Dee never sympathized with me. She never judged my anger. Instead, she talked about Eastern religion and philosophy. And she talked about the book A Course in Miracles.
Many days Dee made me angry with her calm, peaceful manner. I was frustrated by her daily affirmations, her quest for inner peace, her belief in God as an encompassing Source of unconditional love within each of us. I told her the philosophy was easy for her to embrace—but just wait until she suffered in some way. And that's when she told me about her childhood, about growing up with an alcoholic single mom, about being on her own by the time she was seventeen, about having faith and choosing love.
I'd leave Dee's house thinking about how impressed I was with her courage. It didn't occur to me to think about how I could apply her philosophy to my life.
When the movie Schindler's List came out, Dee and I went to see it. After the movie, we rocked on her porch and talked about how one person's kind act could make such a difference. By not giving in to the Nazis, Oskar Schindler saved 1,000 lives and, indirectly, all the future generations that would be born to those people.
As Dee and I talked about the power of Schindler's kind acts, we began to brainstorm the idea of a week in Dallas celebrating the value of kindness as part of the National Random Acts of Kindness™ Month. And we decided to turn those ideas into reality. We asked Jim McCormick, a well-respected businessman in Dallas, to be the chair.
The week of February 7-14, 1995 was a miracle. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King III, W. Deen Mohammed, and Dennis Weaver came to Dallas and spoke at kindness rallies, at schools, and at interfaith services. Under the guidance of Police Chief Ben Click, the Dallas Police Department handed out “kindness citations” that week.
We had a kindness rally for 10,000 school children. Girls from the YWCA handed out hot chocolate to downtown workers as they left their buildings; kids with learning differences made art exhibits depicting kindness; a kindness song, “We Believe,” was written; 800 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim children heard a Sunday School lesson taught together by Martin Luther King III and Dennis Weaver; children and adult choirs sang in malls; the African American Museum held a reception in honor of kindness; and Lovers Lane United Methodist Church hosted a fifty-year celebration of the liberation of the Nazi war camps.
Kindness was everywhere in the media—radio talk shows, television morning shows, the news, even on the front page of the Dallas Morning News. Billboards proclaiming kindness were everywhere.
And throughout all the planning and all the activities, Dee kept reminding me to watch the miracles, to see the love, to see God. And as tired as I was, I did feel a new energy. That's what kept me going.
When Kindness Week was over, I didn't want those good feelings to end. Since I wasn't working or doing athletics, I thought I might spend some time volunteering. So I called the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies and trained to become a docent.
Soon I was speaking to fifty middle school children each week when I took them on tours of the center. We stood in a boxcar—a real boxcar that had been used to transport Jews to the Nazi death camps, that had been donated to our museum—and I told them, “When you leave here, do not hate Nazis. Vow in your own heart never to be prejudiced. That's how you can make a difference.”
During each tour, when I told them about a particular survivor who lost his parents and brothers and sister, I always started to cry—it was the man who had founded this center so that could never happen again. I left the tour each week exhausted—but feeling new energy that I had discovered. And kids wrote me letters affirming that same feeling of hope and love.
For the very first time since my MS diagnosis, I was feeling someone else's pain and not thinking about myself.
I liked the way I was feeling. And so I took on more volunteer jobs. Within a year, I was serving on the boards of several schools, as co-vice president of community service of the National Council of Jewish Women, as our neighborhood March of Dimes volunteer—and the list goes on. I said Yes to everyone.
Right around that time, I happened into a used bookstore. An old copy of Wayne Dyer's book, Real Magic, caught my eye. I had never heard of Wayne Dyer, but the picture of the rainbow on the cover and the subtitle Creating Miracles in Everyday Life attracted me to the book. I grabbed it, paid for it, and went home.
I could not believe what I was reading. Everything I had been feeling since Kindness Week was written in this book. Dyer wrote of creating real magic in your life, which he describes as those times when we can see beyond the concrete five senses and know there is more. He wrote of going within and discovering that our purpose in life is to love unconditionally and to live a life of service. He spoke about life not being a “What's in it for me” experience, but being about our spiritual selves having a human experience.
He asked the reader to have an open mind when first learning about spirituality and to suspend disbelief. Then he talked about intuition, the divine spark within each of us that we can access whenever we choose. He suggested that readers go within and be quiet, to listen to the voice within. And he spoke about waking each day and being grateful for the smallest of things, to enjoy the journey instead of working only for an outcome. If we can do these things, miracles begin to occur.
I can only describe my experience of reading that book as an instant awakening. In one moment, every piece of my life became crystal clear. I knew that I had lived my life not seeing “real” magic. In that one moment, I knew without a doubt exactly who I was—not a person with a disease and weak legs, but a person who has a heart filled with love and wants to be of service.
I felt a lightness I had not felt in years. And my healing began.
At that point, I understood that my healing isn't about searching for the cure to multiple sclerosis. There is no cure for MS. My healing is about healing within. It's about being motivated by ethics, serenity, and quality of life—not achievement, performance, and acquisitions.
And I suddenly knew loving guidance was always available to me. All I had to do was ask. I have never felt alone again. I knew my purpose was to serve others—that's why my service work always gave me new energy.
About a year later, I said, “God, OK, I'm really stretched. I keep saying ‘Yes’ to everyone. I promise I'll say ‘Yes’ to whatever YOU ask me to do. What's next?”
Less than a week later, I woke up and looked at Steve. “OK, I got my marching orders. I'm writing a book, and I've been told exactly what it is about. It's about people who have suffered physical or emotional pain, and gone beyond their own pain to help someone else. I need to interview them and write their stories.”
From February through May I did preliminary research. I sent a short proposal to Danny Siegel, author, poet, and the king of finding community service heroes. He called me and told me he would help me. God bless Danny Siegel. He told me about Bea Salazar. I interviewed Bea and wrote and rewrote her story. In July I knew I needed a professional writer to make this work.
It had always been a dream of mine to write a book, but I decided this idea was too righteous to waste time on learning how to write. I thought about calling Janis Dworkis, an acquaintance and local writer, but I really was not sure. Then one day I opened the phone book, and the header on the right-hand page said “Dworkis.” I smiled and immediately called her.
Janis came on board July 20, the day before my birthday. I never liked celebrating my birthday. But, this year I had reason to celebrate. I was living with purpose.
I interviewed Jonni McCuin and Ben Beltzer. We wrote their stories and finished the proposal. We mailed it to three publishers in October. Three weeks later Mary Jane Ryan called from Conari Press. She told me they wanted to publish our book.
After crying—and trying to sound somewhat coherent—I hung up the phone and sat very still. I thanked God for the miracle, for giving me this incredible gift to share with the world. I laughed at the synchronicity—of course the publisher would be the same group that published all of the Random Acts of Kindness™