"And another word..."

Today my husband is sick and for the first time, I had to clear our driveway of the six inches of snow by myself. I have never used a snow blower and was too intimidated. I started out shoveling but decided to use our Toro Power Shovel. This is a neat little shovel for walkways--it's like a mini-electric snow blower. We bought this for $10. at a tag sale one summer. We did not know if it worked or not and did not even try it the first winter that we owned it. Now we wish we had. It's the neatest little thing and sure saved me a lot of aches and pains.

The drawback is it needed an extension cord and even with that only made it 3/4 of the way down the driveway--which is great but the hardest part to shovel is the end of the driveway where the evil plow packs it in as hard and high as they can--or so it seems.

Nonetheless, I highly recommend the Toro Power shovel--esp. if you can get it cheap at a tag sale! The hardest part was keeping the extension cord out of the way, but that sure beats lifting and throwing snow! Warm weather and no snow would beat it all.

A special little girl

A couple of houses from my parents is a large family who home schools their children. The kids are extremely polite and well behaved. Last year my parents hired the older kids to shovel out their paths for them (they have the driveway plowed).

Well, this year the older boys went to do another neighbor's yard and my parents had a couple of the younger ones. The youngest was a little girl probably about eight years old. She was so excited, "I never had a job before. This is my first job!"

My father watched as she loaded the shovel and then walked ten feet to dump it. She kept doing that, so he showed her the easier way. She kept asking, "Am I doing a good job, Mr. Casey?" "Am I doing good?"

Then she commented, "This is hard work," quickly followed by, "but I love it!" Her final comment (I'm sure after my father generously paid her), "This is the best day of my life!"

Wow, what enthusiasm. Don't you wish we could have that? My favorite Bible verse is: Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men," verse 24 goes on to say, "since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

With this new year coming, I hope to keep in mind the thought of this little girl and her zeal for her first job. I pray that God can give me a little of this enthusiasm when I am dreading the seemingly needless, duplicated and unending paperwork that my job entails. If I could only channel her attitude. When I am weary by the tasks at hand, I hope God will bring to mind this special little girl and her wonderful mindset and I hope that God will generously reward me too, as my Dad did her.