Saturday, August 29, 2015

A little inconvenience?

Upon noticing my change of mood last Saturday evening, my husband asked what had happened. “I hate grocery shopping! And I am not a fan of doing it late at night either.” It had been a while since I wandered around my neighborhood Harmon’s. Bananas – a staple in my home – had not been seen on my counter for days. The last apple and yogurt had been consumed the day before. The few slices of bread in my cupboard were moldy. And that morning my son had drained the last bit of our milk. We had powdered milk available, but now that we were down to one child in the home and drinking the real stuff, I just couldn’t stomach that again. I love whole milk. I had to go to the store.

As I fought the fellow shoppers on each isle, couldn’t find all the items I wanted, and waited in line at the checkout stand, my disdain for this process grew. After lugging it all into the house and putting it away, I was convinced I would be happy if I never went grocery shopping again.

Yet, before I was even done ranting to my husband about the inconveniences of grocery shopping, I realized how ridiculous I must sound. I was whining because I despised battling my cart around other shoppers at the store. Waa waaa waaah!

I couldn’t believe how quickly I had forgotten the lessons of the previous day. Just a mere thirty hours before my "aggravating" grocery shopping experience, I was sitting – rather comfortably and with a completely full stomach – in an air-conditioned classroom listening to an international aid worker’s devastating story of a Mozambican grandmother.  Because of civil wars and the AIDS epidemic in her country, all of her children had died, and she was raising her fifteen grandchildren. Along with many in her country, they were starving. (And not the “I haven’t eaten in six hours” kind of starving that we experience.)That grandmother would have been ecstatic to feed her grandchildren the moldy bread in my cupboard or the powdered milk I found distasteful. She would have gratefully been inconvenienced, irritated, and annoyed just to have the opportunity to walk around a store and put food in a cart. She probably would have even welcomed her fellow countrymen to block her in the isles and cause her to wait at the checkout stand.

I am out of milk . . . 



Thankfully, I have the opportunity to be inconvenienced at the grocery store again today. 

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