pay it forward?

The neatest thing happened to us Monday during lunch. Troy and I both happened to be off for the holiday so we took Emma to the zoo. We spent most of the morning there and left right about lunch time. Emma fell asleep in the car almost immediately and stayed asleep in my arms when we arrived at Panera for lunch. As Troy ordered I found a table and sat down while holding my sleeping baby. Troy brought the pager to the table and went to get our drinks while I took a phone call. As I was talking on the phone waiting for Troy to come back with our drinks the buzzer went off indicating our food was ready. A nice lady across the way from our table came to me and asked if she would like for her to get our order. I told her thank you and declined, relaying that my husband was already up at the food counter. As I carried on with my phone conversation I thought to myself that it was a nice, yet rare, gesture for a stranger to offer help a mother holding her sleeping child. When Troy came back with our order I shared with him how the lady had offered to get our order. About 10 minutes later the same lady came back to our table and asked Troy if he was in the service. He replied "yes ma'am, I am in the army reserves." She thanked him for his service to our country and handed him a gift card saying "Next time you have lunch here, it's on me." We obviously said thank you right away, but her gesture was the subject of our conversation for some time after she left.

We're still not sure what compelled this nice lady to purchase a gift card for Troy, but all week we've held on her to her kindness. Wouldn't the world be such a nicer place to live if we all did one nice gesture each day; with no strings attached. We haven't used the gift card, and most likely won't. We've been discussing how we can pass it on to touch someone's life real soon.