Dinner on the Wrong Night

The Bible is full of regular, everyday folks who heard the voice of God. They were usually quite busy, going about their everyday jobs like keeping wolves from eating their sheep, when God would single them out and say something profound that would end up being historical.

“Old age isnʼt an excuse, Noah. Get down to the local hardware store, because you really need to build this giant boat. If you Google the weather, youʼll see itʼs about to change.”

Those who were faithful and righteous were usually quick in their obedience, too.

My friend, Katie, hears God speak quite often. She once told me that the Lord had encouraged her to go on ahead and lay herself off work. As in, she was quite certain that her friend, Jesus, said, “Tell your boss youʼre laying yourself off from the company, and that you wonʼt be taking a paycheck from them any longer, while the company is struggling with some things.” Katie, being one who is quiet enough to know when itʼs the Lord speaking to her and when itʼs just a pesky mosquito buzzing in her ear, did just this. I was stunned. I would have argued relentlessly with Jesus and said, “Seriously? Lay myself off? Because you know thereʼs this thing called a mortgage, right? And you might not have to pay those in Heaven, but I have to pay it right now, and WHERE WILL THE MONEY FOR STARBUCKS COME FROM?” Iʼd like to say that my first instinct would have been faithful obedience, but I know myself. My first instinct would be to fight what I thought couldnʼt be right.

Katie laid herself off work. In the end, Jesus showed off a little bit and worked everything out for the better. Things didnʼt go back to how they WERE before Katie obeyed – things catapulted themselves into being even better than they had been.

Thatʼs kind of Jesusʼ MO. His Method of Operation. How He does things.

But your heart has to be still enough to hear Him speak, and you have to understand that sometimes He asks people to do strange things. In the book of Judges, Gideon didnʼt think he was capable of fighting a massive army with 300 soldiers, but God asked him to do it, and he did. And through Gideonʼs obedience, the Lord shone through, and a small army conquered one that was believed to be undefeatable.

A few years ago, I had a strange request made of me. Iʼd like to say that I blindly jumped to do exactly as I was called to do, but I didnʼt.

My husband and I know a family. A few years ago, they were a young married couple with a pack of very young children. They had children of every age, it seemed, running all over the place. The husband was very outgoing and friendly. He was easy to like, his sense of humor was incredible, and he was downright friendly. Although strikingly beautiful, his wife was the exact opposite. She was hard to get to know because she didnʼt talk much. When she did talk, her conversations were usually full of judgement toward others, and how her tribe of children were so much better than everyone elseʼs children. She was rude, she was unfriendly, and frankly, I wasnʼt interested in getting to know her very well, because she was quick to present a cold shoulder towards everyone she met. She always presented the feeling that she was much better than the world around her, so she couldnʼt be bothered to befriend those beneath her.

A few years ago, they bought a house and gutted it. They took that house down to the shell. They designed a floor plan for it, and they were going to turn it into something amazing. The husband was actually quite handy in the line of carpentry and construction, so he was doing the bulk of the work himself. His wife was helping, and somehow they were managing to get it all done while little kids ran wild everywhere.

On one particularly cold, winter day, I woke up and my VERY FIRST thought of the day was that I needed to take dinner to this family. The usual list of reasons for bringing dinner to someone didnʼt apply. They hadnʼt just delivered a new baby... no one close to them had recently died... no one was sick. And yet, all day long my heart was heavy with the thought that I was supposed to take them a meal for dinner that day.

But do you know what?

I didnʼt like the wife. She had never shown any kind of friendliness to me, or to anyone, really. She was snooty and aloof, and I figured that sheʼd be just fine cooking dinner for her many children that evening. I didnʼt WANT to take dinner to her.

I made a big pot of soup in the crockpot for our familyʼs supper.

Iʼd look at it often throughout the day and feel like I was supposed to load that crockpot up and deliver it to them. I just shook my head, because NO WAY.

Our family ate the soup. Even though cooking is my least favorite domestic chore, Iʼll just go on record and say that this soup was FANTASTIC! Paula Deen would have stood up and applauded me wildly for it. Martha Stewart would have put her fingers in her mouth and whistled her approval.

The temperatures dipped well below zero that night.

The next morning, I woke up again thinking about this family. My first thought of that day was, “I was supposed to make them dinner last night.”

So this is what I did. I huffed around my kitchen. I slammed a few measuring cups onto my countertop. I slammed cupboard doors. And in a state of angry irritation, I remade the same pot of soup, from scratch, and tossed it into my crockpot. My husband asked what I was doing. I growled, “Iʼm making soup for THAT FAMILY!” Late that afternoon, I loaded up the hot soup, and I drove to the house that they were doing an extensive remodel on. It was a ways out of town, and I had a hard time finding it in the dark, but I did.

I knocked on their door.

Their kitchen didnʼt exist. Oh, there was a spot FOR the kitchen, but no kitchen was there. They were in the process of mudding the drywall in the kitchen area. Their new stove and refrigerator were in giant boxes in their garage. Theyʼd finished a bathroom already, and it was beautiful. The tile work was amazing, and this was where they washed their dishes -- right there in that bathroom sink. There was a microwave plugged into an outlet on the floor of where the living room would be. There was a dorm-sized refrigerator plugged in across the room. They had no tile or carpet on the floor; it was just subfloors, and the kids were using markers and Crayons to decorate it.

The wife approached me and said, “What are you doing out on a cold night like this?”

I smiled. “I just thought maybe yʼall could use some dinner, so I brought over a big pot of soup and a loaf of French bread.”

She took the soup from me and said, “I already have chili in our crockpot for dinner tonight. I donʼt know when weʼll get to this soup.” She walked off, set the pot of soup on the top of a cardboard box, and picked up a crying baby.

The husband came up to me and said, “Thank you for dinner. Wow! What a surprise. Itʼs really too bad you didnʼt show up LAST NIGHT with the soup! What was it? Six degrees below zero last night? The battery in our mini van died, and I didnʼt have any way to jump it last night, and our neighbors were gone. The kids were starving. Weʼd planned to just get burgers in town last night, but we couldnʼt GET to town, so we fed the kids the packages of graham crackers and saltines that we had for their snacks earlier in the day. THAT was our dinner. Crazy, huh? And then this morning, our neighbors were back. I got the mini vanʼs battery jumped, and my wife went to town to get stuff to make chili. But man! Last nightʼs dinner was slim pickings!”

Yes, God often speaks to plain, everyday people.

But do you know what? His work wonʼt be accomplished if those regular men and women donʼt take His instructions and obey them. I have no idea what would have happened, had I showed up with a crockpot of hot soup the night before. All I know is that this family saw an ill-timed meal brought to them. It didnʼt show up when they needed it most, because I wasnʼt obedient.

Tammy is a wife and mother of 2 children, ages 13 and 1 1/2. She has recently joined MOPS in support of entering the baby and toddler years once again, blessedly, but somewhat unexpectedly. Her presence at our MOPS meetings is a comfort, her love for Jesus a special and hefty gift, and her sense of humor a brilliant light. She keeps us all laughing at the beauty and difficulty of motherhood through her personal blog Jedi Mama: Life at a Jedi House. We are hoping to hear from her often here on the Morning MOPS Blog!

Messy Moment: "I'm Shopping For A New Bedroom Rug Online These Days"

My husband and I have two sons: a thirteen-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. This means that we get the joys of parenting a fresh teenager and a toddler, at the exact same time.

We buy our bottles of Excedrin at Costco.

Our older son, Nolan, has developed a passion for writing with a quill, exactly like Benjamin Franklin used to do. Never mind the luxury that is a good gel pen; those are entirely too new-age for our boy, regardless of the nerdy joy they bring to his mama. As far as heʼs concerned, America started to decline when the fountain pen and whittled turkey feather became old fashioned. Nolan has begun to collect old pens. He can talk about a fountain pen collection exactly like an old man, wearing a cardigan sweater that smells of mothballs. And still, we are head over our heels in love with that boy.

As every Gatherer Of Ye Olde Pens knows, if youʼre going to put your collection to good use, you need pots of ink. Black ink... red ink... or dark berries that have been run through the electric, Ninja mixer, exactly as Lewis and Clark used to do before writing in their journals... it doesnʼt matter. You just canʼt fancy-up your scrollwork without a pot of ink to accompany your quill.

The most commonly-spoken phrase at our house, other than, “Whatʼs for dinner?” is, “Did you put the lid on your ink?” Because a bottle of India ink WITHOUT the lid is more dangerous in a household with boys than a flamethrower.

Two weeks ago, I forgot to ask this question.

It was a Thursday morning. I was in the shower, because Iʼd already determined that I had errands to run that day that would require something a little fancier than the standard mom outfit of black yoga pants and unwashed hair. When you have a toddler who climbs more things than Spider-Man does, you come to cherish your alone time in the hot shower.

I may have taken longer to shave that Thursday. I probably stood in the shower with my eyes closed and my forehead resting on the fiberglass wall while the hot water just ran down. I may even have considered finally following the instructions on the bottle of shampoo: Wash, rinse, repeat. Because the repeating? Well, it allows for extra alone time, before you have to get out, dry off, and pull Spider-Man off of the kitchen counters and feed him a breakfast of steel-cut oats and homemade yogurt.

Or SʼMores flavored Pop Tarts. Whichever.

When I finally DID get out of the shower that morning, I suddenly realized that there was some busyness and noise going on in our house that would have put the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange to shame.

I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt (which is ever-so-very-much more fancy than the aforementioned black yoga pants and T-shirt), wrapped a towel around my hair, and opened the bathroom door to complete pandemonium.

Do you know what a mother enjoys hearing on a Thursday morning, just thirty minutes before she has to get the 7th grader to school?

“The baby grabbed an open bottle of India ink off Nolanʼs desk; we have ink EVERYWHERE!”

It was true.

A small bottle of India ink can hold about an ounce. When you turn it upside down onto a bedroom floor, itʼs exactly like a tiny, import car full of clowns at the circus: About thirty-four gallons of ink will spill out.

Our toddler looked like the tar baby from Brer Rabbit. My husband, who had decided to grab that tar baby from the middle of the catastrophe, to prevent further explosions, was stained with the result of his courage. Nolan was scrambling for TOWELS! TOWELS! WE NEED WET TOWELS! And there I stood, taking it all in.

Nash, age one, was covered in ink. His LOANED-TO-US-AS-HAND-ME-DOWNS-

THAT-NEED-TO-BE-RETURNED-BECAUSE-THEYʼRE-HAVING-MORE-BABIES-AT-

THEIR-HOUSE footed pajamas were black. The dinosaurs on those jammies were no longer recognizable. My husband, Jim, was standing at the bathroom sink, furiously trying to scrub ink off of his own face. The area rug in Nolanʼs bedroom looked like a crime scene; it only lacked the yellow tape wrapped around the door and a detective standing nearby with a donut in one hand, as he nodded and said, “It looks like the perpetrator carried the ink from the desk to HERE... and then... just turned it upside down.” Nolan was on his hands and knees, scrubbing OUR BELOVED HARDWOOD FLOORS with a wet bath towel.

Of course, it was one of our better bath towels, because at this house, we have better bath towels, not-so-good-any-more bath towels, and the bath towels that are frayed enough to be relegated to YOU CAN TAKE THIS ONE TO THE LAKE AND WRAP UP ALL THE FROGS YOU CATCH WITH IT. This isnʼt the Ritz-Carlton around here, with all of their Egyptian cotton towels that fluff up to be the size of a Volkswagen bus.

Someone might just have well announced, “Your house is on fire!” that Thursday morning; it would have created the same level of adrenaline explosion inside of me, all before Iʼd had my cup of coffee.

Jim came back from our master bathroom, and his face was relatively clean. I was happy for that, because itʼs kind of hard to explain stuff like that at the office. Of course, he was missing his top layer of epidermis, but he was stain-free.

We all burst into action that morning, which is so much fun, when youʼre driven by the ticking of the clock and the threat of a pink tardy slip for your 7th grader. We scrubbed exactly like Cinderella hopped up on a decent cold medication, while we listened to Nolan chant, “Iʼm so sorry! Iʼm so sorry! I forgot to put the lid on my ink!”

Nash was left to stand there, as black as the sin of dumping out India ink indoors, while we fought to save the floors. The salvation of my hardwoods ranked a bit higher than cleaning up the baby that morning.

Donʼt judge.

Iʼm happy to announce that the local company who installed our floors and chose a nice polyurethane for us knew what they were doing. Apparently, they anticipate a life of REAL LIVING on the floors they lay. The India ink came OFF the floors.

And the angels sang HALLELUJAH.

The ink did not, however, come off of the area rug or the dinosaur-covered, footed pajamas that we were planning to give back to the original owner, once we outgrew them. Both of these, along with two of our better bath towels, went to be with Jesus. Theyʼre resting comfortably in the landfill.

The moral of this story is that real life happens. No matter how many photos we pin on Pinterest of pristine and clean houses and educational activities for toddlers, things are going to explode around us. No one ever pins those kinds of moments, because we like to create an illusion that we have it all together on Thursday mornings before school. Itʼs pretty much exactly what Jesus does for us. He takes the black-as-the-India-ink sin that weʼve spilled all over ourselves, and He cleans it up. (He probably uses the luxury bath towels, with His monogram on them, too.) He wipes our sins clean, and then He tells us, “But this part? Well, it has to go to the landfill, if you want to continue following Me. We have to get rid of this part completely and forever. But the stuff thatʼs left, I can clean up quite nicely.”

Iʼm thankful for that. Iʼm thankful that Jesus can clean me up, and shows me what needs to go. And Iʼm thankful that He entrusted these two precious boys to me and Jim.

I can say that, because my hardwood floors are still unblemished. Had they not come clean, the boys might have found themselves on eBay.

- Tammy Billings, MOPS Mom

Tammy is a wife and mother of 2 children, ages 13 and 1 1/2. She has recently joined MOPS in support of entering the baby and toddler years once again, blessedly, but somewhat unexpectedly. Her presence at our MOPS meetings is a comfort, her love for Jesus a special and hefty gift, and her sense of humor a brilliant light. She keeps us all laughing at the beauty and difficulty of motherhood through her personal blog Jedi Mama: Life at a Jedi House. We are hoping to hear from her often here on the Morning MOPS Blog!