Cream Cheese and Choices
We had a bad day, here, not too long ago. He said something, or maybe I did, and it didn’t sit right on the other’s heart, and suddenly we were scowling and snapping words out of thin air, turning our backs and letting untold annoyances overflow their banks.
Before we knew it, we were treading water in a flood of unspoken hurts. And fear bobbed by, and fatigue, and silly minor things that are never really the cause for the tense gut. But they are the drizzle that leads to a hail of hurts and grievances rain down and then the tide rises, rises, rises, until everything, it seems, is under water.
For a moment I thought we’d drown. We clung to debris–to all that muck and garbage stirred up in the water–kicking our legs and gasping at thin air and trying to find our way to shore.
It was steep, the shoreline. By the time we’d hauled ourselves up on the rocks there was nothing more to do but to sleep, uneasy, thrashing through the night.
In the morning he made coffee. And I said, “I’m making a bagel, would you like one?”
“Yes,” he told me. “Yes, I would.”
And we sat together, quiet, at our table and we ate bagels and cream cheese and the sun lit up the ridge of our little canyon, flooding us with good clean light. As it had the day before, and as it would the next day.
We could see then that the waters would recede, that we’d weathered the flood, and that a bunch of crud had been washed clean away in the rising waters.
We ministered to each other that morning, with coffee and bagels and cream cheese and choices. We chose to let the hurts ride away on the receding waters. We chose each other. Again.
8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
9 He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
12 As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:8-12 (NASB)
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