It’s time for another installment of my blog showcasing Obscure Role Models.  Each week, I have shared a non-leading actor from TV or the movies that has become a role model to me over the years.  We have covered some marquee movies and award-winning actors, but this week, not only is the role model obscure, the movie is too.  Not a whole lot of folks have seen this film, but The Resurrection of Gavin Stone falls into my Top 3 Favorite Movies of all time!  It’s about an out-of-control movie star who parties too hard and ends up with community service working in a church.  And through a series of carefully God-orchestrated events, eyes open and hearts soften, and Gavin becomes a changed man.  This plot may sound cliché but it is very well written.  And I bawl like a baby every time I watch it.

My Obscure Role Model from this film is even more obscure than the others we’ve covered simply because he’s not a full-time actor.  He’s actually one of my favorite professional wrestlers (who lived a life very close to Gavin Stone’s character).  I’m talking about WWE Hall of Famer, The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels!  He plays Doug, a Christian mechanic who runs a free service called CFSM, Cars For Single Moms.  He fixes, washes and waxes, and returns vehicles to unsuspecting women that can’t afford to have work done on their cars.  The church acts as the “middleman” so that he can remain anonymous.

As part of his community service, Gavin is working with Doug one day repairing an engine and gets to witness from afar the car being returned to a joyful teary-eyed mom.  And the conversation is as follows:

Doug: This is the best part.  They always try to pay something.

Gavin: Why don’t you go over there?

Doug: Then she’d know who did it.

Gavin: Yeah, exactly.

Doug: We don’t want the credit.

Gavin: Hashtag, words I’ve never said to my agent.

Doug: Exactly.

Yes, it’s a very powerful scene.  And a very convicting one for me.  As a speaker and a teacher, I sometimes get addicted to the spotlight and often lose focus.  Then I spend as much time figuring out how to be recognized for a good deed as I do performing the good deed.  In other words, I try to put something positive into the world, but only if others know I did it.  And it’s by far the most egotistical and self-absorbed behavior I exhibit.

Of course the world is a better place with every act of kindness we show or heartfelt service we perform.  What the world doesn’t care about it who gets the credit.  Helping others should be commonplace in our lives, not an event to celebrate.  To quote Charles Dickens’ character Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol, “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

As I grow older and just a little wiser (I know that latter term is subjective), I try to remain anonymous in more matters of the heart.  And do you know what I find?  Liberation.  Who knew it felt so good to help someone who will never know it was you?  I stumbled upon a quote recently by Alfred Montapert.  It read, “The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit.”  I love this.  And I’ve found that the less time I spend on getting credit, the more time I have to help others.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it…Do one good deed for one person today that will never be traced back to you.  I promise it will be the best you’ve felt in a long time!