My husband and I are getting ‘up there’ in age. All of our lives we have strived to serve those around us. We don’t ask much in return because we truly don’t need anything. However, we needed to replace our roof and could not afford to have it done by a company who wanted to charge us upwards of $10,000. So, in order to save a few thousand bucks, we decided to do it on our own. For months we put feelers out and had quite a lot of people come on board to help us.
As the project date grew closer, a few dropped out because of one reason or another. Then the week of the project approached and people dropped like flies. On our first day it was my husband and myself beginning the tear out until his brother stopped by for 2 hours to lend a hand.
On the second day of our project we had a tag team of 3 helping my husband, my son and myself. I was on the upper roof when, unintentionally, one of the guys caused me to fall to the lower roof, landing solidly on my back and head and sliding down 2/3 of the way before I managed to stop myself from falling off the roof all together. The breath had been taken out of me and I needed to bow out to recover…another man down on our skeleton of a team!
On day three, we had 4 people working as hard as they could, my husband, my son, and two friends who traveled for an hour to come and help us. The third guy scheduled to help sent a text at 10:00am…he would not be making it…possibly tomorrow though.
To make things even more fun, the dumpster company rented us a dumpster they didn’t have and are now delivering another one four days into our project. So all that roof material being ripped off and thrown into a pile on our front yard….yeah, that would be us moving it into the dumpster all week long!!! Can you say “DISCOURAGING???”
I am not tooting our own horn when I say that we have ‘been there’ for many people. It’s just who we choose to be and we are more than happy to help anyone in need. But for the last two days, I have struggled with ‘our community’ asking myself, where are they now? I get it. Lives are busy. Families are being raised. Work is being done. However, we are no different in that our lives are crazy busy but we have done our best to make sure that people come first over busyness. So the questions begin to swirl through my head: Is this just us? Is it wrong to think that anyone will be here for us? Is ‘community’ a one way street? Should we re-think how we live our lives and who we decide to help in the future?
As much as the tears have been sneaking out and bitterness has been knocking on the door of my heart, I can’t help but feel that tug from the foundations of my belief system. This IS who we choose to be no matter if we ever get anything in return. It’s ok to want people to be here for us, but it’s not ok to expect them to be. Sometimes people need, but don’t have the capacity to give back. We need to continue to just be who we are and allow our hearts to pour into those who will need us again going forward. As long as we are doing what we do out of a heart of pure Love, we will never regret an ounce of giving.
I didn’t write this blog with some great answer in mind. I wrote it to work through the emotions that have been flooding over me these last few days (and because I have been benched because of the pain I am in!). The bottom line is this, I am a passionate, loving person, and sometimes that passion is going to come back to hurt my heart in moments such as this; when it’s my turn to be in need and I don’t feel the Love. However, I will not allow these moments to define me and will not let bitterness to enter the door of my heart or resentment to affect my life. For better or for worse, I choose to LOVE.
A Maze(ing) Heart 