Brighten up someone’s life

By Jeff Becraft

 

(Someone once told me they end their week and start their weekend with the Friday email. Well… maybe on this one, you can end your weekend and start your week.)

I have not watered the side yard of our house on the left side for all of 2025. And you can tell. It is all brown and crusty looking (the grass that is). Most of the side yard has a ground cover growing in it but there is a narrow strip of grass that I am trying to get to grow there as well.

Last Wednesday evening, I decided it was time to get into the game.

I pull the sprinkler out on the side yard and turn the water on. After about 10 minutes, I go back out there just to check on how things are going and I hear this noise. Now, I have not used this sprinkler for six months and so I am wondering, “Is the sprinkler squeaking?” I couldn’t tell. “Is that a bird? What is that noise?” The more I listened, the more it sounded like a cat. But I didn’t see a cat anywhere.

So I turned the sprinkler off. I don’t hear any noise. And then I walk down the side yard some… and I hear the noise again. So, it is obviously not the sprinkler.

I began thinking, “That sounds an awful lot like a cat.” I didn’t know if I was hearing things.

And then I saw some rustling of some leaves in this ground cover that we have growing on our side yard. The next thing I know, I see this little black head stick out from the leaves.

It is a young kitten. A very young kitten.

I stick my head inside the back door and call out to Brenda and let her know that we have a kitten on the side yard.

I go back outside and bend down and start calling the cat to me. He comes out from his hiding and slowly comes over to me and I pick him up. At this point, Brenda comes out and I hand the kitten to her. Right away, he liked Brenda the best (which is true of every animal we have ever had). Brenda then starts going from door to door around our neighborhood, seeing if this cat belongs to anybody… but no go. No one said the cat was theirs.

So we had this stray kitten on our hands. We go next door to our neighbors (who have cats) and they let us borrow some cat food. (We already had some cat litter… not for cats… for if you car gets stuck on snow or ice, you can put it down and it gives you some traction. Well, if you live in central South Carolina, you know how often you need that… that’s why we still had some of it on hand.)

We get Pearl’s old crate (Pearl was one of our dogs we used to have) and we set up base camp for the cat in the kitchen. Inside the crate, it’s got food, it’s got a water bowl, it’s got a litter box… and Brenda went and got a towel, folded it up so it’s a nice, neat little bed, and put a little stuffed teddy bear in there. After some meowing and whatnot, the cat seemed to be fairly content.

Brenda wasn’t feeling well, and so I didn’t want the cat to disturb her. But also… this little kitten (and it was a very young kitten) had been alone out in our neighborhood. And then it had been alone on our side yard… hiding. I just didn’t like the idea that this young kitten was going to go through the night… alone. And so I set up base camp right next to the crate on the kitchen floor with some cushion from the porch swing and a sleeping bag… and spent the night with the cat that I now call Junior.

There are a lot of lonely people in the world.

Loneliness is extremely difficult thing. I don’t have any scientific evidence, but I think probably more people die from loneliness than anything else.

It causes people to feel unloved, to feel un-valuable, unneeded, unimportant. It can cause people to make horrible choices to try and correct the matter, which only leads to further complications and a further downward spiral.

One of the top 20 books in my life is a book titled, Loneliness, by Elisabeth Elliot (who is one of my favorite authors). She had been a widow twice in her life and she openly deals with the emotions of the loneliness that can come on you at any moment… but she also points people to understand the bigger picture.

I heard a song this week on the radio that I have never heard before in my life. It sounded like something from some old movie or something. It was a really cheery and peppy song, and I can’t remember any of the words, but the theme of it was basically “brighten up the lives of those you come in contact with.” I wish I could have found out what the title was.

For some people, we may not even know that they are lonely; they may just look distant or discontent or even look happy… but inside they are lonely… and it wears on their soul.

As we go through this day, and any day, we can brighten up people’s lives simply by a smile, a hello, simply seeing that they are there and that we recognize them as a person and treat them as a person.

So today is a great day to brighten up someone’s life and let them know they are not alone!

 

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].