The Power of Love

I received a mysterious e-mail the other day from a reader of my Heart Stones book named Jill.  She mentioned a miracle she wanted to relay to me.  I waited and waited and then finally received the story of her heart stones.  I include it here because it is inspiring and hopeful.  It also makes me realize the importance of opening up eyes and hearts to looking around us...really looking and paying attention. This can run the gamut from how we notice the stones at our feet, the hearts in our dogfood (a follow up e-mail informed me that Jill had just received her first "dogfood heart") to how we think and react to news or events. This is Jill's story:

 In the fall of 2009, an opportunity opened up for me to go to a new school and teach art again.  I was hired on a Friday and started that following Monday.  This school was a challenge for me.  I had only taught in a wealthy area before where the students had everything materialistic they could ask for and most came from happy healthy homes. My new school was low income, Title 1 school.  Many parents were in jail and education was not a priority to many.  Many of my students were homeless, living in shelters and 75% of the school was on free lunch.  I saw behavior I was not accustomed to.  What I learned was that these children needed love more than anything else. 

    I shared my collection of heart rocks with my students, telling them that there is love all over, all you have to do is look.  The next day, to my surprise my students began to bring me heart rocks.   They would pull them out of their pockets and backpacks and tell me  where they found them. Instead of keeping the rocks for themselves , they would give them to me.  Soon they came in in bags, buckets, old McDonalds wrappers, anything they could find to bring in the heart rocks.  This became an afterschool activity for them.

    On the last day of school, my student named Stormy, a little kindergarten girl, who was bald (mom shaved her head because she had lice) brought me the biggest heart rock ever.  My tiniest student brought me the biggest heart rock.  We painted it hot pink, and it now is in the collection outside of my art room door.

     The heart rocks continue to pour in everyday.  I put the children's name on the hearts and display them in the window sill.  Our count so far is 880 heart rocks.

My students have learned the act of giving.  It gives them something to do and something to hope for when times are tough for them. They have learned that a gift can be free and they don't need to "buy" anything at the store to make someone happy.  The joy in their faces is indescribable when they run to me with their new found heart rocks. They feel loved and special just holding a rock.

    This is a story about hope, inspiration, and miracles. 

What more need be said.

A hole can be so full...

Look closely!

A Florida Heart Stone from Gert Cote

"I placed it between two boulders in the hopes that when I return next year, it will be in the same spot waiting for me to again admire..."

Gert recounted a story a while ago that I carry around like a heart stone in my pocket..or maybe my bra:

"When clients come to have their nails done, we walk out through my garage and there are my stones, displayed on my husband's ladder and lined up on the floor. As we go out together, they are usually talking about how their life is going and most of the time, their spirit is hurting in some way, so I am moved to give them a stone. They cherish it.

Going to my local grocery store, just before Christmas, I happened to chat with the store manager who knew my sister who also worked at the same chain in a different town. Leaning on a stack of cans at the end of an aisle, she proceeded to tell me about the bad things that were going on in her life: divorce and cancer. My heart was feeling for her--we seemed to have a lot of common "dates" (one of them being my birthday). We hugged and I told her about my stones. I came home and rummaged through my collection and found the perfect one and quickly put it in my purse to give to her the next time we met up.

It was weeks later I saw her and gave her the stone. We hugged and things seemed to be going better for her. Weeks after that, I go in after an exercise class and there she was all bubbly and kept grabbing her breast. As I was thinking, "how strange is that," she pulls my stone from her bra and explains how it makes her feel safe and protected.

Now come on, who would have thought to stow it away in your bra? Anyway she could not carry her purse around the store so the bra was a safe haven!"

Thank you Gert. Remember to give someone a stone....who knows where it might end up!