Scrambled Egg Omelet

“Oh, no! Why did I do that?”  “I’m so stupid!”  “How did I get in this mess?”

Have you ever had such thoughts as above?  I feel certain that everyone reading this can identify with that sinking feeling that comes when we have said or done something, and immediately, but too late, we know it was the wrong thing.  We are aghast!  We know that, not one foot, but both feet are in our mouths!  We want to run away and never be seen again!  If only we could change our identity!  Why can’t we just disappear?  Such feelings are terrible and we wonder if we can survive and face people again.  Makes me think of a scrambled egg omelet.

I love to cook.  For those of you who have known me 40 years plus, you are no doubt giggling, remembering my days when I could not boil an egg.  I abhorred the very idea of cooking.  In school I did whatever I could to finagle my way out of taking Home Economics.  Dreadful!  Then I went to Central Asia.

When I arrived in this Russian speaking country, where I knew not a word of Russian at that time, I was given a stack of ration tickets for so many eggs per month, so much sugar, etc.  Of course, I couldn’t read a recipe.  So, going to the open air market I began to buy things to eat, went home, stared at my purchases, got out a pot, and began my culinary adventure.  It was a quick and surprising discovery that I loved cooking.  It was the creation part.  Throwing things together to see what would happen became a happy endeavour.  It was then that I knew my problem had been recipes.  I just hate them: a teaspoon of this, half cup of that, stir, fold, bake.  I couldn’t stand it, but creating something by trial and error, I loved.  All these years later I find cooking a relaxation that I look forward to each day.

My mother and I enjoy eating a cheese and onion omelet with a salad.  There are those moments when the omelet is beautiful.  It folds over just right and lifts onto the plate in perfection.  Then, there are those moments when I announce, “as it happens, today we are having scrambled egg omelet.”  I need not explain why.

So much of life is just like a scrambled egg omelet.  We intend to do our best.  The desire is there, but as much a surprise to us and everyone else, we suddenly have both feet inserted into that gaping hole that said the wrong thing — again!  Take heart, because we, like the omelet, are a work in progress.  Our Heavenly Father never gives up on us; why should we give up on ourselves?  After all, as my mother recently said when I presented her with a scrambled egg omelet, “tastes the same.”

“But now, Oh Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand.”  Isaiah 64:8