for each of us.
I get to assure people who may be hurting from their own deficiencies that the only one who is meant to be perfect is God.
And to souls who are feeling shame-filled or weary, those words might be the most important token of kindness (or kindess) we can give.
