“Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.” ~Bruce Barton

We had to bid farewell to a friend a couple of weeks ago. Rita Scheu was a kind lady, a good neighbor, a loving mom and wife. She bravely battled breast cancer for several years before it spread beyond the point of healing.

Rita’s doctor recommended that she go to hospice last November, but she wanted to have one last Christmas at home with her family. She told no one of the doctor’s suggestion, and had her beautiful holiday at home. Three weeks later, she was gone.

I hate that I didn’t know her better.

It’s always interesting to hear how people are eulogized. It seemed that everyone at the memorial service had similar things to say about Rita: she was a loyal friend and a loving mother. She always reached out to people with a smile, and remained positive even when she was in great pain.

A young teen stood up, sobbing as he talked about how Rita spent time with him and helped him through a difficult family situation. Many mentioned the food she made for them, how she loved trying new recipes and how everything she made was delicious.

She began making soap as a way to heal her daughter’s skin problems. This little act of motherly love grew into her writing a book on the process and hosting a Yahoo group of over 1700 members worldwide. People all over the world are benefitting from the healing properties of her soap because she freely shared her knowledge with them.

Rita’s eulogy was a beautiful patchwork of simply patterned squares. She didn’t do anything particularly extravagant in her short lifetime. She didn’t amass great riches or rule a nation. She just lived a simple life of helping others, of being God’s hands of blessing to the people who crossed her path.

So many of us who live equally simple lives get so burdened in our day-to-day activities; we wonder if anything we do truly counts in the grand scheme of life. We rarely stop to ponder how the chores we do or the words we say impact those closest to us. Life feels like a mundane repetition of what we did yesterday, and the day before and the years before that. It can feel like a cycle that we’ll be repeating forever, a thankless repeating of the same actions, words and deeds.

Sometimes I feel exactly like a fat little hamster running on an exercise wheel, with no idea how to stop it or how to hop off.

And the world will tell us that what we’re doing doesn’t really matter. If you ask a woman what she does, if she works outside the home she usually mentions that job first. If you ask an at-home mom what she does, she usually says, “Oh, I’m just a mom” or uses some other phrase that diminishes the importance of her daily life.

I walked out of my church after Rita’s memorial service thinking about how it’s the little things that are now her legacy. Even if she had been rich in the ways the world defines wealth, at the end of the day, at the end of a life, what matters to people—and what they remember most—are the little acts of kindness.

It matters when you look your children in the eye and truly listen while they talk to you. It matters that you take the time to cook for a new mother or an elderly neighbor, or make your husband’s favorite meal once a week. It matters when you stop folding laundry long enough to throw a Frisbee with your kids, or play along on a video game when there are a thousand other things to do. It matters when you pause to call a hurting friend, or send an encouraging email.

It matters.

How beautiful it was to go to Rita’s service and see someone remembered simply for her love. Indeed, that is no small thing.