I had forgotten!!!

I know this is going to sound crazy, considering I am a completely healthy, capable, competent woman of 36 who lives in the United States of America and has been brought up here all my life.  But my worth ethic is all about the part-time.  As is my work ethic.  I can do "nose-to-the-grindstone" 9-to-5, but only three days a week.  It's not that I don't like to work, I LOVE to work, but I also love rest and all the things that rest helps produce in my life.  Rest helps me be available for a more completed me--the me that I want to be.  I'm all about hard work.  I welcome it.  But when it comes to the conventional j-o-b, it's part-time for me.  I completely get that this is a luxury, but let me say, even when I was single, I only worked part time.  I've come close to 40 hours a week, for a few years, with 35 hours or something like that, but it has never been 40.  26 hours, yes.  18, yes.  15 even, yes.  But then again, I have never had so much debt or so many expenses that I have had to work full-time.  I have made choices in my life that have given me room to keep rest as my second part-time job, if you will:-).  (I completely admit also that I have had the blessing of many, many cheap and gracious rides when it comes to my living arrangements!  Not everyone would choose to live the way I have lived, but it worked for me.)  Granted because I have chosen to work only part-time I haven't been able to travel Europe extensively or get massages every week like I would like to:-), but I wouldn't by any means say that I have been deprived.
  I write any of this because as of the past few days I have had the immense blessing of rest.  And because of my life's circumstances as of late, this kind of rest has been long overdue.  But having this rest reminded me of why I LOVE IT SO MUCH and why I am grateful to work only part-time.  I have been operating on overhaul mode for the past month because we have been out an aide at work.  So it has just been me.  But now we have a new aide...aaah!  And I have been given a break that I haven't seen in awhile.  And yesterday when I was at the post office, I was standing there in front of a line that was starting to get really long when another customer who had just been assisted at the counter needed help bringing a heavy package to her car.  The clerk tried to find her a Dolley so she could use that to wheel her package to the car, but the Dolley was already in use.  So without even thinking, I got out of line and told her I would help her carry the package to her car.  And I did.  Afterwards I came back inside the post office, got in the back of the line and went along as usual.  Rest did that for me.  Having the time did that to me.  I was thinking like how I want to think!!!  (In a way, I wasn't!!!)  I'm not writing this to say I'm great.  I am writing this because I know because I have rested, I have the energy, the strength, the space to do things I love--AND I LOVE SPONTANEOUSLY helping someone out.  And I had forgotten that!!!!  Because I have been soooo busy, I completely had forgotten that I love to just meet people where they are, in that moment, and do something small to make their life a little easier.  Rest helped me remember!!!  And yesterday I was at a friend's house, and this friend has a new dog, and this new dog is stressing her out.  She works a half an hour away from home, but has been coming home during her hour and twenty minute lunch breaks to walk her dog!  She has lost five pounds since owning the dog because she hasn't been eating!  She is aiming to give the dog to another family, but in the interim, I told her that I would walk her dog for her today, and she and I could work out a schedule for next week that I can walk her dog and she wouldn't have to come home during her lunch break every work day.  She looked at me like I had just walked on water:-).  Well, maybe not so much that, but something close.  I love being able to do that for her.  I remembered.  I remembered many years ago when I didn't have a job at all---for months.  I literally would wake up in the mornings and say, "What kind of mischief can we get into God?  Who can we maybe help today?  Who can we bless?"  And I asked that of God yesterday.  And I LOVED praying that. 
  Side note: I am fully aware that LOTS of people are able to pray that prayer while still having a full-time job and/or a family, pets, lawn work.  I totally get it, but my wiring, how I'm made up is not that way.  God is very accommodating to that:-).  As I am sure he is to anyone willing.