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Connie's avatar

This reminds me of something my grandmother told me about 10 years before she passed, something that has really stuck with me.

She’d been very active, in every sense of the word, for most of her life. Involved parent and grandparent, frequent traveler, volunteer, Sunday School teacher, and much more. Once she hit her 80s, she didn’t feel up to being that person anymore. She was slowing down, my grandfather was gone, grandchildren basically all grown. I think she felt like she should be doing more for others, the way she always had. (Not in a martyr way, just in a spirit of real service and generosity having always been part of her life.)

In the midst of this, she was reading her Bible and encountered the phrase, “Jesus went about doing good,” and she thought, hey, I can do that.

As my capacity to “do” has become limited by my physical health in the last few years, I find myself thinking about this a lot. I’m still working on a new framework for thinking about deeper meaning and using my gifts. But I hope I can at least “go about doing good,” and find some peace in that.

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Penny's avatar

Love this. I try to do something to make the world a better place when I go to bed than it was when I got up. I try to call people by their name (and I'm really not very good remembering names - name tags are my friend!). I complement the person in the grocery store on their excellent bagging skills or their lovely earrings. I hold doors, I pick up things people drop, I say please and thank you, and I smile. I'm not curing diseases, but we have far more "average" minutes in the world than we have critical diseases - I'm good taking care of the day-to-day.

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