Gentle Reader,
It’s no secret that I’m not a domestic diva. While I am a neat-freak and love to organize, I could do without grocery shopping, meal planning or cooking. (I could also do without paying bills. If anyone wants to give me lots of money, I won’t turn you down!)
Even as a kid, I hated these things. I would beg to stay home and do housework rather than walk the aisles of the grocery store with my parents. I’m not exactly sure why this is. Maybe I find all the choices overwhelming. And as to helping with meals? Let’s just say that I’ve been known to burn the unburnable and leave key ingredients out. I get bored when having to stand in front of a stove monitoring this or that concoction.
My reputation as a non-foodie is so deep that when joking with some of the ladies at church that I would need someone to feed me if my husband ever went on a business trip, they took me seriously. Chris himself has commented that, if I lived alone, I’d likely live on cold cereal and chocolate chips.
I am thus completely fine with the fact that Chris does most of the cooking, but today I made a connection. We had to go and sign some papers to finalize our house refinancing (praise God!), and he commented that he wasn’t feeling very good. I decided right then to make some from-scratch brownies, his favorite dessert. (I love having a husband who isn’t hard to please). As I melted chocolate chips and beat eggs into the flour, I sighed. This wasn’t really how I wanted to spend my time.
But then I imagined how Chris would smile when he came home and got to eat a decadent, chocolately chunk. That made me smile. And I thought, “That’s what serving is. It means looking past the inconvenience of the moment and into someone else’s happiness.”
For all posts in the 31 Days in the Quiet series, go here.
I’m all for allowing John to “work his magic” in the kitchen and I happily clean up the mess afterward! This has been our agreement since before we got married. Even though I’m home now, I still don’t mind if he wants to do his “thing” in the kitchen – however, he will quickly tell you about the times he’s come home to a home-cooked meal and not expecting it! That, I also have found, is “serving” and when you love someone, it really warms the heart of the one served and the one serving!
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