I slip a patty on the grill and hear sharp sting of sizzle as meat connects to hot iron. Sustenance-in-the-making for those men I bore who were really (I swear this is true) taking their sustenance from my own self just a couple of eye-blinks ago. And I wonder, as I press and flip burgers, how it is that these bodies got so big so fast and how in this whole wide world it’s possible that my heart can contain how much I love them. My guess is that it’s just been havin’ to grow and stretch as the years pass to keep up.

Yeah, waistlines aren’t the only things that mamas grow.

I slide the pan of vegetables in to roast, set the dial and the timer and all my most-loved-ones are safe and it’s insane that all I’m needing to do is whip the potatoes and frost the dessert. Insane because this simple thing, creating a meal, has me thinking that grace really does exist and it’s really here and it’s really now.

I don’t always think of making dinner as grace, but the sun’s been shining for days and the sons I love will all gather around the table tonight, and no one has to be anywhere else and this doesn’t happen all the time anymore because they just insist on growing up and having lives that don’t revolve around this hearth all the time anymore.

But today, tonight, they do.

Grace. In this moment.

But then, this is my life here, so you know (if you know me) that it’s just not gonna stay all Pollyanna perfect.

The fire alarm goes off.

Of course it does.

Because this is me, and when I cook there’s a fair chance or maybe more of one that it will go off.

I thought I was heading this off, honest. The windows are already opened, the fan’s on it’s highest setting, but I guess the sizzle is too high of a bar for it to reach.

I climb up on the stepstool to shut the piercing off and do my best to fan smoke away from the alarm and out the windows. The burgers are done, so I turn off the grill and it’s all okay, no harm done.

Also, there may have been a very small actual fire right there on that grill I’d set on the stove and set the burgers on.

But there’s no need to go into that, and besides, I put it out.

Maybe it’s ironic, or maybe just God’s sense of humor, that just before I started making dinner I was rehearsing a song whose first line is “Thank you, Lord, for the trials that come my way.”

I daresay that I don’t usually say “thank you” for trials, not when they bust through my door or plunk themselves down all cozy-like on the couch. Mostly I complain even if I do try to see the humor in them.

But mostly I see the humor later.

And the lesson.

Because there’s always a lesson. Life itself is sort of a lesson, y’know? Fires too.

They ignite and we either watch them burn or put them out. Some are little, some are big. Some we can put out all by ourselves with the cover of a pot and some we need help puttin’ out.

We can’t avoid them altogether. They’ll show up, even in the middle of grace-filled-moments of making dinner and being happy. They’ll show up. And you? And me?

We’ll go ahead and put them out and maybe learn something and maybe even laugh about it later.

Because life doesn’t have to be Pollyanna perfect and neither do I.

And neither do you.

~xo,
LuAnne