Today, I jumped out of bed at 7:14. The kids needed to leave the house for 7:45. How was I going to make breakfast cookies in less than twenty minutes? I wasn’t. It was impossible. So the kids and I rallied—they found clean socks, I rushed the recycling to the curb in my wrinkly pjs. The brushed their teeth, I made coffee. They made lunches and I made my new standby, scrambled eggs. Part of me felt the cold shame of failure as I scooped up fluffly piles of eggs—eggs that I let cook slow and steady since slow is cheap— because today was suppose to be better: oatey, wheat-germy, coconty breakfast cookies and a big glass of milk was on the menu, and I failed. I overslept because I stayed up too late reading the end of a book, then I tossed and turned all night thinking about my work schedule for the next three days, and when I finally fell asleep it felt like a moment of rest before my kids woke me up at 7:14 this morning.
But here’s the thing: after I kissed those babies on their knitted cap-covered heads and wished them well, I sat down with my plate of eggs and felt energized to start the day and oddly, cared for . As if, by taking the time to make myself breakfast I created a holy space in my day. For the ten minutes it took to toast the bread, spread the jam, peel the orange, pour the (second) cup of coffee, eat the scrambled eggs, I was participating in a priestly duty. I was both honoring the temple first thing in the morning and inviting Jehovah to come rest with me, then I didn’t feel like such a failure anymore. With Jesus, making eggs for breakfast doesn’t seem so pedantic or meaningless. These were priestly scrambled eggs—they blessed me and pointed me back to Truth who I am and to whom I belong.
So, I’m going to meditate on that today. The fact that I serve a High Priest who gets oversleeping, and rushing, and needy kids, and running the recycling out in your threadbare PJs. He understands my shame and unfair expectations. He takes all that into consideration and then he reminds me of the mystery that is being the temple of the Holy Spirit while still completely human. He speaks the words of life when I want to beat myself up. After all, he is our Great High Priest who can “sympathize with our weakness”.
How often do we discount or discredit the good we do as ordinary, meaningless, or even worse a failure because it fail short of my (quite possibly unfair) expectations? How have we disregarded self-care as selfishness when Jesus calls it holy, good, and right to honor this temple?
Pondering and praying,
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