{"id":5726,"date":"2014-05-31T15:32:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T15:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5726"},"modified":"2014-05-31T15:32:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T15:32:29","slug":"flames-bring-out-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5726","title":{"rendered":"Flames bring out kindness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>A gentleman and I crossed paths this week.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s 82 years old. He lives in Fritch. At least he <em>lived<\/em> in Fritch until a few days ago, when fire destroyed his home near (what&#8217;s left of) Lake Meredith.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t get his name. We talked for some time at the car dealership where I work part time. He and his wife have moved for the time being to their daughter&#8217;s home in Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t yet know what he&#8217;s going to do, whether to rebuild at the site of his now-burned-out home or move somewhere else permanently. He said the fire took everything, except his motor vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>This gentleman appears to be a man of great faith. As we spoke, he kept talking about how Scripture has helped guide him through the heartache, how God doesn&#8217;t give his children more than they can handle. This fine gentleman is quite sure he&#8217;ll get through his crisis.<\/p>\n<p>He talked some more about the incredible strength that the victims of the wildfire have exhibited.<\/p>\n<p>This fellow also talked about the equally incredible random acts of kindness others are showing daily to help these victims.<\/p>\n<p>My acquaintance held up pretty well as we spoke. He didn&#8217;t get emotional until he told me of someone who handed him $100 as he was sharing with friends and others about the difficulties that so many folks are enduring.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if I can get through this,&#8221; he said as he told the story of the unexpected gift.<\/p>\n<p>He did, more or less, get through it. He finished telling his story and he concluded it by telling me something I already knew: Most folks are inherently kind and compassionate when they witness their neighbors endure such struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Such kindness is the single most important positive result of this recent round of tragedy.<\/p>\n<p>My heart breaks for this man&#8217;s suffering. It&#8217;s also filled with joy at the kindness he has received.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A gentleman and I crossed paths this week. He&#8217;s 82 years old. He lives in Fritch. At least he lived in Fritch until a few days ago, when fire destroyed his home near (what&#8217;s left of) Lake Meredith. I didn&#8217;t get his name. We talked for some time at the car dealership where I work &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5726\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Flames bring out kindness<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1826,2718,4609],"class_list":["post-5726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fritch-fires","tag-lake-meredith","tag-texas-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}