Below are some thoughts I found one day when trying to find some inspiration for a daily attitude email.

Two things to remember:

Don’t be embarrassed to share a positive thought about someone. Don’t let your own insecurities stand in the way of telling someone something that may just brighten their day.

Second, tell them now. Don’t hesitate. Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Tell them now.

Make it a great week this week.

Jake

A lady who is a good many years older than I tells me often of the aunt who was a mother to her throughout her childhood. ‘Auntie’ impressed her with the need to tell the truth–the welcome kind–and she would add emphatically, ‘Tell them now.’

My friend calls me on the telephone–sometimes to thank me for a note or a little gift, sometimes to tell me what my friendship means to her. ‘You remember what Auntie always said,’ she will say, ‘’so, I’m telling you now.’ There would be no way for me to exaggerate how she has cheered and helped me.

I was talking with a lady who had been a missionary for forty years, and I noticed that she had exceptionally lovely hands. ‘Has anyone ever told you your hands are beautiful?’ I asked. The dear soul was so flustered one might have thought I had committed an indecency. She looked at her hands in amazement. ‘Why . . . why no. I don’t think anyone ever has!’’ But she saw that I meant it, and she had the grace to hear the truth. She said thank you.

‘Tell it like it is,’ is the watchword today. But suppose it’s lovely? Suppose it’s actually beautiful? C. S. Lewis said that the most fatal of all nonconductors is embarrassment. It seems to me that life is all too short to let embarrassment deprive us and our friends of the pleasure of telling the happy truth.

Suppose the boy who does your lawn does it fast, trims it perfectly, and takes care of the tools? Suppose the clerk who waits on you happens to be the most gracious one you’ve ever encountered? Suppose even that your husband–when you stop for once to look at him, to think about him as a person and as a man–seems to you to be the best man you know? Tell them. Tell them now.”