Yesterday my ability to be fit4service was extremely tested. As everyone knows we had a huge snowstorm on the east coast with some reports of up to 23 inches in our area. My wife, kids and I have been staying at my parents house after the birth of our son a week ago. It's huge blessing because my parents help with the kids and it gives my wife a chance to recover a bit before we go back to the "real world."
After spending some time getting my parents' place cleaned up for the snow, we needed to drive into our place and dig us out. We have on street parking in our town and you have about 12 hours to get shoveled out before they issue fines. Anyway, as we pulled down our street we saw the biggest pile of snow in front of our house! Long story short, because we were not parked in front of our house, the borough snow plows decided to deposit most of our streets' snow in our spots for us to dig out. On top of that, there was no where to move it except across the street. Let the fun begin!
My dad and I preceded to start shoveling. Pick up a shovel full of snow, turn around, walk across the street, put it down, turn around and repeat. For 3 hours! We are estimating (and my dad is a mechanical estimator by trade so this is probably pretty accurate) that there was about 2 tons of snow in this spot. Talk about a test of PIES. It truly tested our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual bodies. But I learned some pretty cool things in the experience.
1. I was physically prepared. No I don't train to shovel snow but because I had taken care of my body, I did not get tired while I was working. (but trust me, I slept well last night)
2. Because I was not getting fatigued, my emotions stayed in check. It is very easy to become frustrated with a situation like this, especially when you are physically exhausted, but I was able to stay in balance. Actually it was a joy to spend some guy time with my dad. (But I could think of better ways)
3. As I was working, the bible verse that talks about doing all things as unto the Lord kept ringing in my ears. Although it was monotonous and potentially overwhelming, I knew that the Lord was pleased with our efforts and attitude yesterday.
4. A major part of life is about community and strangely enough other than my dad and an extremely nice neighbor, no one offered to help. Even as plow after plow, and snow blower after snow blower drove by, no one said, can I help you? This is something that fit4service aims to change.
5. Some people have the gift of service. I'll talk more about this later in the week but let me first say I'm not talking about myself. I'll fill you in later.
Anybody else have anything happen this week that stretched their PIES Post it in the comments below!
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