"I stretched and walked the dog!"

With Weston's Farewell gathering just days away, I am under alot of stress, trying to make sure that everything is just perfect for Weston's special day.  I can look back on this and laugh now...But at the time it was a different reaction!

 I told all of my kids that I needed all of them to do extra jobs around the house, because there would be a lot of people who would want to "take the tour."
  Now our home is not ooberly messy, it is just lived in!  We have fingerprints on the walls, and dust on the floor boards.  I went to work and asked the kids, while I was gone to make sure they did a few extra jobs...just look around and see what needs to be done.  When I returned home from work, I asked Aubrie what she did that day to help.  (....Now I must first say that Aubrie is taking a dance class, and part of her dance is to stretch daily...) ok so I asked her what did she do, and she hesitated, because she knew that she was busted...then she hesitantly said she "stretched".....I am sure my mouth dropped wide open...you what?  You stretched? I exclaimed! And then she quickly added...and I walked the dog! I asked her in probably not the happiest voice..."AND JUST HOW DID THAT HELP OUR HOUSE TO GET CLEANED?  Then the crying started! and it lasted 3 hours!  I could not stop.  It was not the fact that she only stretched and walked the dog...it was that I had a overflowing sink full of dishes, a bathroom that was messy, a stack of piano books that could have been repositioned nicely.  There was plenty of things to do to help....I thought by now that I had taught my children to look around and see what needed to be done.

 Well Aubrie is so tender hearted, and she started to cry too.  I know she felt bad, knowing that she could have done better.  I asked her to look around and tell me 5 things that she could see that needed to be done.  She looked and noticed quite a few things.  Then she admitted that she is just so used to seeing things that she really doesn't notice them...I think that is how life is for most of us don't you think... I think a lot of times we are in such a hurry to go here and there that we forget to stop and "smell the roses"  or we see things that need to be done, and think to ourselves...I will do it tomorrow, and sometimes, tomorrow never comes!  Sometimes we see the need, but tell ourselves, it is not my mess, and so I am not going to help, or do it, or perhaps we pass by hoping that someone else will take care of it.

 It reminds me of the good Samaritan.  There was a man on the road to Jericho who had fallen by the roadside, being left to die.  A priest and a Levi who passed by, seeing the man, they crossed and walked on the other side of the road.  Then there was a man from Samaria, who bound his wounds, he took him to the inn, he paid the inn keeper to make sure the needs of this man were taken care of.

It is a great lesson to learn to be "aware" of others needs, and to look around and see what you can do to help and lift another.

Needless to say the next day she was extra helpful, and did things without being asked, so maybe it was worth it to have this lesson, of just walking the dog and stretching!