Where are your shoes taking you?

She is standing in line just before me. In a small-town post office, the ancient lobby offers a respite from the searing heat. At once, I glance down, and I see her shoes. On her feet, she’s wearing bright red, low-top sneakers, Converse style. As I wait silently in line behind her, this is what comes to me. “I wonder where those shoes have taken her.”

Years ago, my husband and I would go out nightly to walk our three miles. In the sun’s dying light, we’d talk about the day. Passing two neighbors on the road, we’d stop and visit for a few pleasant moments before resuming our walk. Noting each house that we passed, this is what often came to me. “I wonder what lies hidden beneath each roof. What unseen battles are being fought by the souls who will sleep here tonight?”

The questions were a long time in coming. The genesis, I believe, was rooted in two things, the first being a request that I’d put to the Almighty years ago. “Ordain all of my appointments today.”

It sparked a transformational shift, for I began to see those around me with different eyes. No longer were they interruptions or happenstance encounters. I began to look—really look—at who was in front of me, behind me, beside me, or passing by, and I began to inquire as to their stories.

Everyone, I found, had one. They all had stories, and they would tell them to me as they looked into my smiling face. The key to their hearts and their stories? It was kindness.

The other factor that brought the transformation was having a son in crisis. Long-term pain can work deep-down good, and that’s what his journey did for me. Pain tenderized me towards others who were suffering. I could look around a room and pick out the one who needed to be seen and acknowledged. And again, that maternal kindness opened the doors.

As I practiced relentless kindness in spite of my own trials, my beating heart only kept expanding as I saw the precious souls around me. People like the Amish girl reading her Bible at the coffee shop. The woman at the train station, terribly sick, who’d just been abandoned. The young African American father, working the counter at Subway while taking college classes. They had been there all along, but I was finally seeing them, talking to them, and encouraging them. At times, I chose to remain silent and watchful, simply murmuring a prayer.

“Kindness,” said Charles Glassman, “begins with the understanding that we all struggle.”

Keeping this truth at the forefront of your mind can revolutionize the way you see and relate to others. It will foster patience as you consider the hidden story of another human being. It can also help you not to take it personally when someone else is short or rude.

But back, now, to those bright red shoes and the question they sparked. “I wonder where those shoes have taken her?”

Weeks ago, I told the story of Baby M, our great-niece who spent weeks on life support before slipping away to heaven. Seeing the shoes of a stranger reminded me of our niece whose shoes took her into a NICU; took her into a waiting room as Baby was in the operating theater. Whose shoes took her, finally, into a church where they gave thanks for her life and wept tears for her death.

That niece of ours needs oceans of kindness. Her husband does, too, as they walk this rocky path of grief.

This week, a new widow’s shoes carried her into our office. She told us how just before her husband died suddenly, she’d looked over at him as he sat in his recliner and said this: “I don’t know what I would do without you.” A day later, he was gone.

“I’m so glad I told him that,” she said. She, too, needs the healing balm of kindness as she navigates life without him.

This week, I received a message from another mother. “I have a child in crisis. If you have time, can we talk, or can you at least pray with me?” Parenting a struggling kid is hard. Kindness from someone who’s worn the same shoes will help her a lot. She’ll remember that she’s not alone and that others have made it through. She’ll find courage to keep on walking.

Recently, my second son told me a story. He was working his route when he came across a homeless man. “I asked him if he was hungry, and he said ‘yes.’ I got him some lunch and a Gatorade.” He said that seeing him there on the street reminded him of his brother who was once homeless and hungry on the streets. That day, his working man’s shoes brought him to a human in need, and his heart was moved with compassion.

The people we meet in our everyday lives do not come with handwritten signs that tell us how they struggle. No, “Loss! Grief! Loneliness!” Their struggles usually remain hidden to the naked eye. Yet the discerning eye will know which ones need extra kindness.

It was love in shoe leather that led my son to a hungry man. It is love in shoe leather (ours) that carries hope to the hopeless, courage to those without, and comfort to the brokenhearted. We cannot do everything, but we can do something. By practicing relentless kindness, I believe that we shall find a lightness and a greater ease on the path that we ourselves are walking.

Now, tell me, friend. Where are your shoes taking you?