Making Concessions
And whatsoever ye do, do it
heartily,
as to the Lord, and not unto men. .
. .
-- Colossians 3:23
There I was, down
on my hands and knees on a cold, rainy, autumn Saturday afternoon, scrubbing a
really grungy concrete floor with disinfectant so strong it curled my nostril
hair.
Me? A college
graduate who once wore white satin elbow gloves as a debutante?
Well, it might
have been a lowly job - but it had the highest purpose.
After a long
softball season, I was shutting down the concession stand in our city park. The
tiny building, run by parents to make money to support sports teams, became my
home away from home this fall -- spider webs, concrete block walls, bare
overhead lightbulb and all.
I had been
outfumbled by the other softball moms into running it. They were younger,
nimbler, and met behind my back to elect me by acclamation . . . the finks.
I hated the assignment.
Volunteering, to me, is white-collar, no-brainer tasks. Fun! Easy! Clean!
This job, though,
was hard work. Ewww!!!
So I found myself
pushing a heavy, overloaded dolly of supplies through a warehouse store,
mushing like Nanook in the Iditarod.
I washed and lined
shelves, stocked and priced items, fumbled around with keys to four locks,
supervised volunteers, counted cash, balanced books, iced countless coolers,
and learned how to load heavy "udders" of cheese into the nachos machine, run
two persnickety microwaves, and several ancient crockpots.
My coffee tasted
bad. My trick wrist ached. I failed to master the circa 1957 can opener.
It grossed me out
to change the flypaper hanging from the ceiling. Worse, I had to fix Frito Pies
- blobs of canned chili and cheddar cheese dumped into a sack of Fritos - right
underneath those flypaper strips. Ewwwww!!!
I got black knees
from kneeling on the filthy floor, and broke three nails and our cooler handle.
Why do I whine
about all this?
Because I thought
I would hate the job.
But I loved it!
Isn't that always
the way it is? Taking on a tough job that nobody else wants to do can be the
best thing for you.
These are the jobs
that serve people's needs . . . and give you a good, strong dose of reality for
just how cushy your life really is.
I mean, some
people work that hard all their lives. I only had to make it through softball
season.
It was a lot of
fun, too, with lots of camaraderie. We were playing a pretty good team one
night, and one of their fans ordered a chocolate sundae. We exchanged good
wishes for the game, but as I was spraying on the Redi-Whip, I said, "This
here's WHUPPING cream!!!!!" She cracked up.
Everybody pitched
in, and that was inspiring. Dear friends helped staff the stand, "just
because." Dads made sloppy joes, wings and super-secret chili. One donated a
ton of free hot dogs, and another got us day-old buns to go with.
We made almost
$1,300 for the softball team, and that was the best of all.
Or maybe it was
what happened when I was scrubbing that filthy floor at season's end on that
rainy afternoon. Buckets of black water had gone down the drain. Dead bugs and
petrified gum spots had been dealt with. My joints ached. But I ran outside to
throw something away . . .
. . . and was
treated to a gorgeous, full-size rainbow in the purple sky above blazing red
and orange trees.
I almost dropped
to my knees in awe, which would've been fine, since they were already black
from scrubbing.
I knew what this
was: heavenly payola for doing a thankless job. I would never have seen it,
never been outside at that time of day when it was cold and rainy out.
It was God's way
of making concessions - a little treat to remind me that He's with me in my
glory moments on the mountaintops of life, but also while I'm making Frito pies
under loaded flypaper and scrubbing a dirty floor.
Which, by the way,
looks fabulous now. Hmm. Wonder if they'll ask me to run the stand again next
year?
AAAIIIEEE!!! I'll
have to tell 'em - I may be your servant, but I'm NACHO slave! †
