Crucifying “Perfect”. And When Meals Go Haywire.

Dishes clank.  The smell of red peppers and onions sizzle over the stove.  With garlic.

Oven beeps. The aroma of sweetness fragrances our home.  Blending harmoniously, delightfully with the scent…of family.

Each chair.  Taken.  Except the one empty. The one where the child of our hearts sat. The one waiting…for another.

And we laugh.  Bellies roaring.  Filling our stomachs, full of joy.  Full of each other.

Until, one child lights the firecracker.  And it gets thrown like a hot potato.  From one person to another.  Around the table.

And why is it grace-words, sooth.  Cover over.  Melt away the world in us all.  While, one hot word.  Can surface like magma.  Rising independently.  To play a game of tag.  All alone.  During what otherwise would be a peaceful meal?

I dig deep into the water in my soul from the worship music I have been playing…all morning.  And try to stop it.  But, I miss.  It keeps darting, from one person to another.  Me…not keeping up with it.  Me….not standing in front of it saying….STOP.

Husband’s head, on cars.  Mine, on a birthday.  All of us have been busy.  Way too busy.

While these words…want to keep us all.  Still running.  Running faster, away from each other…though we are all calmly sitting, together at the table.

One leaves.  Then, another.  Words may seem harmless, but eventually they pierce and kill.  A piece of who we are.

And if we are not encouraging, uplifting, building up.  Before we know it.  Like a landslide of selfishness.  We slip deeper into the valley and pull others with us.  And we don’t even realize it.

I reel at the thought of my “secret dish” pulled apart.  Taken advantage of.  I start to hear my heart question, “What is wrong with us all?”

Until I catch myself….

“No, thank God.  We were all here today.  We are safe.  Healthy.  Going to enjoy a day just the five of us.”

I take that bitterness and cut it off…like a serpent’s head. I should have done that at first when the firecracker got lit.  And the game of “catch” started at the table.

I pull the dishes, others leave.  Standing there.  In our kitchen.  Empty.  Dirty dishes tempting me.  To step into bitterness. Anger.  Resentment.

But, I refuse.

Scraps, empty plates all that’s left of the work of my hands.  Or so, I think.

Still, I refuse to shed tears and clank dishes and turn around and add more igniting oil to a meal gone already so haywire.

So I do all I know.  All I have ever known.  All I ever will know….I stand right there with a dishrag in one hand, dirty dishes in another…and pray.

Turning my heart downward, my words upward.  Lifting my head skyward, pressing down my pride wanting to boil over on everything…and everybody.

Cranking my mind away from “my special meal” and making it about what it really is…..A chance to know more.  See more.  Pray more.  A chance to learn who my kids are.  Who my husband is.  Who…I am!

And I will no longer be the gun powder that blows a house apart.  I will no longer be the center of a storm that can get carried so far out of control….until

scattered hearts, are left dismembered throughout our home, like casualties of war.

I will be His peace.  Now. Regardless.  In this moment of dirty plates.  Offended hearts.  Wounded words. Distant people.

I will be a red cross worker….walking through our home.  Offering silent prayers,
hopeful words.  Handouts of love….not more poisonous darts to throw at those already wriggling in pain from toxins.

And as I place my stake. Ready to take ground.  I realize I first must repent about how I have been the one lighting the match.  At prior tables.  How I have been the destroyer years earlier, not the healer.  The one walking away.  Creating hardships or bitterness or heavier weights to this already hard and heavy laden world we live in.

And I think…

Could it be?  Could it be that they have learned it from me.  That this match is not the person that carried it.  That lit it.  Could it be they are just practicing “my” sin….the coping mechanisms, the scapegoat tactics, once learned subconsciously by watching me?

And I begin to have grace.  So much more of it now.  I begin to leak love, not anger over words. Volcanoes.  Dirty dishes.  Hot lit firecrackers. Empty plates staring at me all alone in the kitchen.  

It is then I choose to put it all down.  Laying down, the “perfect meal”, the “perfect” family, the “perfect” everything.  And I go upstairs, where grace pours out.  Exchanging the nothing in me for the all of Him.

And I take this computer and begin to write….

And it is then. Now. At this moment in time.  I find the one who beget my own sins….not dirtying, but cleaning those dirty dishes I was just holding a few moments ago.

And instead of breaking them, clanging them, stacking the soil of one on top of another…I hear them wiping, washing, restoring white plates to the once cleaned state they had been in, before dinner.

And I thank God for His ability to wash over us like that water I hear running over those recent soiled memories, downstairs.

Knowing God can take whatever mess we have got up from the table…and left Him.  Making it, crystal white.  Clean as snow.  Offering us new beginnings.  And a heart filled with peace…

Despite the fact….and especially when….none of us are, “perfect”.

(Linking with Tracy, Emily, Missional Women)