Helping Out

I like helping out, I help with the tech in our church on Sundays.  I also help with the Pre-K kids in the church on Sundays.  On Wednesdays I help with serving a snack to the Pre-K to fourth graders in the church I grew up in.  My husband & I attend a different church on Sundays.  But for me helping out in these different places is just where I think the Lord wants me.

This past weekend I was able to go help out a friend & her family.  They are building a house & they were to the painting process.  I asked if they needed any help & she’s like sure we could use all the help we could get.  See this last weekend there was a lot going on, so she wasn’t sure how many people where going to be able to help her out.  Prom was this past weekend, there was a benefit for a mission group from our church.  Then the mission group that we are raising money for was in Florida.  So a lot of people were very busy.  I said I don’t mind helping out I’d be more than happy to.  So guess what between everyone that was able to show up & help out, the whole house got painted, the house is a four bedroom, two full bath house.  So a lot of rooms to paint, but it all got done & what a great feeling to have helped someone out that is very grateful for the help.

I don’t know about you but I know we have helped out some people that just aren’t grateful at all.  Now I know getting a thank you isn’t what helping out is all about.  But when you continue to help the same people out time & time again, then they start acting like you owe them.  It starts getting upsetting.  We have helped family out that still act like for some reason that we owe it to them to help them out even more.  Plus this particular family member I’m talking about we loaned a lot of money to.  Knowing we will never see it again.  The money isn’t the point though.  My point is that why in the world do we owe them anything else?  Then we have a friend that we have not only helped out, but have lent money to.  We’ve not seen a dime of that returned, yet he still act’s like we owe him more.  I know your probably thinking well it’s your own fault for letting those people walk all over you.  But the thing is, when we are able to help someone out, we fill like we are suppose to do it.  Just a little bit of gratitude would be nice.

Then again we have another friend that we are helping out, we let her move in with us for 11 months.  We told her when she moved in we would help her as much as we could & that she didn’t have to pay anything back.  See she has some health problems & her family won’t really help her out.  Some friends she was living with before us took advantage of her health problems & used her to get food stamps.  Told her what she could & couldn’t do, treated her like she was a child.  She’s had one hard time after another.  It is so nice to be able to show her what a person should be treated like.  This was something she hasn’t really experienced much in her life.  You know even thou she doesn’t have the money to spare she has paid us back for most of the medication we helped her out with & other things.  She’s grateful for the help that we have gave her, even thou she doesn’t have enough to hardly live on she tries to help others out also.  It’s wonderful to see that by us helping her out, she is now paying it forward, even when it doesn’t financially seem like it’s the right thing to do.

Remember that even if you’ve help out a lot of people & they don’t seem grateful, don’t let that detour you from helping out.  Because one day you might help out someone that is truly grateful & if you would have hardened your heart towards helping out, you would have missed that opportunity.  Helping out can have a domino effect, you help out that one person they help out another & so on.  You’ve paid it forward & it reached so many others.  Yet you will never know when that one time helping out is the one that will make a huge difference.