Friday, August 19, 2011

Would You Prefer...?

Would you prefer...
mild nausea or a bad paper cut?
listening to a personal story or telling a personal story?
country music or classical music?
a weekend with two friends or a weekend with twelve friends?
being two feet tall or being nine feet tall?
being eaten alive by lions or being eaten alive by ants?
working with computers or working with power tools?
skydiving or bungee jumping?
being a superhero or being married to a superhero?
camping or Disney World?
watching TV alone or doing chores with a friend?

I started a class discussion several years ago with questions like these. Apparently some folks have definite preferences about stuff like how they would prefer to be eaten alive.

A piece of our fence blew down in a strong wind a couple of months ago. I made some calls to fencing professionals so we could get it fixed. The ones I called don't serve our area, or didn't call me back, or called back but didn't come. Grrr.

We had never done fencing beyond replacing the occasional slat. It seemed like we should be able to figure it out, but getting that one post replaced seemed pretty overwhelming, mostly because of the cement. I didn't want to deal with it and didn't even know where to start. Argh.

But now look!


Friends offered to join us in the project, which added much-needed encouragement, effort, and expertise to the situation. What had felt like an unmanageable task became possible. And now, a full day and an evening later, we have a fence again!

Fencing is still not something we would do recreationally. Given a choice between building a fence together or watching TV alone, I'm sure all of us would have enjoyed some more television in the day. But with generous hearts and within good friendships, our friends chose to join us in fencing. And with grateful hearts and within those good friendships, we were very happy to work together. It was a lovely gift.

No comments: