Lately I’ve been intentionally bringing up questions or curiosities when I go spend time with my cute mom. I don’t want to waste even one conversation I get to have with her. And yesterday we got into a discussion about service. It may or may not have involved me crying. (It totally did.) I was telling her that service does not come naturally to me and that historically, I have not been someone who sees a need and immediately jumps in to help. I know what that person looks like (I’m looking at you, Enneagram 2s!) and it’s not me. I can count on two hands the number of times I have taken dinner to someone in need and it’s about twice per decade. PER DECADE.
She’s my mom, so, of course, she tried to convince me otherwise by mentioning other things I do that could qualify as ‘service’ – but I stopped her. “Those things don’t count, because they’re the easy things. The convenient things. That’s the bottom line – I do service that is convenient to me.”
The definition of convenient is “fitting in well with a person’s needs, activities, plans”. Check. “Involving little trouble or effort.” Check. “Situated so as to allow easy access to.” Yep, Check.
And do you know what my mom, the best woman I know, the woman who has cared for her eleven children (ELEVEN!) for over 60 years, the woman who cared for her parents and her in-laws, who cared for an uncle, and a step-mom, the woman who took care of my dad, his very busy career, and his failing memory until he died just after their 60th anniversary, the woman who has never said ‘no’ to anything asked of her, said to me? She said, “I do, too.”
She proceeded to tell me that all of that was what was convenient for her. Taking care of us – and them – fit her plans and her needs. Mothering was not hard for her like it is for some. That part of her was easy for her to access.
She went on to reassure me that service doesn’t have to be hard or heavy or horrible. It can simply be using our strengths in a way that helps others. Even if those strengths, in my case, pretty much just involve cookies.
With those 3 sincere words, “I do, too,” she calmed my troubled heart and reiterated why she’s the best mom in the world. You would love her.
I can’t wait to hear the ways you are serving – even if, or especially if, it’s convenient. It’s probably helping someone in more ways than you think!
