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.
