A mom and her three children took the wrong bus and ended up lost. She realized she couldn’t buy her children food until a low voice startled her, offering much-needed assistance.
Julia had no choice but to raise her three growing children alone after her husband left her. He had been cheating on her with her best friend, and once she found out about their love triangle, he left her and stopped supporting their children.
At the time, Julia was devastated. She thought her life was ruined. She suffered from major trust issues after being betrayed not just by her husband but also her best friend.
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“You have to pull yourself together, Julia. You have three children you need to raise. You can’t be sulking at home because of what they did to you. Use it as motivation to do better,” her mom said after seeing Julia crying in the bathroom.
Julia looked at her children and knew that her mom was right. She had to look after her kids and make sure they lived comfortable lives, even if it meant working two jobs to earn enough money.
Julia’s mom, Lisa, happily volunteered to care for the three kids while she was at work. She had two jobs, working a total of 14 hours a day.
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Every day, she would start working at six in the evening, working as a waiter. Then from one in the morning until eight, she would work as a housekeeper at an inn.
By the time she got home, she had about three hours until her children woke up. She’d use this time to sleep before waking up alongside her kids to play with them and clean the house.
Julia’s work schedule exhausted her, especially because she didn’t get enough sleep every day. This lack of sleep often caused her to be scatter-brained, unable to remember the simplest things.
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One weekend morning, Julia had to take her kids to the hospital for their vaccinations. On their way home, Julia accidentally mixed up the bus routes, and they ended up in a place in town they’d never been.
Unfortunately, it would take another hour before another bus came around. She bought tickets at the bus stop and they quietly sat there until her kids began to cry, yelling that they were hungry.
Julia walked to a nearby burger stand, where she ordered four burgers. When she was about to pay, she frantically searched for her wallet inside her bag, only to look up at the sky, defeated.
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“My wallet was right here,” she cried. “I just purchased our bus tickets!” She looked through her bag again.
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” the man who took her order said. “This part of town is notorious for pick-pockets.”
Julia looked at her kids, ashamed that she couldn’t buy them food. She apologized to them and told them they’d have to wait an hour before they could eat, only for them to cry even louder. “Mom, I haven’t eaten the whole day!” her daughter whined. “I’m so hungry!”
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At that moment, Julia was at her breaking point. Her eyes started to fill with tears. Suddenly, she heard a low voice say, “No worries.”
She looked up and saw the man from the burger stand taking out his wallet. He paid for the burgers, packed a bag for Julia, and handed it to her.
“Please, take this. It’s on the house,” he told her.
Julia looked at the man in shock. Tears started to stream down her face, and she thanked the man numerous times. “Thank you so much; you have no idea how much this means to me,” she told him. “Can I please ask for your number? I want to pay you back once I can get some money.”
The man shook his head. “It’s no big deal, and it’s a simple act of kindness I’d like to do for you.”
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Ever since that day, Julia always made sure to help someone out whenever she had the chance. After working two jobs for a few more years, she earned enough money to start her own business. She created a mobile app that allowed users to book different services, from housekeepers to nail technicians, laundry shops, car cleaners, and more.
One day, while in a business meeting, Julia came across the man who helped her several years back.
“You’re the guy from the burger stand,” she said. He smiled, recognizing her as well.
“You’re the mom with three crying children,” he recalled. “How have you been?”
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That conversation ended up being life-changing for both of them. Julia insisted on treating the man, who introduced himself as Jacob, to dinner. It was her way of paying him back.
She discovered Jacob was looking for a job and she decided to hire him as her executive secretary. He went with her to all her meetings and helped her grow her business.
Eventually, after spending so much time together and getting to know each other more, they fell in love. They married, and Jacob adopted Julia’s three children, loving them as his own.
What can we learn from this story?
- If you’re in the position to help someone, do it. The man felt terrible that Julia couldn’t feed her children when they were hungry, so he stepped in to help her. When you’re capable of helping someone in need, do it without expecting anything in return, as it could save that person from reaching their breaking point.
- What goes around comes around. After receiving an act of kindness, Julia paid it forward. Eventually, she came across the man who helped her again, this time in the position to help. This led to a beautiful working and personal relationship between them.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.
If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a beggar who gave half of his pizza to a hungry rich man, only for the man to give half his business to the beggar later on.
This piece is inspired by stories from the everyday lives of our readers and written by a professional writer. Any resemblance to actual names or locations is purely coincidental. All images are for illustration purposes only. Share your story with us; maybe it will change someone’s life.
My Daughter’s Landlord Schemed Against Her to Evict and Hike the Rent – We Outsmarted Him with a Clever Lesson
“And he has given me two days to move out,” she continued.
I was fuming. My daughter had transformed that backyard from a barren plot into a blooming oasis. She poured her heart into every plant, every flower, and every single vegetable.
She had always been like this. Lily wasn’t the type of child to sit inside and play with her toys. She preferred to stay outside and get her hands dirty, trying to discover how things grew.
“This is so much fun, Dad,” she told me one day when I was mowing the lawn and little Lily was planting flowers.
“There’s a few worms there,” she said, pointing. “But I still planted the seedlings anyway.”
Her mother hated it. She wanted Lily to have freshly pressed clothing, clean nails, and hair that stayed in place.
“You need to stop enabling this behavior, Jason,” my wife, Jenna, would say. “Encourage her to be a little lady.”
“Not a chance, Jenna,” I would always say. “Let this sweet girl just be herself.”
Now, after everything Lily had done to make her garden her own space, all I wanted to do was try and save her hard work.
“Don’t worry, honey,” I said, a plan already forming in my mind.
“How, Dad?” she asked.
“Because we’ll sort this out. And we’ll do it together.”
The next evening, I showed up at Lily’s place with my truck and a few friends. We were armed with flashlights and a healthy dose of righteous anger.
“Right, guys,” I said. “We’re going to do this for my daughter. We’re going to teach Jack a lesson. That as a landlord, you cannot go around and take advantage of young women.”
We meticulously dismantled the entire backyard haven that Lily put together.
“Dad?” Lily asked when she realized that we were there. “What’s going on?”
“Hi, darling,” I said. “We’re going to teach your landlord a lesson. He cannot do this. So, we’re going to take everything apart. I’ll take your plants home, too.”
Lily yawned and stretched.
“I’ll leave you to it, Dad,” she said. “I’m going to rest for a little bit and then get back to packing up the place when the sun comes up. I’m going to stay with Nolan until I find a place. He’ll be here with more boxes soon.”
“Go on,” I said. “We’ll be quiet, I promise.”
As we worked, every lovingly tended plant, every painstakingly built bed, vanished. By the time we were done, the once-flourishing garden was reduced to a desolate patch of dirt, a stark contrast to the lush photos Jack, the landlord, had already posted for the new listing.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “You can leave. I’ll just help Lily pack. I’ll pick up my truck later, Malcolm.”
I wasn’t done. There was still more work to be done.
Inside the house, we rearranged the furniture to highlight all the faults.
The cracks in the walls were not hidden by Lily’s art pieces. The missing tiles were left out in the open without any kitchen appliances to cover them up.
“Nothing can be done about the ceiling mold in the bathroom,” Lily told me. “But I have been telling the landlord that we needed to sort it out.”
We replaced all the light bulbs with very bright blue-white ones, making the entire place look stark and uninviting.
As we worked, Lily and I talked about her time in the house.
“I remember when I first moved in,” she said, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “The backyard was just dirt and concrete. And I didn’t think that anything could grow here. But eventually it did. And every time I felt homesick, I would come out here and plant something new or tend to whatever was growing.”
“And you made it happen,” I replied, smiling. “You turned it into a paradise.”
She sighed.
“It just feels so unfair. I did everything right, and he still found a way to ruin it all.”
“We’re not going to let him win,” I assured her. “This is just a setback. You’ve got a new adventure waiting for you. Nolan’s place is a good stop for now, but I know that he’s serious about you. Maybe a new house together is going to be the next step.”
I left my daughter’s place feeling confident that her landlord would get a really good wake-up call the next day.
“Dad, can you come over?” Lily asked me on the phone early that morning. “Please be here when I have to hand over the keys to Jack.”
“I’ll be there soon,” I said, buttering my slice of toast.
Lily had me packing her shoes into a box when Jack stormed in, livid.
“What the hell, Lily?” he demanded. “Where are the plants? The flowers? The pictures online clearly show what this place is supposed to look like!”
He sighed deeply, his face turning the color of a particularly overripe tomato.
Lily, the picture of innocence, blinked at him.
“What plants, Jack?” she asked. “The backyard has always looked like this, haven’t you noticed?”
She gestured toward the desolate patch, a sly smile playing on her lips.
Jack, caught red-handed with his deceitful plan, spluttered some incoherent threats about property damage. I stepped in, pointing at the exposed faults.
“You want to talk about damage?” I said, my voice cold.
“Let’s discuss the cracks in the walls, the missing tiles, and the mold in the bathroom. You can see everything clearly now, can’t you?”
Jack’s eyes widened as he looked into the bathroom.
“This is clearly sabotage!” he yelled.
“No,” I replied, pulling out the photos I’d taken when Lily moved in.
“This is exactly how the place was when she moved in. If anything, it’s tidier now. Nothing is missing, Jack.”
Jack tried to regain his composure, but the three couples who came for the viewing that afternoon saw the house in its raw, unappealing state. They all left without putting in an application.
Meanwhile, after a few months, Lily found a new place with a landlord who appreciated her green thumb, not just the potential for profit. As my daughter settled into her new home, I couldn’t help but feel proud.
Lily and I sat on her new porch, looking out at the spacious yard that would soon become her next gardening project.
“Dad, I can’t thank you enough,” she said, her eyes bright with relief and excitement. “I was so scared, but you knew exactly what to do.”
I smiled, squeezing her hand as we swung on the porch swing. “You did the hard part, kiddo. You stood up to him. And now, you’ve got a fresh start.”
What would you have done?
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