Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Give 52 Week 9 - Where Serentripity Leads You

Follow Your Curiosity
Give 52 Week 9
Cheryl Houston 2015
On Sunday, September 20th, my friends and I set out on annual trip we call Serentripity. We meet at 8:00am at Starbucks, load up on caffeine and get our first clue of where we're going. We have no idea where we will wind up or who we will meet throughout the day but the goal is to have an adventure doing random acts of kindness spreading shine and wherever we land at 2:18pm, that's where we were serendiptiously meant to be.

I'm not going to recap the whole day but we wound up in DeLeon, Texas. At 2:17pm Claudia was panicking in the back seat (as she does every year) about us being on a dirt road in the middle of no where. That is one of my favorite parts of the day- Claudia freaking out that we have one minute to be wherever it is we're meant to be.

As we're driving down the dirt road we see people in a backyard so we pull into their drive.

They have a B on the front of their house. Claudia's last name begins with B. They have a 3 foot metal chicken in their front garden. If you don't know that a metal chicken is a sign for me than read this.

So, the four of us pile out of our car, walk around the side of the house and pounce on these poor people! Well, anytime you walk up on people and want to do a kind act for them, they get very wary sounding asking things like, "Now, what are y'all doing? And, you want to do what? And, why?"

We met Breanna Barnes and her family.

They had been dutiful working on adding a back deck onto the house (thank goodness they were done lest they ask us to help!) and we wanted ice cream so we asked if we could bring them some ice cream, too.

After a funny exchange, we finally got their order, picked up their order and we returned we promptly sat down on their new backyard deck and proceeded to visit. Who are you? What do you do? All that business.

Breanna is an elementary science teacher. We asked her who she found to be an encouraging or inspiring person and this is when the magic happened. Breanna started to tell us about her principal, Lori, and her voiced cracked and her eyes welled up about how supported she felt by her principal. I can't even really remember what she said but it was that feeling, you know? She was talking about someone who was truly special to her. So special that she became overwhelmed with emotion. That's special.

I recognized that moment and I have a strict "no-one-cries-alone" policy so I welled up and told her Lori would be one of the recipients of Give 52. Now, Lori hasn't encouraged me in any way. Or inspired me. I don't know her one iota. But Breanna knows her, and Breanna is encouraged and inspired by her and that deserves a gift of Give 52.

And in the end, that is what our Serentripity day is about. Floating around, not knowing where we will land or who will meet but we trust in the process and in the universe to take us somewhere we can connect with good.

This is my gift. I give it to you.

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