Kindness is a seed, 🌱 not a Boomerang.

I thought kindness was a boomerang. Turns out, it's a seed. You plant it, without knowing where it will grow. 

I watched a video today where a guy went to a fast-food restaurant and got some chicken tenders. He went to leave but then realized he didn’t have any barbecue sauce. So he went back and asked for barbecue sauce, and the worker said it would be 75 cents. He said something to the worker like, "You want to charge me 75 cents? And then you probably expect a tip?" But what he did was pay the 75 cents—and then gave the worker a $10 tip.  

His point was this: "I don’t match the energy. I set the standard. You don’t deserve that kind of tip for mediocre barbecue sauce, but God didn’t call me to match mediocre with mediocre. God called me to be generous. I won the eternal jackpot—I got something I didn’t deserve. So I want to give people what they don’t deserve."  

Watching this made me realize a solution to a problem I’ve been having.  

### My Story  

I’ve helped a lot of people in my life. When I was younger, I was in a religion that required paying 10% of your income as tithing. I paid it religiously, even after I left. Once, in my 30s, I couldn’t afford food and asked that church for help. They refused because I wasn’t a member anymore—even though I’d given them 10% of my income for years.  

So I decided to use that 10% for things I believed God would want:  

- Helping people pay rent  

- Bailing people out of jail  

- Forgiving debts when people couldn’t pay me back  

- Giving away three cars  

- Giving away a $4,000 wedding ring  

- Housing my siblings, their partners, a homeless girl, my cousin, a friend and her kid  

But at 39, when I became homeless, I was shocked that no one wanted to help me—not even the people I’d helped.  

### What Happened  

In 2019, I got divorced. Almost all of my ex’s family and half our friends cut me off. I was banned from seeing my stepdaughter, who I’d helped raise for five years. I was working more, getting my master’s degree, and raising six kids I barely saw. I stopped enjoying school because I was so tired.  

Then the school messed up my loans—$10,500 short. I couldn’t pay rent. No one would help. So I quit school, and gave up my house, and lived in a tent with my kids while working DoorDash and making YouTube videos.  

As it got colder, I had to move into a hotel ($3,000 a month). My car broke down four times in a row. I missed payments, and it got repossessed. I had nowhere to go. My exes took the kids (which I agreed was best). I couch-hopped. My son let me borrow his car, and I slept in it all winter—that’s when I developed autoimmune diseases.  

I kept getting kicked out of places, even though I tried to contribute and stay out of the way. Eventually, I bought another car and got a studio, but I got sick, got screwed over by guys I was dating, missed work, and got evicted—same day my car was repossessed again.  

I stayed at my son’s until they asked me to leave. Then I got a job with housing at a national park, but because it was not what I wanted to be doing I had a lot of emotional break downs. And my ankle collapsed from standing too long. I got a sales job in Texas, but they shorted my pay and kicked me out. A friend in South Carolina got me a bus ticket there, then kicked me out on Christmas Eve. I took an emergency flight to Idaho got in an argument with my step dad and left a week later.  

I stayed with a friend for two months, had foot reconstruction surgery, then stayed with my mom. I got a job at a resort with housing but was fired the first day for not removing a piercing—even though their handbook allowed it.  

I went back to my mom’s and decided to bike across the country since I couldn’t find a place to stay. But four days into preparing, I was bedridden—my pituitary gland was half-crushed from autoimmune issues.  

All this time, I’d been trying to build a business, but my life was too chaotic to stay consistent.  

### What I Realized  

After watching that video, I saw the truth: I’d let resentment and bitterness grow in me. The ugliness of the world changed me, and I didn’t even realize it.  

Entitlement.  

I never would’ve thought I expected anything—but I did. Deep down, I believed that because I helped others, they should help me. Because I loved them, they should love me. Because I gave, I deserved to receive.  

But deserving implies earning. And earning often kills gratitude. I was angry, resentful, bitter inside, and really sad—proof that I felt entitled.  

I’d forgotten: Nothing is truly earned.  

From Job 1:21-22:  

> "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."  

I don't follow any particular religion but thats because of the short-sighted view of people. I read what is underneath the texts. 

Reality doesn't remain stable. It can come and go no matter what I do. And I was relying on the world external from me to behave how I expected it to be. 

I forgot that when I had been given much I too must give. Not because I earned much, I must give. 

I had to bring that gratitude all the way down to that root chakra, where I remember that I'm grateful for whatever health I have, whatever home I have, for my kids near or far, for whatever I have to eat, for any money I have. I didn't earn it. I'm not entitled to it. I'm grateful for it.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says:  

> "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."  

Everything is a gift.  

A hymn from my old Mormon days came back to me:  

> *"Because I have been given much, I too must give…  

> My glowing fire, my loaf of bread, my roof’s safe shelter overhead,  

> That he too may be comforted."*  

I don’t give because others deserve it. I give because I too was given anything I have.

And I can keep giving. 

By Sonya Herrera

✨🔥🏵️AWEnomALI🏵️🔥✨