This afternoon I went shopping. I figured I would run into lots of moms and kids as schools let out and I was right. I remember doing that with my own children. After school seems like a good time frame so you can get a few things accomplished before going home. But it has been my experience that kids are wound up from being inside and concentrating all day and/or pretty tired. I was prepared for the worst. Since I was alone, I paid a lot of attention to what was going on around me. Within the hustle and bustle, I was pleasantly surprised to see very patient parents and children who were respectful and pretty well behaved. The dollar store – one of my favorites – was probably the busiest. There was a mom down one aisle looking at things with a little girl. Then a little boy came down and met them. The mom explained that she had asked the little boy and another sibling to go down another aisle so he would not see what the little girl was getting. It seemed that she was taking turns with the kids to pick out their gifts for the others while trying to keep it secret. Another mom and kids were talking about what to get for their teachers. One girl said her teacher liked kisses. The other little girl responded, “Wait – Hershey’s kisses – right?” She was assured that was correct. There were a couple of teenage girls smelling all the candles and talking about what to get for others. In another store, a mom had 4 children with her – one toddler in a cart which was full of merchandise, two older ones, and a baby in the car seat. The car seat was on the floor as they stopped to look at things. I didn’t have a cart and was going to walk on by, but the older boy saw me coming and moved the seat out of the way. There was another mom with 4 kids and 2 carts. As I was making my way past them, the mom told everyone to move over which they did, then the older ones said, “Excuse me.” all on their own. There were several other incidents where parents were just plain being attentive to their kids. Honestly, there was only one time when two kids were having a sword fight that I saw any kind of commotion. The whole shopping experience was joyful and uplifting.

I Found God today in very patient parents and kind kids.