helping hands...

Don't you just hate those days when you wake up thinking it's Friday... but it's really not? It's a very cruel joke the brain plays, and I don't think anyone really laughs. Last night, I had to keep reminding myself that it was in fact Wednesday, not Thursday and that today was actually Thursday, not Friday. It's funny how we wish our way through the five-day workweek only to savor two fleeting days that are the weekend.

We have a choice when those two days come again so welcomed on our doorstep: we can either embrace our free time by tackling the inevitably long to-do list that no doubt faces each and every one of us, whether it's go grocery shopping, mow the lawn, weed the garden, go to the doctor, fold the laundry...or for many of us nowadays go to work (job #1, 2 or 3 or etc); or we can look that list square in the eye and instead ignore it, forget about it, crumple it up and simple see where the day's surprises take you.

I had the opportunity to change my plans last weekend and instead of doing menial work around my own home, I opted to drive the 45 minutes down to my mother's house and help her with her own long list of to-do's that I very well know she can't do herself. Sometimes, it's so easy to forget what each person's limitations are and to realize what our own undirected abilities really can be. I probably moved over 500 lbs of dirt that was leftover from when my mom had her house hooked up to town water; it was an ominous, ugly pile of dirt casting a shadow on her driveway and she just didn't want to look at it anymore, but she couldn't physically do anything about it. I determined that I was going to do as much as I could to make that dirt pile disappear. So with each shovel-ful, each wheelbarrow-ful, each trip to the backwoods, I told myself 'keep going, keep going.'

When we encourage ourselves, we push our own limits, and I believe that when we know we are doing something good- something that directly affects someone else - our limits become even more surpassable. Just knowing that I was able to help my mother in that small way, for just a few hours' time, and make a dent in her list was enough for me to be satisfied. Because those things on our list...they'll still be there tomorrow, or next weekend, and they're patient enough to wait for us to do them. We should always add one thing to the very top of that list - to help someone else. There is no better feeling than knowing you've made a difference in someone else's life.