How a stranger taught me a lesson in gratitude!

A while back I stopped in at a Walgreens to pick up some pictures I had ordered. Upon entering the store, the first thing I noticed was a young girl working the cash register. She appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, and what caught my eye was that she was bald. For the most part when I see a woman with no hair, I tend to think...."cancer" however this day I remember thinking that it was anybodies guess, because these days some girls might just do that for attention or on a dare etc. so of course I couldn't be sure.

When I arrived at the store, I guess you could say I was in a mood, it was a hot day and I was in a hurry and the air conditioner had recently gone out in my car which made going anywhere I had to go a fairly miserable experience. I walked to the photo counter and waited a good while but no one showed up to assist me so I went back and asked the girl at the front if she could call someone to the photo counter for me, but she apparently didn't have a lot of help, she asked me if I could wait a moment and then after helping another customer she came and retrieved my pictures herself, and then met me back at the register.

As she was ringing me up, the cashier looked outside and said "I sure wish some of that breeze would find it's way in here". I....... being in the mood I was in, responded by saying" yeah it's a nice breeze but it's still hot" and then I proceeded to complain about how the air had gone out in my car and how miserable it was. That is when this total stranger completely changed my prospective on so many things. She said "Well at least you have a car to drive". I kind of looked at her wondering what exactly she was getting at when she said: "I'm sure you have figured out my story from looking at me, but anyway I have cancer and because of the chemo treatments etc. they took my license away and I'm not allowed to drive." She then said " and now I can't even get my treatments for a while because someone has stolen my identity, and they are working on it and have narrowed it down as far as who was involved they think, but until it all get's cleared up my treatments are on hold for a while." I'm sure she also said a few other things, but I can't remember offhand what they were now, because my mind was going in a thousand directions by this point. I wished her "the best of luck" and said I hoped everything got straightened out very soon with her insurance so she could continue her treatments and with that I left.

I left that store a different person than I was when I got there. Here I was complaining about the heat and about having to drive without air conditioning, and here was a young girl who has barely had a chance to live, and she is battling cancer! She can't drive she has lost that privilege not long after finally being of age to get it, she has lost her hair, has endured the very harsh side affects of chemo and radiation treatments, and those treatments as bittersweet as they are, are also the one thing offering her hope and a chance at a cancer free life and now she has lost those too temporarily due to a thief! Yet here this girl is.....working, smiling, making conversation, but most importantly teaching! She taught me a lesson that day I will never forget!

That day I learned a lesson about how precious life is. I learned how very much I take for granted, and how much I have to be grateful for in my life. I learned how petty my complaints must have sounded and in fact were to a person facing what this girl was facing. I learned to appreciate the small things like a breeze blowing on a hot day, when you have been perhaps stuck indoors for too long etc. Mostly I learned that everyone is fighting there own battles, some much much worse than I have ever imagined, much less been unfortunate enough to have had to deal with. I will be forever thankful to this stranger for teaching me these and so many other lessons that I so needed to learn. She gave me a much needed wake up call, and although I thought about a lot of things on my ride home that day, the temperature outside or in the car was not one of them!