The real impact of kindness

Chrystal Evans Hurst is an author, speaker, and kindness advocate who shared her compelling story on a recent episode of Nicole Phillip’s The Kindness Podcast. Chrystal works to spread kindness through telling stories, listening to others, and helping them fulfill their dreams. By helping others share stories that have inspired her, she hopes others can experience the same kindness she did.

Chrystal’s book Divine Disruption was written about her family’s journey through losing their mother to cancer and the overwhelming sense of loss they faced during that two-year period. Each of her family members sat down and wrote their perspectives, expressing the same story with different thoughts, feelings, and angles.

While this narrative might have felt overwhelming for one person to document on their own, the Evans family came together to share their feelings and emotions, processing with one another through writing. After finishing this cumulative process, they all sat down and read the book, creating an audio version in the voices of those who wrote it.

Chrystal shares the story of her mother’s ministry supporting her father as he pastored their church. This behind-the-scenes mission wasn’t visible to most, but it made a difference in the lives of many. This family chose to spread their mother’s story of faithfulness and share her life’s work and their personal faith instead of questioning God’s plan.

After Nicole, host of The Kindness Podcast, talked about their courage and grace in sharing this story, she asked Chrystal, “Why faith?”

Chrystal’s response echoed the reality of John 6:68–69, which reads: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God” (NIV).

Chrystal responded, “The whole point of faith is hope, and the whole point of hope is to believe that there is something good at the end of a string of things that are not so good.”

The purpose of life is found in Christ. No matter how far you “make it” in life, there will always be a feeling of emptiness. Chrystal points to the reality that “everything planted has an eternal benefit if you believe.”

Faith is a choice—and it is not always an easy one—but it’s a choice that Christians need to keep making. What greater kindness is there than sharing the hope of eternal life with those who are lost?

But there’s another part of Chrystal’s story too. Her journey of kindness reaches back to much earlier in her life. At 19 years old, Chrystal was wrestling with the harsh reality of teen motherhood. From that experience, and the 10 years that she struggled through life as a single parent, she developed a passion for ministering to women and girls.

Chrystal bluntly states that teenagers often make dumb choices. Their parents might warn against those choices, but their voices can get lost. She works to be a second or third voice in teens’ lives, warning and encouraging them in a different tone. By offering variety and stating things in a new way, she hopes to reach these young women. Instead of turning their parents’ voices into background music, Chrystal helps these teens hear parents’ warnings in a new way.

Instead of always telling teens no, she finds ways to encourage them to celebrate the yeses that they have through Christ. Nicole reminds us that God wants what is best for us, so in following Him, we are following the best plan for our lives.

One of the recent ways that Chrystal is sharing kindness is by giving the gift of listening to and acting on the desires of others.

Her pastor’s executive assistant, who is also one of Chrystal’s friends, had always joked that she should write a book about her experience working alongside the pastor in ministry. She had even given a recent talk about this experience but hadn’t bothered to write it down.

Chrystal took her friend’s dreams and worked to help make them a reality. She took the recording of that talk and had her assistant transcribe and edit it. She then gifted her friend personal coaching sessions with her writing coach to help her write an outline for the book.

This gift was an overwhelming act of kindness, but it was more than just an act. By working to make her friend’s dreams a reality, she found a way to express how much she cared.

We often get stuck with a desire to do much and the ability to do so little. “Resist the urge to do nothing just because you can’t do everything,” Chrystal said. “Do for one what you can’t do for all.”

In the words of Dave, someone I met from the airport, “Kindness goes a long way, folks, so pass it on.”

Listen to more of the compelling conversation between Nicole and Chrystal on this episode of The Kindness Podcast. To find out more about Nicole, read the story behind the host.