It’s not every day you see the fruits of your labor and learn how you directly impacted someone’s life.
Sure, someone starts going to church and you hope your conversation with them that one time helped lead them there. Or a friend asked for your advice and their actions seem to follow what you told them.
We see where we might fit in to someone’s story, but rarely do we learn how big of a role we actually played.
Twenty-three-year-old Raquel is one of the lucky ones.
Her story made its way around the feeds of Tumblr and Reddit about a little girl she used to babysit:
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“When I was 12, I babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week.”
Rather than blowing off the little girl’s request, Raquel always took the time to treasure the art at hand. She even turned it into a source of entertainment, narrating each masterpiece with the voice of a sports-announcer.
“Such form! This level of coloring! Why I haven’t seen such perfection in Crayola in a long time. And what is this? Why Jeff, now this is a true risk…it seems she’s made…a monochrome pink canvas…I haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932…and I gotta say, Jeff, it’s absolutely splendid.”
Each time Raquel performed the bit, her creative little artist friend would “fall back giggling.”
“At the end of every night, she’d check with me: ‘did you really like it?’ And I’d say yes and talk about something I noticed and tucked her in.”
It’s been about 12 years, and Raquel received news about the little girl:
“She was just accepted into 3 major art schools. She wrote me a letter. Inside was a picture from when she was younger, monochrome pink.
‘Thank you,’ it said, ‘to somebody who saw the best in me.’”
Raquel’s story just goes to show, you never know just how much your words and actions might mean to someone else. May it inspire you to go out of your way for someone in your life today.
