The Monday after

It’s Monday and I awake with a headache, facing too many tasks on too little sleep.

We’re headed into the crazy month of August… fire hall training, fostering training, an editing project, a taste-test project, a ten-day visitor, beans and peaches to can, back to school, two weekend trips and a daughter’s birthday.

Today I have two cakes to make for a social, three loads of laundry, three children to tend. My house looks like the Nazis invaded on Sunday and strewed as many items as possible over the floor. I make a deal with my sons: either you stop having bad dreams or you clean the Lego pieces off your floor before going to bed.

I hope someday I am grown-up enough to decorate a cake for strangers without ordering the kids out of the kitchen mid-process and having an emotional meltdown.

It’s that kind of day.

Last night we had communion at our church and almost I stayed home. My faith has been shaken these last months, and I feel small and sinful, unworthy of the “righteous” stamp Jesus placed on me. Thank goodness His work in me is not done! I did not plan these words to my congregation and only in the moment of speaking did I know they were true: I want to manipulate life so that I look good.

The doubts and sins tumbled from my mouth into the safe, the so safe ears and hearts of His people and left me empty and cleansed, and when His bread and wine took their place they washed me with sweetness. All I know is that I need Jesus terribly, and I need His people, though sometimes I hurt them and they hurt me and I think we cannot go on together. This is the only place I know to find Him.

After thirty-some years of living and extensive thought, I have concluded there are two things of which I can be certain:

First, that my small protections and deceptions are never as complete as I think they are.

And second, that the taste of His bread and the savor of His juice helps to heal the broken places of the world.

Yes, I am quite sure.