Who Do You Carry With You?

The Power of Living an Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Ways

Someone recently shared with me one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard. It’s a story about a student who is now in middle school. She carries a binder with her from one school year to another that has a photo taped to the front cover. The photo is a picture of her and a teacher from elementary school.

One of the middle school teachers took a current picture of this student holding the binder close to her chest and sent it the teacher in the picture, with this note: “She carries you with her wherever she goes.”

My heart stopped on that phrase and being a former teacher, tears leaked from my eyes at the power of a lasting impression made by an educator in a student’s life.

But something more was pulling at my heartstrings when I read those words and I’ve been swirling it around the way a wine taster swishes and swirls each sip of wine, trying to identify what is pleasing about it.

“She carries you with her wherever she goes.”

As I worked this image around in my mind, I started thinking, “Who do I carry around with me? Who carries me around with them?”

You’ll never know the impact your kindness, attention, your words, your everyday love has on those you interact with in the dailiness of life. We can’t know all the million little ripples our lives create but there’s a saying, “Some people bring joy wherever they go, others bring joy whenever they go.”

We get to choose which type of joy-bringer and memory-maker we want to be.

Make no mistake, you will live on in the memories of others, how beautiful to be someone who is carried around with others wherever they go.

This memory making is not about being a cheerleader or being extraordinarily likable. It’s about the genuineness of the heart. The sincerity of love. We can model this love after Jesus — after all, look how many of us carry Him around in our hearts!

We carry him around with us because he showed us the power of love and acceptance, kindness, and grace.

We carry him around wherever we go and that very fact should change every encounter we have with others.

Bill Johnson, in The Way of Life, says that Jesus met every problem with a transformational solution. He says that we should “leak hope” into the world. That transforming power, that hope, the Holy Spirit, isn’t just a cute idea or religious bias, it’s power and a being. The Holy Spirit, alive IN us as we carry him through our life.

Every person who bumps up against us, every interaction is an opportunity for others to rub against the Spirit of God.

They may never remember your face, your name, your title or position, but they’ll carry you with them as they draw strength from your joy and an encounter that lodged a little bit of you (and Jesus) in their heart.

Who Do You Carry With You?

I remember that she had red hair and a wide, warm smile. In my memories, she’s Maureen O’Hara. She made my four-year-old heart light up. I can’t explain the connection to a cashier at Pick-N-Pay but she never failed to make me feel special, to let me know that I had been seen and noted. In my vulnerable little world, I often felt invisible, enveloped and overshadowed by grown-up troubles and chaos beyond my understanding or control.

My parents knew that this cashier — I’ve long since forgotten her name — had a special effect on me so they chose her line even if it wasn’t the shortest. I can only imagine how my always too-big-for-my-face green eyes must have lit up when I saw her. I watched, fascinated as her slender fingers handled each item and quickly tapped the register, her red nails against the keys, producing that satisfying click-click-clicking sound.

One week my eyes grew bigger than usual as I admired her ring. Not a sparkly diamond or a brilliant ruby, just a simple twisted wire ring shaped into a swirl of a flower resembling a bouquet.

I’d never seen anything like it and “my” cashier needed no explanation, she read my face and removed the ring from her pinky finger and gave it to me.

Over the years that ring either fell apart or got lost but the way my red-haired cashier made me feel that day has stayed in my heart for almost 50 years. She’ll never know — but then again, maybe she does — that I carry her around with me.

Can one look, one meeting of the eyes change a person?

If you ask Zaccheus, or the woman at the well, or Bartimaeus the beggar, or the thief on the cross, they would say, yes — most certainly!

We live in a Go Big or Go Home society but that’s not what Jesus modeled.

If he were alive on the earth today, I suspect his bumper sticker might say something more like, “Go small and be small.” We think we have to do extraordinary things for anything to count, but as Oswald Chambers says, We only “have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life.”

I was in my typical hurry mode. Fly out the door, zip through the nearest McDonald’s drive-thru window and order a black coffee and Egg White Delight. As I paid the cashier she caught sight of my pink rose bracelet. She never looked me in the eye, I wasn’t her regular and we didn’t know each other, but her face was reminiscent of four-year-old me.

“Oh my gosh, I LOVE your bracelet.” It wasn’t one of those polite, Oh that’s a pretty bracelet compliment. Nope, this was a full on gush.

I didn’t think twice, I handed her the bracelet and said, “It’s yours, have a nice day.”

I could hear her squeal to her coworkers as I pulled away, “She gave me her bracelet!”

I didn’t think about it then, in fact, I guess I just now made the connection, but I’ve been carrying my cashier around with me all these years and her spirit of generosity carved out a place in my heart to call home.

We were in McDonald’s (again? I swear I rarely eat there!) and a young man approached us asking for money for lunch. My boys and I had been sightseeing all around San Antonio that week and I was fresh out of cash. I reached into my purse and pulled out two one-dollar bills. He politely declined, stating that it wouldn’t be enough to buy a sandwich. I realized then he wasn’t panhandling for cash to buy cigarettes or beer, he was simply hungry.

I invited him to eat lunch with us and order whatever he wanted from the menu, paying with my credit card. We sat down and I asked him about his life. His name was Robert, he was only 17, and his life was packed into his backpack. His mom had recently died and without a job to pay the rent, he was soon evicted.

With nowhere to go and no other family, he was now homeless.

We prayed with him before we parted ways and as a family, we prayed for him many times since. Over the years, one of my boys would say, “I wonder what happened to Robert.” They have carried him in their heart and my prayer is that we leaked enough hope into Rober’s life that day that he carries us in his heart too.

What if, as Emily P. Freeman asks in Simply Tuesday, “…instead of thinking we have to choose between our ordinary life [cashier who smiles at small children and mom who buys a homeless kid a sandwich at McDonald’s] and an extraordinary life, we began to realize they’re the same thing?

I admit I am a sucker for sentimental items and my home is filled with things that remind me of those I love and loved. My grandmother’s rolling pin and my mother’s pink, Gooseberry Pyrex bowls make Christmas cookies special. The beanie that my son carried around and named Horsella is prominently displayed on my “memory shelf” where I’ve saved the cake topper from my wedding and souvenirs from vacations. Baby boxes and hordes of photos are tucked away in closets, as a type of insurance policy…just so I don’t forget…

I like to carry things with me but I am starting to learn to let go of the temporary reminders as I trust what’s in my heart more than what’s in my closets.

I see the beautiful tapestry of my heart woven with memories of others who have touched me in ways that remain.

I am learning that we carry people around with us wherever we go, not because we have something tangible to remember them by but because we carry them in our hearts.

This story is published in Koinonia — stories by Christians to encourage, entertain, and empower you in your faith, food, fitness, family and fun.

We are a Smedian Publication. Find out about us and how to write for us.