Grocery Store Angels

Today was a shopping day. Not my normal shopping day, because I put off going for a couple of days...we've been out of milk since Sunday! By the time we finished with our regular to-do's we arrived at the grocery store about noon. I will never make that mistake again.... The inside of the grocery store looked as if it was an hour before Thanksgiving dinner, and everyone in town forgot to buy the turkey! Now that it is summer, I've got all my little ones with me and at that point, were very tired and hungry. Not good. It was wild--to put it briefly!
We saw a man in the store who was missing a hand and had a hook in its place. So my children noticed, and their imaginations went wild with them. I told them not to speak too loudly about it, and that I was sure he was a very nice man...and not Captain Hook. Well at the craziest point of the shopping trip (Hannah screaming loudly in the cart stepping all over the food and eating marshmallows through the plastic, Lily pushing out of her seat belt and her screams demanding that I take her out and carry her, the other children dragging themselves on the cart and pushing the cart in undesirable places), "Captain Hook" (for lack of a better name) stopped and said, "Are they having fun yet?!" I just said "Oh yeah, it is a little too busy in here for us today, but we're gonna make it, huh guys!" He just smiled at me and said "cute kids." Not but a couple of minutes later, "Captain Hook" returns and asked if there was anything he could do to help me, and distracted my children with a little conversation. Even though there wasn't really anything he could do at that time...it was so nice of him to ask and distract my children's mind off our eternal shopping trip. I have had other grocery store angels, ones who have bagged my groceries when I was in tears from crazy outbursts of a two-year old little boy, ones who have caught my runaway produce in the parking lots, cashiers who have distracted overly tired and cranky little ones while I sign or type in card information, ones who have come to my aid and returned my shopping cart, ones who have donated shopping carts, and those lovely grocery store baggers at certain stores who take my groceries out to the car and load them for me. I am ever so grateful.
Days like today remind me of one of my favorite motherhood stories--I don't have the exact story but this is the basic idea. A mother is grocery shopping with her little daughter. The daughter was struggling and throwing fits throughout the shopping trip. The mother would quietly say encouraging words like "we're almost finished Suzie." "Just one more aisle and then we're through." "We're headed to the checkout, Suzie, and then we will be able to go home." A lady then comes up to the mother and compliments her ability to stay calm through the chaos of the entire trip. The mother then responds, "there is something you should know. I am Suzie."
I love it. And today I felt just like that. I was sure we were leaving before we ever got that much needed milk. Someday when my little ones are grown, I hope I can remember these difficult times and be someone's grocery store angel!!!