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Last year a group of my friends and I read this book and were so inspired that each of us started saving our coins…. All year we kept our eye out for someone within our community that we could bless.

We really wanted the jar to go to a stranger so that this act couldn’t lead back to us in any way but living in such a small town, that was proving to be difficult. We felt that it being anonymous was very important, we didn’t want recognition or thanks, that defeats the entire purpose of giving selflessly.

Finally, one of us heard a story of a woman who just got diagnosed with uterine cancer. This woman was going to have to have a hysterectomy, their house was being foreclosed on and her teen daughter was pregnant.

It seemed that life just kept hitting her with one thing after another. She is also known in our community as someone who helps others and is always putting people before herself.

We found out where she lived (benefits of a small community) and went to deliver the jar. At first we set it at the end of her walkway, banged on the side of her house and made a run for it. We waited a minute and then drove around the block to make sure it had been picked up…It was a VERY stormy night and we didn’t want the jar to fill with water or get stolen.

This woman had a huge septic truck parked in front of her house so I parked on the opposite side of it and turned off all of my lights. It was dark out so this would make it so she couldn’t see that someone was there but we could peak between the cab of the truck and the septic tank and watch her.

We sent one of the girls back down to the jar to move it in front of the door and knock. She did good, almost losing her flip flop in the mad dash back to the car, but she was safely inside before a man came to the door and found the jar. I don’t think he knew what it was because we had left a copy of the book along with the jar and he picked it up, looked at it and then tossed it to the floor and tried to pick up the jar. The jar was way heavy and felt like it was filled with cement so when he couldn’t lift the jar he went back into the house and closed the door, obviously not knowing it was money and thinking it was some prank by a neighbor kid.

Then the woman came out and found the book. She looked around very confused and then went to pick up the jar. You could see when she realized what it was because she looked shocked and even more confused, looking everywhere for who could have left this. She had no idea why there was money on her porch or what exactly a Christmas Jar was. She started to walk down her walk way so we panic ed and sped away, not wanting her to see us.

The blessing of Facebook is that we were able to stalk her page and read what she had been writing about the jar. She posted asking what it was and thanking whoever did this profusely. She said she was crying and couldn’t believe it…That at first they didn’t know if they should call the cops or if it was someone wanting a donation…She couldn’t believe that it was really for her. reading through the posts and seeing how touched she was is all the thanks we could ever want. So many people commented on her post, over 80 people in a few short hours, many of them saying they too wanted to now do a jar. Random Acts of Kindness really do spread like wildfire…One person does one thing and then other want to do good….it spreads and spreads, infecting everyone with happiness and the urge to pay it forward.

None of us have ever been so filled with laughter and joy. Blessing another person, giving so much money (over $300) to someone anonymously, was amazing and I plan to do it every year, I think we all do.