I went to the grocery store today and I had my 5 month old foster son with me. Initially the purpose of his trip was to pickup the kids snack for our small group tonight and grab some needed ingredients for dinner tonight, we're having tacos!! The baby's car seat is one that does not have the capabilities to latch onto the front part of the grocery cart which would be nice and free up the rest of the cart enabling me to utilize it as it was meant for! So here I am walking around stuffing food in the gaps(or whatever you would call it!) in this grocery cart and in the midst of the food is this precious baby, sitting contently (well at least until checkout) in his car seat and it just seemed that there was less and room for well ,nothing now! This is a pretty common thing for me, I go to Kroger's and I tend to pick up a few extra things, and end up with.. OK quite a few! I am checking out and the sweet lady is bagging up all of my groceries, she politely asks if I would like help out with these, I always turn down the help in the grocery store even if I am with all 7 of our kiddos(4 our own and 3 foster) and this time I thought about it and as I looked at the now 2nd cart that had been bagged up for me plus my original cart in hand filled with baby and his ever gigantic car seat, I agreed that would be great to have some extra help out! We walk out to the van, I thank the young lady and tell her that she can just leave the cart and I would get it. She smiled and seemed a bit hesitant but walked away. I wondered, did I offend her by not having her help me? Then I thought about it, needing extra help can sometimes be looked down upon in our society as weak or so we think, or we just want to do it by ourselves! How many times do we get turned down when offering a helping hand and it is done out of the genuine kindness and concern out of our hearts? I know that has happened a lot to me and when someone finally does accept your help,wow it just feels wonderful to be able to bless someone! As a result of being so independent ,I believe that we have at times gone extreme and we will not accept any form of help that is unless it is important to us or we cannot physically achieve it on out own. Don't get me wrong being self sufficient is a good thing, I just think that sometimes people really do want to lend that helping hand and even if we can do it by ourselves could we sometimes let others in more? Just my thoughts today. By the way as mother to 7 and wifey to 1, lol, I could not do it without all of those helping hands in my life and maybe I will make room for some more:)! Have a great day, and thanks for listening!
