FISH STICKS ANYONE?

I’ve tried to live a Godly life, but I’ve failed miserably, so what I do no is just try to be real, try to do God’s will, and try to glorify Him. If I try to be perfect, I’ll fail and then will be completely lost and have to start at square one…..again.

Have you ever tried to sit back and count how many times you’ve screwed up and had to start over? For me it’s TOO MANY TO COUNT!!! But each time of starting over I try to take a new lesson I’ve learned from it. This doesn’t just apply spiritually. I’ve been able to apply it in my quest to become a little more domestic.

See, I don’t really care to cook. In fact, I’m just plain bad at it. I will share with you one lesson I’ve learned during my time in the kitchen. Not only is it a good tip for you in the future, but it was a definite lesson in humility for me.

One night Mom asked me to just throw some fish sticks in the oven while they were gone so they would be done when they got home. No problem I said. Who can screw up fish sticks, I said. You’ve have to be a really bad cook to not do this one right, Julie. Well…………

So my mom and the rest of my family pull up. Perfect timing. The fish sticks should be done in about two minutes. I’ve got the table set, everything’s ready, and it’s a really good thing because my family is so hungry that they’re almost grouchy. They’re going to be so happy that I slaved over these fish sticks for about seven minutes for them. Everyone’s sitting at the table, so now it’s time to unveil the main course. I open the oven, pull out the pan that was in the oven. That’s funny. I could have sworn there were fish sticks on this cookie sheet when I stuck it in there. Hmmm. Oh, look. There’s the box on top of the counter. Hey, it’s still got the fish sticks in it. I wonder how that happened?

Needless to say, the grouchiness of my family quickly turned to laughter when they found out that I had essentially just cooked the cookie sheet. To this day I don’t know what happened. Why in the world would I have put the pan in there without anything on it? It’s all beyond me.

You know, sometimes we reach into the oven and expect to pull out the wonderful results of our hard labor and there’s nothing there, or it’s not what we expected, and we have to start over one more time. I’m pretty sure God was speaking to me through those frozen fish sticks. God was saying, Hey, slow down. You’re doing all this work, but you’re forgetting the most important part. Literally, I had forgotten the fish sticks. But at that time in my life I had a ton of stuff going on and God was saying, Hey, it’s great you’ve got all this going on, but if you don’t slow down, you’re going to leave out the most important part…..Me.

Sometimes we need to sit back and reassess what we’re doing. You wouldn’t think that while cooking dinner a person could go as far as putting the pan in the oven, but forgetting to put what she was cooking on it, but if you don’t slow down and take the time to really do a good job and make sure you’re doing it for the Lord, you’ll have to start over. You’re going to be right back where you started. And the Lord knows that I don’t ever want to cook fish sticks again!!!!