What I learned today.... again

I spent the morning grumbling about how busy I am and how I am so tired of people (who aren't surrounded by earth-dwelling sea monkeys) that want to schedule my days with some 'unimportant' thing or another. Today's 'unimportant' thing was going to visit a young mother from my church with two young children (living in an unfinished home). The night before, instead of putting away my dinner dishes, I baked brownies (always a big hit over here).
So this morning when I woke up late (Thing 3 said, "I've been up since 6:35." "You didn't think it was strange that I wasn't out here?" "no"), the school bus was out of the question.
I packed lunches--oh yeah, another something I probably should've done before baking brownies-- dressed kids, bundled the baby and off we went, driving quickly down our little country roads.
Our little roads.... I want you to imagine the narrow little one-way street near your own home. Now cover it with deposits left by tractors (mud, rocks and fertilizer), line both sides with irrigation ditches or hedges of blackberry bushes (nice firm, thorny branches that stick out every which way and love car paint). Expect this to be used as a two-way road.
When you meet another car/tractor/horse-- whatever, one of you needs to back up to the last area you saw that was semi-safe to pull off. Sometimes that means into the blackberry bush that has the most give--oh, and both of you have somewhere equally important to be (there's a dark blue van that I hate and one day I am going to sit there until it backs up). Six miles take about 15 minutes.
When I get back home from this relaxing drive through the country, I am about an hour behind on my day and due to make this dreaded visit in an hour. Miss Ky says "no way" to nap time which really fuels my pity party. My dishes are multiplying in my sink, the daily cereal explosion has already occurred, and the laundry hangs in every doorway of my house and the tornado is still spinning (envision my daughter the Energizer Bunny--she just keeps going and going...).
When this (far-more-than-I) altruistic woman arrives to pick me up for the visit, I stand with my tired daughter, a plate of brownies and a pasted smile.
What I learned today came next.
She sat down at my kitchen table and told me how she's amazed that I baked and how she can't even seem to drag herself to do the things she needs to be doing, much less show any thought to bake something for the woman we're visiting. She proceeds to tell me some of the things she's struggled with for the last few months and how glad she is to be going out with me today to get her mind off of herself. (ouch). The young mother we visited, fed us lunch and kept thanking us for coming over and telling us how she loves visitors and wants to keep them over as long as possible. (ouch again). I had a really nice time and still managed to stay as behind on my day as I usually am-- no more, no less.
So did you miss what I learned? First: it's really true that when you put your self aside, sacrifice a little of your time, everything else works out. Second: you have no idea what is going on in another person's life-- especially those smiling, happy people you see at church. You have no idea of the life challenges they've faced or are facing now. Third: if it's not painful, it's not really a sacrifice is it? I mean, how much of a sacrifice is it to sit down and eat a bag of oreos? But now give that bag of oreos that you've thought about all day to a hungry kid...oh wait, now I've gone too far.