My sister-in-law called me today and asked if she could bring her family over tonight for a service project: putting our house back together. At first I hesitated – it’s always awkward to have people come help you clean and I really wasn’t quite sure what I would have them do – but I quickly did the math of how many man hours it would take to do everything myself and I reluctantly agreed to have them come help. It’s always a process to get everyone going on a project, but once we did we were efficient.
We had the younger ones playing with our kids, we had my niece and nephews scraping glue and scrubbing the new floors, my sister-in-law painted moulding and cleaned, my brother-in-law and Steve painted the office and the hallway and I helped on the floors. I was amazed at how much we got done and so grateful that I don’t have to spend the rest of the week slowly crossing one thing off the list each day. I’m grateful my sister-in-law was persistant in lending her family’s services because that is not something I would normally agree to. (why is it in our nature to turn down help??) Service is a wonderful gift. Thank you, thank you.