Loxy Burckhard Love is Kind Memorial Scholarship

Volunteering in high school has been the baby steps of leading a life of service. Through volunteering, I have built up a practice of serving. I desire to continue this practice for as long as I live. We get to mean the world to others just through our love. This has completely changed how I see my hobbies, activities, and everyday life. No longer will I seek the betterment of myself, I can use my skills to be a blessing to others. Currently, I volunteer in my community at an extended care facility, my church, and in several youth organizations. Working with the unfortunate, the elderly, and the forgotten members of our community is a humbling ordeal. One part of the service work that I participate in is through my local church. When my church hosts a funeral, we host a lunch for the family and I help. Typically this means serving food, washing dishes, and putting away tables and chairs. The kitchen help with sits with the family and sharing in their sorrows as the family recounts their stories. Throughout my volunteering experience, I’ve learned that listening is the best gift I can give to someone. It doesn’t matter if a person is thirsty or hungry, they just need to tell you their story. Another part of my service work is helping in youth programs. I love to play with the children, to laugh and make jokes with them, and to be there to hear their outrageous stories about their day. I help at two children’s programs, AWANA and Ark. We sit at a little table in little chairs and put together puzzles, make Play-Doh figures, shape wiki-sticks into ballerinas and cowboys, and put on a puppet show for the kids. Some days I walk into the room feeling tired and worn down but one warm smile from a shy little kid is all it takes to rejuvenate my heart. Hopefully someday, one of these precious children will remember how I cared for them and will be able to spread my love of God to another child. The third part of my service work is at an extended care facility, the place to which I have devoted most of my time. I have gotten to know each resident, to listen, and talk to them. Some remember better than others, but each one has told me about their past and their life’s ambitions when I spent an afternoon getting to know them. I have had the great privilege of giving them their dignity back and treating them like human beings because that is who they are. Not only is love kind, but it does not boast and it isn't proud. These two aspects are fundamental to any kind of service work. Community service is not a chore or a task to check off on a list of things to do today. It is an opportunity to mean the world to a child, an old man, or a grieving family. It is a way to make connections and bring life to people. I will always tell that old man that he is more than an old man, he is like a grandfather to me. No greater gift can I give them, than to show up and listen. The hardest part is saying goodbye. These people come and go from my life so quickly. Before I even realize it they’re gone and that is why every hour of service work is valuable.

Love is important. Love shapes the world. Along with love, kindness shapes the world. These two qualities help people grow relationships and lives. Love and kindness keep our world spinning. These qualities are crucial, and often work together. Love is kind. Taking that bird with a broken wing from the side of the road to the vet so that this bird can continue its life. Helping the elderly carry their groceries into their house so that they can eat properly without getting hurt. Calling your parents to check up on them when they miss you. Standing up for your friend who is getting judged for how they do things. All of these actions show how love is kind. Kind love can change lives, and even save them. Many people do not believe in love or being kind. People believe that they only need to care about themselves, that others don’t matter, that others don’t deserve their love. While you don’t have to love everyone, you can still show your love to everyone through actions. These actions can help others more than you’ll ever realize. Showing your love helps others to believe that they matter. You could do something as small as smile at a passing stranger, and that action might talk them off the edge. Just because these actions seem small and insignificant to you, they can change a person’s entire life. Many people have heard the phrase, “It costs zero dollars to be kind.” Some people scoff when they hear this phrase. But this phrase is not fully accurate. Being kind can actually pay. Showing your love can cause a butterfly effect. If you compliment a stranger’s outfit, they’ll be touched. Then this person might want to make someone else feel touched, and will compliment another stranger. This will keep spreading, until a large group of people are complimenting each other. Some people rarely get compliments, causing them to be insecure. By showing your love of someone else’s outfit, you can entirely change how people see themselves. Love is kind. Love is important. Love should be shared. The world we live in can be dismal. Any person can show their love in many ways, but not many people actually choose to show their love. One person can change this. One person can spread love worldwide. I aspire to be one of those people, one of the people who spread love. I used to worry that I would not make a difference in our world. I am just one small person, so how could I? But as I got older, I realized that with how dark our world is and how important love is, I can make a difference. That difference may be small, but it also may grow and spread all over the world. Now that I understand how love is kind, I show my love however possible. I give my friend’s parents chocolate every time they allow me to stay in their house. I help clean my house so that my mom doesn’t have as much on her plate. I offer my teachers help when I have extra time in class. I smile when I pass strangers. These are all small acts, but I have witnessed how they have made people feel cared about. I don’t feel put out by doing this, but rather rewarded. I love the feeling of making others witness how love is kind.

Love is necessary at all levels. Infants require love to thrive and survive. Families require love to remain intact. Our communities require love to become cohesive and successful. Our world is starving for love as we witness tragedies, hunger, war, and all varieties of loneliness and fear. Our need for love is outpaced by our lack of sharing love. Scholarships such as this Loxie Burckhard Scholarship exemplify sharing love. My mom loves kids' books with messages, and she filled my childhood full of books and messages! “Have You Filled a Bucket Today” by Carol McCloud was such a favorite book that she even gifted it to my homeroom teacher each year and reminded me (more than) daily to fill others' buckets with love and kindness. The message still sticks with me as I finish my senior year of high school. Love is the most powerful gift. It brings hope, beauty, unity, and joy into one’s life. Also, it brings pain and heartache if neglected. There are many different forms of love -for example, the love for a parent for a child, which is unconditional but has challenges of ups and downs. The love shared with friends, that is built upon getting to know a person and slowly caring for them, and sacrificing anything in your life for them. Regardless of the type of love shown, love brings people together in ways unexpected. Love is to be respected, it is forever, and that love is essential to life. Love is to be respected and protected. As 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 states,” Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” I have been taught to replace the above scripture word of “love” with my name, “Liz”, to remind me to be patient, kind, serve others, and forgive, among the other admonishments. I will use my gifts to “fill others' buckets'' with love and, in turn, fill my own bucket with blessings. Helping others see their potential and feel love, love is given freely and unexpectedly, provides strength in me. I would like to pursue a career in psychology. I would like to provide counseling and support to children with mental illnesses. Children with mental illnesses are frequently viewed as “bad kids'' and are left only to fulfill that description. This world is full of so many challenges, and children with a psychiatric diagnosis and/or challenges at home and school need to feel the same love of “normal kids''. Your support financially would help me achieve my goal to become a licensed counselor. Thank you for considering me for Mrs. Burckhard’s generous gift of love.

Love is kind is showing compassion for others no matter the circumstances and reaching out to take care of those who need love the most. Love is kind is what I experienced on my first day walking into Bluff Physical Therapy to start my internship. I had known since I started high school that I wanted to work someday as a physical therapist. Getting to experience people going through a tough time with recovery from accidents and surgery has made me understand the amount of love, care, and selflessness that goes into being a healthcare provider. Each day I go to my internship I am able to create relationships with new patients and learn their stories. Each patient has a story, and letting those patients tell their stories and give empathy back to the patient takes patience, love, and kindness. During the time at my internship, I have worked with patients from young athletes with sports injuries to older people with hip and knee replacements to even people with brain and spinal cord injuries. Every day the building is flowing full of happiness from patients who are excited about getting better. The happiness that flows through patients when you tell them they got a new exercise on their chart just lights up the room. I believe that happiness is also referred to as kindness and love. The little bit of love that I give to patients is given back to me with a smile. I have learned that I am a small part of someone's journey to getting back to completing everyday activities. Being a small part of someone's journey to getting better makes me realize how important it is to be a healthcare provider. When I think about physical therapy I think of giving kindness and love to patients no matter what they have gone through or what they look like. Giving love to patients is also shown through respect or kindness, helping a patient with self-esteem, helping their dignity, and showing you care about human values. I also believe that love is a learning experience, you have to fail to learn love. Sometimes when patients fail or struggle doing exercises all it takes is a little bit of encouragement and patience to change their attitude. People respond better to someone loving and kind than to someone cruel and bitter. In healthcare, if you give love and kindness you are likely to receive love and kindness back. After I complete college and physical therapy school I plan to use love is kindness in my work. I plan to take care of patients the same way I would take care of myself or someone that I care about and love. I will use love and kindness by creating a personable environment with patients to learn their stories. I want my patients to understand I am passionate, dedicated, and attentive to their rehabilitation journey. To become a healthcare provider I will hold my values close to my heart. I will remember why I fell in love with the occupation of physical therapy, helping my community, and restoring patients' faith in getting better after accidents and injuries. I will forever use love is kindness in my work as I continue my journey into healthcare.

“You do not have to be friends with everyone, but you do HAVE to be kind to everyone” was one of the first things I remember my mom telling me when I started elementary school. She explained that you have no idea what anyone is going through outside of your interactions with them and that we have no idea what weights or burdens other people are carrying. I have always tried to live my life with that thought in mind and to work daily to show people love through kindness. Now that I am a senior who lost my dad in 8th grade, I understand the burdens people carry that no one else knows about. Even though I have lived through tragedy, I have made it my goal to spread love every day walking through the halls of Scottsbluff High School. I could have been bitter, but I decided that I would show people how much they matter daily instead. I make it a point to compliment someone new every day, or at the very least to smile at someone who looks like they are having a bad day even if I am having a bad day myself. Just last week I gave one of my freshman basketball teammates a hug in the hallway and told her how proud I was of how she had played at her game the day before. I noticed she started to get tears in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything other than thank you at the time. The next day she told me she couldn’t say anything when I hugged her or she would have cried, but she needed that hug more than anything. She had just found out a family member had passed away, and she was trying to make it through the day. My mom’s voice ran loudly through my head, “you just have to be kind to everyone.” Because of my love for helping people, I plan to enter the medical field to eventually be a doctor, specifically a pediatric surgeon. Parents with children facing medical needs are going through some of the most traumatic times of their lives. I want to be able to step in and care for their children with kindness and compassion. Children who are facing medical needs at times can’t fully grasp what is going on. They are afraid, and they need someone they can trust and bond with. I plan to continue to “be kind to everyone” through medical practice. I have also always dreamed of being in a place in my professional life where I could work with Doctors Without Borders. Living in the United States, it is easy to take the availability of quality medical care for granted. Sharing love through medicine would be one of the greatest achievements of my life. We never fully know the true impact we have on people, so it has always been important to me to make sure the people around me feel seen and loved. To be kind to everyone.

Love is kind is an opinion, not a fact but still such a powerful statement. To some people love is kind, gentle, and peaceful. To others, love is not known to them if anything may think it's harsh. I believe that everyone should know love somehow whether it is from their parents or a stranger. If only everyone knew that God loves unconditionally no matter who you are. God has angels everywhere and they help him give/show love to all of us. Some people are gifts from God with the amount of love the show, as Grandma Loxy did. He knew she would treat everyone she met with kindness. Her smile, just made you feel loved and wanted, which many people need in this world. Love can be shown in many ways, not only by being told you are loved. I feel that not everyone knows they are shown love daily in their life. I have learned that my parents show us kids love by providing our family with the life we have. It can be them saying good morning, have a good day or see you after school. It's providing a roof over our heads or the clothes on our backs. Although the food isn't what we want to eat, they never let us go hungry. Doing our laundry, cooking and cleaning our house, shows love. Fortunate individuals who are shown and given love should then go and pass the love to others who need and want it! My parents have always taught us to treat everyone kindly and respectfully. They tell us we do not know what goes on behind closed doors at someone’s house, so never make fun of them or treat them differently. My parents have taught and shown us to love and be loved. My parents have also shown us love by encouraging us to do well in school. They have taught us to never settle for less and to do our best. They support us by going to our conferences, musicals, concerts, and games or waiting in the car till our clubs finish. This is love and its kind. Not all children have parents that do any of these things for them. We have been shown love by them teaching us to be responsible and accountable. They use life lessons to help us to understand. We are told to work hard for what we want, it won’t come easy but the results will be worth it. They have taught us how to save money since we started working. Help with applying to jobs, opening a checking/savings account -how to even cash our first paycheck. Some children have no idea how to do that till they take a finance class. I now know this is all done with love. I plan on using my love to help others around me wherever I am. I have started sharing my love with my fellow students by sharing my time, and skills as their Class President. It takes heart to be a leader, to listen and act as a voice. People must be kind and show love for others to believe and trust in you to lead them. Love shows itself in many ways and I can share everything I have learned through love with everyone I encounter. I pray that everyone feels and knows love and kindness in their life as it's a wonderful thing. I pray that the others who do not know love let others who do teach and share what they know so they may stop the cycle in their lives of unknown love.

The word love can have unique meanings for each individual. However, love is kind. Love is what allows the world to go around. Personally, love is what I am blessed to be surrounded by. “Love is patient, love is kind.” 1 Corinthians 13:4. God has told his believers these exact words in his teachings. As we were put on this earth, we were taught to love one another and love one another correctly. We find ourselves loving our friends and family. We might also find ourselves loving “the one” as some of us attempt at finding love within a partner. Real love can be considered hard love. Love was never meant to be easy as we find ourselves battling important fights for our loved ones and learning how to be patient as He once told us. Love is kind, love is welcoming, and love is comforting. I find myself with a large heart. With this large heart, I do my best to express my love for my family and friends. As well, I do my best to love strangers, for love is all we need according to The Beatles. More importantly, you should love your enemies because you never know the battles they are fighting in their day-to-day lives. It is very influential for us to share kindness and love with everyone. However, I have once loved a special individual differently than the rest. I found myself caring for him in a way I have not for anybody else. I used my big heart in order to love this boy and make sure was surrounded by love, kindness, and support in the years we shared together. I found myself in the real, hard situations that can be created from real love. I found myself needing to find patience in order for this love to succeed. We were both surrounded by so much love, so much kind love. We were taught how to love correctly within our rights and wrongs. This love was not easy, however, this love was kind, this love was a real thing. People do not realize the importance of kindness and how a little can go a long way. We are unaware of the battles we are all fighting in our lives. A small compliment can be the difference between a suicide attempt and choosing to stay alive on this earth. Spreading love and kindness is what can help create our environment safe and welcoming. I plan on spreading love and kindness to every individual I might come across. In doing so, I am doing what God intended for me to do. I am doing what God is calling me to do here on earth. I plan on impacting the world by having people remember me not by my accomplishments, but by the way I have made them feel. As I prepare myself to move out of a small town and into a large city, I can better practice spreading love and kindness to all the many people I will soon live near. In the future, I plan on having a career in the health field. In this occupation, I will be able to spread kindness, love, and health to every one of my patients that I get to meet along the way. I want to impact health care by ensuring each one of my patients feels loved and cared for in the way they should. I want them to feel safe and welcomed in the offices which can be hard for them to visit. For me, love and kindness can start with a simple smile.

Love is no such definition but rather deepens through the connections that you make. I felt my love inside one 5th grade classroom. ¨Hello guys... I am Miss Angelica, and I´m here to hang out with you guys.¨ I had prepared this statement time after time, as I was entering my internship program. Wanting to become an elementary teacher, I held hopes to be placed at my old elementary school, Westmoor Elementary. I was able to work one on one with students, problem-solve, and simply was there to show love and support for them. Entering the final weeks of my internship, it was time to be in fifth grade. Unsure of what class I wanted to observe, Mrs. Luehrs my supervisor, immediately told me, ¨Go to Mrs. Schwartz´s class, you´ll make an impact there¨. Right when I stepped into her classroom, all the students gravitated towards me. They circled me and expressed I was ¨the coolest high schooler ever!¨ Soon they called me their “best friend” and showed excitement when I arrived. Or when unable to arrive, they complained and asked all the teachers where I was. I soon learned all of their favorite hobbies, favorite subjects, their crushes, and what they were hoping to get for Christmas. As days continued, I grew a strong love for these kids. The best part of my day was going to my internship to see them. The thing is I never had met any of these kids before I had started my internship, yet it felt as if I had been a part of their entire educational journey. Hugs each day and them screaming, ¨We love you Miss Angelica!, ¨ as they head out of the classroom. Each day, I had the same routine. Arrive at the classroom at 2:00 pm. join in with their math projects, talk to them about their day, head to PE, music, or library with them, come back to their class, and prepare to send them home. It´s a simple routine yet I wouldn't have traded it for the world. As first semester was ending, I had to break the horrible news my internship would be ending. With confusion and sadness, my students pleaded me to not leave them. As my last day got closer and closer, I began receiving letters and gifts from the entire fifth-grade class. Sadness hit me, never did I think I would be so sad to leave my internship. But this was more than an internship it was the start of the relationships with wonderful students. On my last day, I spoke to Mrs. Luehrs, asking ¨Why is it so hard to leave?¨ She instantly replied, ¨Your love Angelica, the love you had for these students.¨ She began stating, this group of students faced a lot of obstacles outside of school and at times needed support. From the first day, you started with them, you greeted them with a smile and showed you wanted to be a part of their lives. On my journey of becoming an educator, I plan to be there. Once my students enter my room, it will be an environment of love and support. I am determined to establish one on one time with all of my students, making it known they have someone who is invested in their life. One on one time, of meeting with each of my students weekly, providing advice and personal goals that I will help them accomplish. I want my students and their families to understand I am available, beyond my role as an educator. My love started with a simple smile.

Love Is Kind by Ethan Reichman Love is kind. Sometimes people misunderstand this phrase. We all strive to have love in our lives in one way or another. Love can be beautiful and exciting and everything the movies tell you it is, but love can also be hard and exhausting. It can keep you up at night. Love is doing not only what is easy but also what is hard for people you love. Then your love is kind, because when you have love for someone or something, you will do anything for what you love. When you are willing to do difficult things for the sake of someone else, your love is kind. I am an athlete and have always been one of my school’s top performers. I go to a small public school in western Nebraska. We do not have hundreds of students wanting to play sports. We do not hold tryouts to make the team. I have played sports with a teammate who is a grade below me in school. He has some intellectual challenges and spends most of his day in the special-education room, but he has always loved to play sports and is very athletic. On our junior-high football team, I was the quarterback. He was the running back. He always had difficulty remembering the plays and which direction to go because he struggled with knowing his left from his right. I could see that my teammates and coaches were frustrated, and I realized that I needed to find a way to help him be successful without pointing out his weaknesses to anyone else. I got him two shoestrings—one yellow and one blue—for his cleats to help him remember his directions. Whenever we broke the huddle, you would have seen me talking to him one-on-one to make sure he knew what his expectation was each time. All I had to say was blue for plays to the right and yellow for plays to the left. I have had plenty of personal athletic achievements throughout my career, but my biggest success was helping a teammate do what he loves to do against all odds. It wasn’t always easy to put in the extra effort for him, but I always acted with patience, love, and kindness. I still go to school and play sports with this teammate. I have watched him grow tremendously from the beginner who didn’t know his left from his right into the athlete he is today. My act, taken out of love and kindness, is by far the accomplishment of my athletic career I treasure the most. I plan to go to college to become an elementary school teacher. I have been a teacher’s aide in the first-grade room at my school for the past two years and have discovered a passion for teaching young children. I will use love and kindness to help our youth advance intellectually, personally, and emotionally. I want to do everything in my power to set my students up for success. Our youth are the future, and I want to help mold them into the people that our world needs them to be. Each child, no matter his or her situation, deserves love and kindness; I want nothing more than to give that to them. I want to make a difference. Teaching young children and giving them the love and kindness they all deserve is the way I plan to make my contribution.