Relationships and Rat Traps

As I've been thinking about expectations and how they affect our relationships with others, I've been reminded of how much impact we have in the lives of each other.

Don't believe me?

Read on, my friend...

A rat looked through a crack in the wall of the farmhouse just in time to see the farmer and his wife opening a package.

"I wonder what that is?" the rat said to himself, "Some new kind of food, perhaps?"

But the rat was disappointed to learn that the package was not food at all...but a rat trap. Retreating to the farmyard, the rat proclaimed the following to all who could hear him:

"There is a rat trap in the house now! There is a rat trap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, then raised her head and said, "I can tell, Mr. Rat...that this is a grave concern to you...but it is of no consequence to me! I cannot be bothered by your petty problems!" The chicken went on scratching in the dirt.

The rat saw the pig nearby and told him the news. "There's a rat trap in the house now, Pig!"

The pig smiled sympathetically at the rat. "I am so very sorry for you, Mr. Rat, but there's nothing I can do about it. So sorry..."

The rat turned to the cow. "Did you hear that there's a rat trap in the house?"

The cow nodded knowingly, "Yep, I heard that, Rat. It's too bad...but it's no skin off my nose now, is it?"

The rat, now feeling very dejected, hung down his head and went slowly back into the farmer's house...to face the trap alone.

And...that very night...a sound was heard throughout the farmyard. SNAP! The trap had caught its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to it. But in the darkness, she could not see the venomous snake whose tail was stuck in the trap, and the snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital...and she returned home...with a fever.

Everyone knows that one of the ways to treat a fever is with chicken soup, so the farmer got out his hatchet and went out to the farmyard for the main ingredient.

However, the wife's sickness continued, and as friends and family came to take care of her around the clock, the farmer killed the pig in order to feed them.

But the wife did not get well...and died one night. So many people turned out for her funeral that the farmer's cow was sacrificed so that they could eat after the service.

The rat watched all of this from the crack in the wall with great sadness.

The moral is: the next time that you hear someone facing a problem and think that it doesn't concern you...remember, when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

That's why encouraging each other and keeping an eye out for each other is so important. Relationships matter!!!

I know we're all busy...each day I myself have the potential to need to be in four places at once. We can't 'do it all'...that's not what I mean. But we cannot keep saying, "I don't have time." or "I'm too busy." or "Maybe tomorrow." Don't put off the relationships in your life...pick one person to really connect with this week, okay?