Friend, I figured this one out over dinner dishes, of all places.

In our house, there’s a rule that’s been around longer than I can even trace back. If you cook, you don’t clean. That’s just how it’s always worked.

My daughter had taken over the kitchen making homemade sourdough, pulled bbbq pork grilled cheeese with tomato soup on the side. So good, it’ll make you smack your momma – but she better not, because I’m her momma!

Butter out, counter covered in everything, soup simmering on the stove, fresh bread browning in the butter and cookie dough in the oven for dessert. By the time she was done, the kitchen looked like a whole tornado had come through. Per the rule, that mess wasn’t hers to clean up. She’d cooked. She was off the hook.

So I walked in and just started cleaning. Nobody asked me to. I saw the counter, the bowls stacked in the sink, the cheese and bread crumbs dusted over everything, and I moved toward it before I’d even decided to.

My daughter looked over and said, “You’re a lot of help.”

She wasn’t sassing me. She meant it! It caught me off guard a little, because in my head I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just doing what needed to be done.

I’m trying to be helpful, I remember thinking. I don’t understand how someone could look at a mess like that and not want to jump in.

There it is. The difference between me and you.

For my daughter, helping is something that happens when it’s asked for. Tell her what you need, and she’ll do it…(as long as she remembers, lol). For me, helping isn’t a response to a request – I’m just doing what needs to be done. I see it before anyone says a word, and I move.

Neither one of us is doing it wrong. We’re just doing it different.

That line took me a long time to actually believe, not just say.

Paul wrote something that settles this better than any parenting book on my shelf ever has.

1 Corinthians 12:4-6  There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. NIV

That’s not just about spiritual gifts inside a church. This can apply to a kitchen mess or a staff meeting. We see it play out in friendship and marriages. You can see this anywhere two people who care for each other are trying to help but still miss each other.

Once I saw this in my own kitchen, I started seeing it everywhere. The friend who shows up with a meal instead of a phone call. The coworker who reorganizes your files instead of asking how you’re doing. The husband who fixes the leaky faucet instead of sitting down to talk about your day. None of that is a lack of love. It’s love, translated through a different dialect.

Here’s what I’ve learned to do instead of keeping score. I name what I actually need, out loud, without making the other person feel small for not already knowing it. And I let their version of help count, even when it’s not the version I would have picked.

Different, not deficient.

If somebody in your life keeps showing up to help in a way that doesn’t quite land the way you need it to, before you decide they don’t care, ask yourself if they’re just speaking a different dialect of the same love. Most of the time, that’s exactly what’s happening.

We were never going to be a family, a team, or a friendship made of people who help in identical ways. We were always going to be a group of people who have to learn each other, on purpose, over and over, for as long as we’re doing life together.