a servant.
I had a bad day last week. It happens periodically. I was tired and a bit grumpy or impatient - which is not a good thing to be on a day that also happens to be family day when you have 50-100 kids coming over for a party.
And lots of little things were going wrong - or maybe just not happening the way I wanted them to. It kinda started the night before when I came home to find the neighborhood kids had messed with one of the games we had ready outside while we were out. Sunday we ended up getting started making the food later than we were going to and some of the people who were going to come help at the party couldn't make it.
The kids arrived and in the magnificent way kids have - they were enjoying running around, dumping buckets of water on their friends in the dunk tank and eating snow cones as fast as we could make them.
We tried to play a group game - and that was a fail and we tried to make a comparison of how it is better to help each other than to do things by yourself, but the girl who was working alone beat the two boys who were working together - so that wasn't so great of an example.
Then we got the food ready to hand out - and this part at least should have gone smoothly. It's been almost two years of monthly parties. And it did go mostly right, except half our rice wasn't cooked. In the midst of finding this out and trying to figure out what to do, one of our moms came in and started telling me I should have let her cook it for us. . . I was not in the place to really hear that right then and pretty much told her so.
We served the kids what we had and as I apologized to her shortly after the moment she was gracious and forgiving and looking straight past the offense, seeing the needs and meeting them - offering to cook for us the next time we had a party and recognizing where we're short on help at this point and even though it would mean taking a day off of selling food in the market to help support her family being willing to make that sacrifice for us.
The party ended relatively quietly, no big mishaps happened and I'm probably the only one who really knew what was supposed to happen and didn't. The kids had fun and went home with mostly full bellies.
What got me then and sticks with me now was my friend, this mom who I had been unkind to. She stayed and was still helping to clean up even after I called it quits for the day deciding it could wait for morning. I want that my heart would always love and serve like hers, looking past the surface of what things look like and seeing where there is a need I can meet, a place that I can love and then doing just that.
And lots of little things were going wrong - or maybe just not happening the way I wanted them to. It kinda started the night before when I came home to find the neighborhood kids had messed with one of the games we had ready outside while we were out. Sunday we ended up getting started making the food later than we were going to and some of the people who were going to come help at the party couldn't make it.
The kids arrived and in the magnificent way kids have - they were enjoying running around, dumping buckets of water on their friends in the dunk tank and eating snow cones as fast as we could make them.
We tried to play a group game - and that was a fail and we tried to make a comparison of how it is better to help each other than to do things by yourself, but the girl who was working alone beat the two boys who were working together - so that wasn't so great of an example.
Then we got the food ready to hand out - and this part at least should have gone smoothly. It's been almost two years of monthly parties. And it did go mostly right, except half our rice wasn't cooked. In the midst of finding this out and trying to figure out what to do, one of our moms came in and started telling me I should have let her cook it for us. . . I was not in the place to really hear that right then and pretty much told her so.
We served the kids what we had and as I apologized to her shortly after the moment she was gracious and forgiving and looking straight past the offense, seeing the needs and meeting them - offering to cook for us the next time we had a party and recognizing where we're short on help at this point and even though it would mean taking a day off of selling food in the market to help support her family being willing to make that sacrifice for us.
The party ended relatively quietly, no big mishaps happened and I'm probably the only one who really knew what was supposed to happen and didn't. The kids had fun and went home with mostly full bellies.
What got me then and sticks with me now was my friend, this mom who I had been unkind to. She stayed and was still helping to clean up even after I called it quits for the day deciding it could wait for morning. I want that my heart would always love and serve like hers, looking past the surface of what things look like and seeing where there is a need I can meet, a place that I can love and then doing just that.
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