25 Days of Kindness

Happy December! Merry almost Christmas! The best month of the year--by far--is upon us. I am so excited.

I am also really excited to be celebrating December differently this year. Everyone has obviously heard of the 12 Days of Christmas (if not, who are you?), which turned into ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas, which I turned into 25 Days of Kindness.

This started when I heard from someone that it takes at least 21 days of doing a certain action to create a habit. I love the concept of random acts of kindness, and thought it would be so perfect to combine kindness and Christmas! I feel like we usually associate the two, but with all the stress that goes with the holidays, sometimes going out of our way to help people can get lost in the shuffle.

In an effort to make a habit of doing nice things on a daily basis, I am doing something nice every day from December 1st to December 25th. Some of the days are planned out, while some days I'm hoping that God will put someone right in front of me and say, "This person needs you today." Some nice things are big and some are small. I guess my philosophy on this is that it doesn't matter whether it's free or costs a million dollars, as long as it's helping someone else.

I strung up these banners on the doors to my closet and am attaching a notecard with the act of kindness for the day on the back!

I am not doing this to get recognition or to try to act like I am a better, nicer, holier person than anyone else. Absolutely not! Luke 12:48 tells us, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded," and Matthew 10:8 says, "Freely you have received, freely give." I have been blessed with more than I could ever imagine and this is the best way I could think of to both praise God for what I'm given and serve people who need it most. I also hope that posting what I am doing here will keep me accountable to keep doing it! :)

Yesterday I kicked off the month by making a loan on the website Kiva.org to a woman named Beatrice from Kenya. When I found Kiva, I spent hours looking through the pages of loans, reading the stories from all around the world. It is simultaneously heartbreaking to read about these people in poverty, but incredibly inspiring that they are so motivated to start their own businesses or provide for their families.

This afternoon as I was driving home from church, I was really excited to see students standing next to the road collecting change to raise money for the Northwestern University Dance Marathon. They do this every year, so I wasn't surprised, but in years past my family or I have just kept our windows up so they wouldn't ask us to donate.

Today, I decided that because I had money literally sitting in the cupholder right next to me, that this was God telling me what my act of kindness was to be for the day. I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to contribute to an amazing organization like NUDM, even if it's just in a tiny way.

Hopefully I will be able to update you periodically throughout the month! Have a wonderful Christmas season. :)