Monday, February 25, 2013

Service is an Attitude

Today was one of those days from a song.  You know the one.  Sing it with me "Ain't nothing gonna break my stride, ain't nothing gonna slow me down."  It started with a late start for school.  Woohoo, everyone likes an extra 2 hours in the morning.  On the way to dropping the boys off at school I passed a friend who had slid on the icy roads in the neighborhood, done a 180 and ended up damaging her car hitting the curb.  I stopped and asked if they needed help but at that time they waved me on.  On my return trip I stopped again to give assistance.  This time they took me up on the offer and I moved the car over a bit and put on my hazard lights.  No Way was I going all the way to the side of the road and getting stuck so I did the best.  A man in a giant truck came up behind me and stopped, motioning to move.  Hmmm, the doors are open, kids are on both sides of the road and the hazard lights are on.  Not sure what kind of clue he needed other than those that I wasn't moving.  I waved him around me and as he passed he attempted to show how "big and bad" he was in in his truck, instead he slid on the house and made a fool of himself.  I laughed.  I dropped the family off at home and promised to return in 15 minutes to take the youngest to school when I was taking Jordan.

After the 2nd school drop off the family needed help again.  One of the boys needed to get to school so he could participate in the basketball game after school.  I head down the road only to find a woman stuck on the side of the road in her van.  I pulled over, put the hazards on, grabbed my shovel and headed to her van.  There was a garage door serviceman in his van parked behind her, just sitting in the van.  The woman was pregnant and had a small child in the car so she was unable to get out comfortably on the ice.  I gave her some instruction on how to move the car, shovelled some snow, gave a push.  The van didn't move....but the garage door guy started his van and drove off.  Seriously.  We were both shocked!  In my disbelief I figured I would go get the boys from the family I was helping with school runs and we could all push her out -she must have tried again after I drove around the corner because she managed to get unstuck. 

Once again, I had to laugh.  Here were two different men who could have ruined my day but instead it just reminded me of a lame roadshow I was in while in mutual.  Our theme was "Service is an Attitude" and you know, it's true!  Just stopping to help someone else out changed the way I could have reacted for the entire day.  Not saying I didn't have a negative thought pass my mind, because I did - but I definitely got over it faster and I'm guessing it's because I was too busy serving others. 

Oh - and I wasn't trying to "toot" my own horn.  Just telling a story. ;)  Oh, and reminding you to serve one another!