2. Here's my When-I-Was-a-Dummy Wednesday post.
I used to really have a hard time accepting help, favors, and gifts that were offered to me freely from people who care about me. I'd feel guilty for not pulling my weight, and for others to go out of their way, spending time and money to make my life better. I felt obligated to repay with another favor, or to somehow make our friendship more worthy of such a generous gesture. But recently I've gotten my mind changed about carrying the guilt, because I've recently been spending a lot of time on both sides of the fence.
I've been busy and tired and sometimes under the weather, which just makes me a little sad. But my sweet husband gives and gives and gives. He cooks me dinner and gets me the heating pad and makes sure I have a lunch packed for the next day. He tells me jokes and he turns of the TV when I get a headache. I just can't really repay every little favor he does for me. And he doesn't expect me to. That's what love is- doing what you can to meet the other's needs, and never keeping score.
The past few weeks I've also gotten to be on the giving side of things, at work. As I've mentioned, this week is VBS and there is an ungodly amount of prep work that goes into registration, organization, volunteer recruiting, and training and safety measures. Somehow my awesome coworker got stuck with like 80% of the responsibilities so I would try with all my might to take some of her workload from her. She was constantly thanking me and feeling guilty and writing me notes. But I didn't want or need thanks! I just wanted to make her life better!
When people offered to help us move, I felt guilty. But they wanted to help to make our lives easy, knowing we couldn't truly repay them.
When somebody invites us to dinner, they're not keeping score for us to pay them back.
When someone does you a favor, they don't want you to feel guilty, but just valued and important and a little more stress-free.
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