Today, I learned about service

I volunteer at a hospital.

Every Wednesday, I get dressed up in a red/white striped pinafore and trudge into elevators heaving a giant plastic cart for IV pumps, begging those darn elevator doors to stay open and not cut off my foot...pumps that nurses like to hide behind pillows, nurses who like to yell at little, lowly volunteers who are stealing their HIDDEN TREASURE!!

anyways,

today I was also asked to re-stock pillows

Bah mahself.

That's right homies

Yo homegirl was asked to also haul a GIANT SCARY METAL HARMFUL NEARLY 7 ft. TALL PILLOW CART ALONG WITH THE IV PUMP CART.

The pillow cart is actually a cage

it has GIANT wheels

If one would slam into it

One might accidently die

So by pushing a slightly light IV pump cart in front of me

...& dragging the big scary cage full of pillows behind me

I learned a lesson about service

Having a servant's heart.

Barely anyone offered to help me

Someone actually had the nerve to tell me I was in the wrong elevator.

My arms hurt.

one would go one way

the other another

and I was very scared of hitting someone.

The pillow cart almost ran me over

I nearly became paralyzed.

At the beginning of the whole ordeal

I was humming "Superwoman" by Alecia Keys

By the end of it

I was sweating

Mostly out of fear

And I was on the verge of tears

Because I wasn't sure I could keep moving the heavy pillow cart

I felt like a wimp

An ant struggling with a crumb

The truth about service is

1. It isn't about the hours

2. It isn't about being noticed for the great work you're doing for other people

3. It isn't about being better than the less serving folks of America

It's about being able to somehow agree to do anything with courage...

It's about lugging a metal pillow cage on wheels, and a cart heavy under the weight of 15 IV pumps...and still being able to smile.

The people who smiled back

Some of them we're in wheelchairs

Very sick

And of all the things I'll never understand

I know this for very certain

I will never understand why out of all the wonderful people who die everyday

From cancer

From heart disease

Suffer to survive

I was chosen

To be given my health