26 Acts of Kindness - Day 14

Today's Act of Kindness is in honor of little Emilie Parker, age 6. I never had the pleasure of knowing Emilie, but I feel like perhaps I should have. She and I share a common kinship - of heritage, homes and pass times. She was born in Utah, but her family moved around quite a lot in her 6 years. She lived in Utah, Oregon, New Mexico and Connecticut - she beat me out with the New Mexico one. ;-) She returned to her hometown of Ogden, Utah to rest next to her grandfather who had passed away just a few months before.

Emilie's father described her as a loving, charitable girl who was full of compassion, and whose mouth was full of words. Emilie was a talker, and apparently filled her short six years with enough words to fill a lifetime. She adored the color pink, loved her American Girl doll and was an avid reader.

She was the epitome of a big sister. She cared for her two younger sisters, hugged them when they needed it, helped them when her parents were busy, and dressed up with them and read them princess stories just for the fun of it.

Emilie wanted everything to be beautiful. She was a fancy girl - I have a feeling she would have loved Fancy Nancy. =) And she wanted to make the world more posh (as Fancy Nancy would say) through her artwork. Her parents said if you handed her a notebook and markers it was like giving her candy. She told her father: "I have so many ideas of things to draw and it is hard to remember them all." She could easily fill both hours and notebooks with drawing after drawing - but NEVER one on the back of the other because that would spoil the masterpieces.

I wasn't sure what exactly to do for young Emilie, but I kept falling back on the drawing. I was much like Emilie as a youngster, minus the talking part. I could pass hours and days with nothing more than a book and a sketch pad and pencil. I used to draw a lot. Used to. Honestly, I haven't really put pencil to paper more than a handful of times since my children were born.

Today I was compelled to break out my sketch book that has been collecting dust under my bed and make a little drawing for Emilie. I had a feeling she could appreciate a Disney princess, so I went more along that lines in my drawing than a more portrait-type. I drew Emilie - her bright blonde hair, her sparkling blue eyes, a pretty pink dress, and clutching a doll to her chest - reaching up into the sky, as if she were about to take flight.

Now where does a random act of kindness come with all of this? Well, I wasn't quite sure, but then I stumbled upon a story about "Ben's Bells" being hung up throughout Newtown. Ben's Bells were created by a grieving mother who lost her son to croup when he was 3. She fashioned beautiful chimes of clay shapes and cow bells, and hung them up throughout her hometown of Tucson, AZ in remembrance of him. She put a note on each one that whoever found it should take it home and hang it up and that they should "remember to spread kindness throughout the world." Ben's Bells became a hit and soon she had volunteers helping her make them and hanging them for people to find. One of the citizens of Newtown heard of Ben's Bells and asked the founder to come to Newtown with her bells and they hung thousands of them throughout the town - giving something for the children and adults alike to smile about, to look forward to walking down the streets of the city again.

I started thinking that Emilie was taken back to Utah, where I am from as well. I know I will be going back there to visit sometime in the somewhat near future. So I thought I would take the drawing I made and fashion it into something. I'm not sure yet exactly what it will be. Perhaps an ornament, or a chime or a crystal sphere or... well, something. But before I head back to Utah I will do something with it, and I will stop by Ogden and I will leave it somewhere. Nowhere in particular, but somewhere where someone will be sure to find it. I will leave them a note, tell them to take it home and ask them to pay it forward with a gift of kindness to someone else. Maybe it will make that person smile to find it, and maybe that person will start a new ripple of kindness.

Because like Emilie said, "I wish everybody could just be happy."

"The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.'" - Jeremiah 31:3