Before Karen and I were married, I lived in a rural part of Appalachia. It was the third poorest county in the nation. The church provided a parsonage, a place for the pastor to live. There were two sets of stairs in the home. One set led to the spooky and dark basement. The other set went upstairs. At night the house would creak. Sometimes at night, it sounded like someone was walking up or down the stairs. Then, what made matters worse, off in the distance a dog howled like a wolf. I don’t mind telling you that sometimes I moved the dresser in front of the door and kept the bedroom light on.

After we were married and Karen moved in, the house did not seem as scary. We gradually got use to the creaking and noises of the stairs. However, when people came to spend the night with us, they thought the house was eerie. When Karen’s eight year old brother, Bobby, came to visit, he was afraid to sleep in the other bedroom. We made him a pallet next to our bed with the night stand above his head.

I was sleeping on my back while Karen was lying on her side with her face next to my ear. About four in the morning, she had a nightmare that someone was kidnapping her brother, Bobby. She screamed, "Bobby!" in my ear! Thinking there was someone in the room, I could not wake up fast enough. My head felt like it was about to explode. Bobby jerked up from the pallet and in so doing knocked the night stand over. It fell on him. Thinking that someone had him, he started screaming. After managing to pull myself out of the bed, I lifted the night stand off Bobby. We both walked around the room, hearts pounding in our necks and holding our heads.  

"What happened?" Asked Bobby.

I said, "The way Karen screamed, I thought someone was in our bedroom." Then I realized that Karen hadn’t said anything. Bobby and I turned and looked at the bed. There was Karen sound asleep as though nothing had happened. She had no idea of the havoc she had caused. That night I learned a great truth: "Sometimes we have an impact on others and aren’t even aware of it."
This truth was illustrated again when I was leading a growth group in our church. I asked the group to name five people who had made an impact on their lives and what they did to make that impact. The ways the people impacted their lives were not newsworthy, but they were what each person needed at that time in their lives. Then I asked if those people knew that they had made that impact. 

The answer was, "no."

Sometimes we have an impact on others and aren’t even aware of it.