Can I help you lint?

If there ever was a time that you knew exactly what you wanted to do as well as knowing what the affect of your actions would produce it was definitely expressed by my 4 year old. Everyone in our household has a specific chore on specific days. This particular day was not my youngest child's day to "lint" but he wanted to. "Mama, can I help you lint?", he asked. In which I replied, "Help me do what?", I asked. "Lint, Mama", he said again eagerly and somewhat confused that I didn't know what he meant. His last attempt to explain it to me made it perfectly clear. "You know when you get the towel and put that stuff on it and wipe the furniture". Oh, yes. He wanted to dust!

It struck me as funny and quirky that the very thing he wanted to do was actually expressed or requested by him as the thing he wanted to get rid of. He wanted to "lint". All my visions saw him whipping a dusting towel around depositing more harm than good with his "linting" technique.

That then made me think of our attempts, yours and mine, to fix a problem or "straighten someone out" all to our dismay that we did not accomplish what we set out to do. I can think of one time to illustrate what I'm saying.

It was in Ms. Meyers' first grade class that we had just completed the reading of a story and now had to be creative and draw a picture of what the story was about. Well, no one at my table felt very creative and I, being the helper that I am, began to draw picture after picture of cows and other animals. I believe it may have been 5 of so pictures. Just as my younger son, I to was too eager to provide help.

What I didn't realize was that my help really would not help my classmates in the long run. We were attempting to comprehend oral stories and following directions.
My "helping", as with my son's "linting", could never be effective.

Is there a cloud of lint floating around you in all your attempts to help a situation?