The Kindness of Strangers

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers, welcome, it is good to have you here. I am so pleased to share, for those of you who haven’t already read it, Joy’s latest post in, “Joy’s Corner,” which you can link to it here. While her words are self evident, I wish you could all see what I was blessed to watch as she labored over her heartfelt message.

We are so thankful for God’s mercy and grace shown us in Joy’s healing and Joy is especially pleased with the recovery of her knitting, crocheting, and sewing skills. The picture at the end of her post, which I have shared before, is just a sample of the marvelous abilities God has blessed her with and which she thanks and praises him for in her writing.

But while Joy can sew a couple of quilts and knit a baby sweater, hat, bootie, and mitten set all in a day and have time left over, to write for the blog is painstakingly slow and takes all the mental energy she can muster over the course of several days. Joy has deep thoughts and a deeper soul, but collecting thoughts and finding words in her brain scrambled by traumatic injury, is no small task. It is beautiful and painful to watch all at the same time, but thankfully, she persevered, wrote from her heart, and now you all have the benefit and blessing of reading her labor of love.

One of the things that stands out to me so clearly in Joy’s life, and she shares it in her post, is her heartfelt desire to show kindness to any and all who need it. Her acts of kindness toward strangers in her knitting, crocheting, and sewing creations are incredible. Joy will probably never meet the babies or their families that she has blessed so graciously. But it truly brings her so much joy and deep gratitude to know she, even in her “new normal” and compromised cognitive state, can be a blessing to others through her gifts and abilities. I am so very proud of her and I am truly blessed daily by her courage, grit, and determination, to say she inspires me is an understatement.

Of course Joy and I are both heartbroken and grieving with the loss of life by those who themselves were just trying to show kindness to strangers in their neighborhood and community. We will never know if Renee Good knew the neighbors she was trying to assist and there is no indication that Alex Pretti knew the woman he tried to protect from ICE aggression before being tackled and shot to death. While you may not agree with their politics, life choices, or methods, I believe their motivations were genuinely to show kindness to strangers in need.

I do not know Michael and Susan Pretti, but I can’t imagine the pain they are enduring right now, and believe me, Joy and I know something about pain. For any parent to have their child taken from them in such a brutal manner is truly heartrending, but to have it played out in such a public setting and by one’s own government, would be excruciatingly painful.

As I said, I don’t know the Pretti’s, but in closing Joy and I want to honor them and their son by posting their official statement here:

We are heartbroken but also very angry. 

Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman.

The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.