We are all put in a place in the world for some unknown reason. We are sometimes just stuck in a rut, or maybe even just hurried by our everyday lives that well, we just move along with the flow and do what we do! Today was a busy day for my family from the start, I knew that things really just needed to stay on track for the morning, or nothing would work out right. I wasn’t in a bad mood, I was just hurried. When you get like this, do you think about other people, or do you just get on with your day? I’m sad to say, this was a day, that I just wanted to get the show on the road.
With a 7AM wake up ring (alarm clock) I start my morning! I go get our son up and ready for school, my husband was home! No, he was not playing hookie, OUR VA STREAMLINE REFI was scheduled for 10AM!!!! Off for the normal routine in the morning (as normal as it can be with a 5th person in the house to get ready in the morning) then to school, we then decided to take the girls out to breakfast!
We stopped at our favorite breakfast place (it was 1/2 to the title company) we were sat almost immediately! The server came and took our order, and a few minutes later one of the other servers came and leaned into our table. With a HUGE smile on her face she says “one of our customers has chosen to pay for your meals today, and it is anonymous so don’t ask, they just wanted you to enjoy, and to tell you Thank you for serving!” We smiled and thanked her, and asked if they were still there? She said it was anonymous!
Of course my husband and I then had to talk about it, and how nice that was. My husband tries not to normally wear his uniform out when we are on personal runs, but today was the exception because of everything we were doing in such a short time period. This gesture of GRATITUDE was so unexpected. As we were eating this lady and her what I am going to assume husband was sitting at the corner booth and kept smiling at me. Our little girls being there, I just assumed she kept smiling at one of them. The couple left, and had been gone for a bit, when the other server came back and leaned into me with her hand on my shoulder. “They were some of our regular customers and they like to remain anonymous, but it was the couple that sat there in the corner that paid for your meal.” Then as we were finishing our server came and told us that whenever we were ready, we could leave that our entire bill had been taken care of.
We were so not expecting the entire bill, we just thought that it would be my husbands. What a nice gesture, tears began to surface. This was obviously a couple who appreciate everything that the armed services do for our country. It really was not about my husband, or even about our family. It was about EVERYONE in the military, in every branch, it was about that couple letting us know that we are ALL appreciated (we even the families).
Our day did not end with that, we then went on to the title company to complete our VA Streamline. Upon leaving the office and passing through the office building…. A man was walking out the front doors, I yelled out to my girls “don’t go out there”, and he stopped, and looked at us. He stopped completely where he was and turned all the way around to look at my husband. “Thank you for serving our country”.
I think often times we are all hurried, and take advantage of life, even though we live the life of deployments and separations, long hours or whatever it is. We hear people sometimes say… thank you… but it is often more out of habit than sincere gratitude, I think they mean it don’t get me wrong. When these people at breakfast said they wanted to remain nameless, that was not necessarily a “hey lets notice me for thanking you in front of everyone” type of moment (even though we would have LOVED to thank them), and the guy in the hallway, to actually stop in his hurried way to look my husband in the eye to say “thank you for serving”. These people stopped in their moment to give our county thanks! They showed GRATITUDE on the spot for all of our Military! I guess even I should sit back a lot more often and let others know how truly thankful I am!
I just wanted to take time today, right now, to share with you all, the thanks that we received on ALL military families behalf! Thank you everyone for everything that you have done, and will do in supporting this great country that we live in and call home!
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