Actions.

A few weeks ago a coworker and I were having a conversation about a bunch of different things and it was mentioned that he thought I was good at my job. I told him I just come in do my job the best I know how and if that's not good enough then oh well. He mentioned that I probably had a bigger effect on people just by doing that then I could know. I really didn't think about that until this week end.

Friday night my wife and I went to my parents house for the week end. It's about an hour from our house so we spend the night when we go to their house.when we got there my mom and I were in the kitchen and she told me that one of their neighbors, who was a youth leader for me in church when I was a teen, had been cleaning a hand gun in his kitchen. The gun went off and shot through his finger. That happened a couple weeks ago, and the doctors told him they will amputate it in a couple of weeks.

My mom had been talking to his wife and mentioned he could talk to me but not to expect sympathy from me.

This was a man that I looked up to for guidance as teen. So this morning my wife and I went to church with my parents. As soon as we walked in the chapel I heard this man call me. I walked over and was greeted with a hug. Then he raised his bandaged hand and asked if I had heard what had happened. I mentioned I did. As my dad walked up to hear what was going on, the man began to tell me how when he was my leader he noticed that it didn't matter what we were doing as a group but I was always there trying to do everything every one else was doing to. That he noticed I never let my lack of a hand slow me down. He mentioned his wife told him what my mom told her. Then he told me something that really caught me off guard. He said that as he's been trying to do things and thinks he can't because his hand is wrapped up he thinks about me and how I could figure out how to do anything, he tries to figure out how he can do it.

After church my wife and I were talking about this and I mentioned that it makes me wonder how many people I have affected in this way, and that if that is one of the reasons I was born without a hand is to help people know you can still do things if something happens, like shooting off your finger. It all goes back to the conversation I had with my coworker, you never know how people see you when you are just doing the things you're supposed to, the best you know how.