Chapel...with Dumplings

There was no class yesterday.  Instead we had time to study, take our first test, and write our first paper.  It was a relaxing day.

At 11:30 I attended chapel services.  As you may have guessed, the message involved food.  

The speaker was from Singapore.  With his father-in-law suffering from cancer, his wife recently went home for a two month stay to help care for him.  This week he decided he was going to cook Chinese dumplings.

His wife often told him that she didn't like to make dumplings because it was tedious.  His response was, "No problem.  The kids and I will help you wrap them."  Once the filling was made, each dumpling had to be hand-wrapped in dough.  

What he found, however, when he was on his own making the dumplings, was that the wrapping was the easy part!  It was the tediousness of cleaning and chopping and mixing the vegetables that made preparing dumplings so difficult.  

He never knew.  His wife never told him.  What a surprise to find that his offer to help was not nearly as helpful as he thought it was.  

We just don't get what someone else is going through until we walk in her shoes.