Service at Home

The beginning of the this week saw me and my ENGR 131 team frantically trying to get our project done so we could have an actual Thanksgiving break. Thus, I didn't make it to the Veterans' Home on Monday. (I let them know, so it's all ok.) Since I cannot just regurgitate what happened at the Home, I'm forced here to take a little different of a view on service. Specifically, a more broad and more organic view--service in the home.

This week was (as you all know) Thanksgiving. My mother's side of the family consists of some 15 or 16 people and usually comes to our house for 2 or 3 days to celebrate Thanksgiving. My mother is more than a little particular about keeping our house clean, and so the first several hours of my break were spent preparing the house for our guests. Seeing as how I am a boy and a teen-aged boy at that, I don't much like cleaning.

Throughout the four days between then and now, I've helped make, serve, and clean up meals. I've re-cleaned parts of the house for new, incoming parts of the family, and done other little things to help. But not till now when I sit down and think back did I realize how much I've served others through all those little things. Serving family should be fairly natural and for me it is. (My mom tells me if I need to do something). But shouldn't there be something reciprocal about this kind of service too?

What do we get back from serving our family? I know I got some great games and some great meal out of it, but what else? I think that love and a place to belong are some of the most important things that family can give us, and that all starts with serving one another. Service is more common and more important than I'd thought before.