Snowballs

Have you ever noticed how bad things seem to snowball? When one bad thing happens, it seems like they just keep happening... and they get bigger and bigger! I guess that's the reason behind the origin of the saying, "When it rains it pours." But do you ever think about how good things seem to snowball, too? We seem to focus too often on life's struggles that we forget to get excited about the joys. Say you wake up late in the morning, and on your way out the door you spill your coffee all over you. What's going to happen with the rest of your day? Chances are you will have a flat tire on the way to work, you'll realize at lunch you have no money on you, your boss will decide to take you off a project you've been so excited about being a part of, then you'll get home to fix dinner and notice the food you were going to use has gone bad. It's one thing after another. Or if somebody says something bad to you that puts you in a down mood, bad things just keep happening. What about when someone starts your day off with something good, though?

In Bible study today we were talking about how people can get you down, and the problems just seem to build. It reminded me of several times in my life when the opposite has happened. Sometimes all it takes is that one person doing something nice to turn my whole day and whole attitude around. When I lived in Miami, Florida, and I was a server at Chili's I can remember this one day I had that was horrible. My manager was on my case non-stop. I got flustered and ended up messing up orders. Then one order came along and I completely forgot to enter it into the computer. By the time I realized my mistake the guys at that table were very frustrated. I went to them anyways and explained how it was all my fault. I told them I completely forgot to enter it, and for that I was so sorry. I expected them to be horrible about it. Instead, though, they thanked me for my honesty. They told me they seldom run into honest people in south Florida who will actually take the blame when they do something wrong. They were so appreciative that I did not try to push it off on someone else that when they left I noticed I received the biggest tip I had ever gotten. Talk about changing my attitude! That made my night!

The funny thing is that this unintentionally was paid forward about a year later. I was living in Pensacola, Florida. My brother was working on a movie in New Orleans, and he came over to see me on his day off. We decided to go eat at Red Lobster. Our server was horrible! She was rude, mean, and just an all around terrible, terrible server. When we got ready to leave we were going to split the bill. Instead I told my brother I would get the tip if he got the bill. I left a tip the same size as the bill. He asked me why I did what I did after she was so horrible to us. I told him that people don't just act that way. There had to be a reason for her attitude, and my guess was that something was going really bad in her life. I wanted to do what I could to help make it a little better.

I was thinking about that today. I would venture to bet that the actions of those guys to me when I was having such a bad day are what subconsciously convinced me to do what I did for that girl at Red Lobster. It's amazing how we never know what the actions of a stranger will lead to. With that in mind, we never know what incredible things our actions to a stranger could lead to.

Try doing something good for somebody you don't know. Better yet, try doing something nice to someone who is mean to you. You may not see the positive results, but they just might happen. Regardless of their reaction, though, you can feel good knowing that you took the higher road.