Waltzing with Potatoes, part 2

Yesterday was Wesley's Potato Drop, when 44,000 pounds of potatoes showed up in the Morton parking lot at W&M and volunteers got to load them onto smaller trucks for local food organizations. The Potato Drop has been an annual thing for a while now--I'm not sure how many years, but I remember it from when I was in college. Specifically, I remember being on my hands and knees on the parking lot asphalt putting potatoes in bags one by one.

This year, except for a small group, we weren't really bagging potatoes. We had lines of people going from the big truck to the small trucks, passing down these 50 pound bags of potatoes. Only, there were a ton of volunteers, baseball teams and school groups and W&M students and church people. And really, there were more than enough people to fill these potato-passing lines. So Peter, Megan, Jason and I stood around and kind of cringed (at least I did) as baseball players threw these heavy sacks of potatoes off the truck to their teammates on the ground.

We came ready to work, but it was hard to figure out what to do. At one point I found myself in a potato passing line, more to look busy than because there was actually a gap, but it only took a few 50 pound bags of potatoes for me to decide my gifts and graces might better be utilized elsewhere. (I'm sore today from those five or six bags, by the way.)

Well, I saw a cute baby over by the snack table, being held by her grandfather, a member of my church. So I made friends with this baby, and held her while her grandparents manned the table and refilled the lemonade, and tried to make sure she wasn't actually eating the styrofoam cup she was chewing on. My friends thought perhaps I planned to steal this baby (since it is no secret I love babies. BABIES!) But I didn't. I just held her and had a one-sided conversation with her until she cried for Grandpa, and then I gave her back.

They say ministry happens in the interruptions. Sometimes, so do small blessings like holding a baby. I showed up at the Potato Drop to bag and carry potatoes, and I did very little of that. That can be kind of hard for a service-oriented person, who shows up to do a good thing and ends up more in the way than anything. But what's that Wesleyan covenant prayer--"Let me be employed by you, or laid aside for you"? It says that sometimes, feeling useful is more about our own self-esteem than what God actually needs from us. It's like you show up thinking, "I'm going to help a bunch of hungry people get dinner tonight!" and God's like, "Nah, I got some other people for that. Today, you just get to hold a baby."

After all, those potatoes got into the right trucks, and they got into those trucks fast. And people will get to eat them. And a lot of people from the community, especially kids, got to be a part of that. That's awesome, even if I didn't do much to help. And in the meantime, I made friends with a baby. And that was a pretty good thing, too.