Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

Riddle:  what singular thing can bring us great benefit and massive discouragement?  Well, it's all in the semantics.  Great benefit:  emulating a person and family you admire, otherwise known as role modeling.  Massive discouragement:  comparing yourself to a person or family you envy, otherwise known as idol worshipping.

My husband and I had a discussion about this last night over burgers and fries at Newts.  I wanted to pick his brain on which men in his life he admires and seeks to emulate.  He wanted to eat his burger and keep abreast of the 49ers/Patriots score.  But he humored me and mentioned a couple of names, pointed to some parenting classes we've taken, and praised the fact that we are a tight team when it comes to guiding our family. 

"Do you ever get down on yourself because you're not more like so-and-so?" I probed. 

"Nope."

"Oh." 

Maybe it's a female thing.  Maybe we more easily turn role models into idols.  All I know is that I have to be extremely careful in this area.  In the Bible, which is my instruction manual, there is no step-by-step recipe on how to do life and raise a family.  God has provided the ingredients of my family in one big, handsome face, one quickly-wrinkling, almost 40-year-old mug,  and 3 sweet, ever-morphing faces.  He says, "Child, this is My provision for you.  There are a million fine ways cook.  Just trust Me, and I will be your guide and soothe your worries." 

What happens when there are too many cooks in my mental kitchen?  

It leads me to think things like: why don't  I have her ingredients?  How come I can't have a kitchen like theirs?  How do they cook with a well-developed recipe, while I just cook with a pinch of this and a palm of that?  How did they get nice, brown bread while mine is burned on the bottom? 

Suddenly, my mind hits fast-forward through the Food Network.  Do it like this!  Do it like that!  Stir the pan!  Put on the lid!  Take off the lid!  Turn up the heat!  No, turn it down!  Follow the recipe!  Throw out the recipe!  Oh, look at his perfect turkey.  Oh, look at her beautiful cake.

Stop.  STOP!  Turn it off.  We are the Pearsons.  God loves even the worst things about us, because they keep us humble and seeking Him.  God loves the best things about us because they make Him look good. 

Now, I think I'll go join my family for our own little breakfast in our own little kitchen, even if someone burns the toast.

Portion and Cup

LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup, you make my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.  Psalm 16:5-6

You can't imagine how often I have meditated on this verse over the years.  I've chanted it when I feel the temptation of eating an extra serving of ice cream or feel myself overcome with the urge to buy something completely unnecessary.  I've used it as a psalm of thanks in times of abundance, and as a reminder that boundaries are "good" for me and that children are "delightful." 

But what is it about me that remains unsatisfied with my portion? 

God put in me a craving spirit so that when I discovered Him, I would be filled to overflowing and left craving more of Him. In stray moments, it happens, that spiritual filling, deep and satiating.  I reach to take hold, and like a sparrow, it flies. 

Sin says "uh, no, not enough. Give me more."  I look wildly around for SOMETHING...food, entertainment, things.  I know well when I have misused them.  They carry a cloak of regret, weighty and scratchy and ugly.  They put a canyon between me and God.

God gave me a plate and said,
         feast on Me. 
He gave me a cup and said,
           watch how this cannot contain my blessings. 
He gave me a territory and said,
              make a name for Me here. 
He gave me an inheritance and said,
                 take good care of this for Me.   

Yet I have the audacity to say I need another bite.  I'm thirsty for more of the world.  These borders are too tight.  I'm too busy and distracted to take care of this inheritance. 

My mind picks a daisy and says, "Should I?  Should I not?" And no matter what the last petal dictates, I feed my craving because...I can.  No one is stopping me.  I toss down the ugly stem and reach for the temptation of the moment. 


If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.-John Bunyan   

Am I trying to taste heaven by indulging in the world? 

Wait.  There is only one way to taste heaven.  Go to the source.  Sit at the beautiful banquet table.  Eat, drink and be filled.  Do it again and again, until you want none but the best God has to offer.

This is the cry of my heart.