By Reba Phelps
Earlier this year I made the conscious decision to eat out less and cook more meals at home. Eating out had simply become a way of life over the past few years. Finding it very hard to cook for two people coupled with me being exceedingly busy…it was the perfect recipe for ordering takeout online or hitting a drive thru after a long day. With my newfound wisdom of wanting to cook more at home, I spent hours upon hours building a grocery list, presenting a menu to my daughter for approval and executing the perfect meals. Everything was working out perfectly.
That was until the one week that I had one ingredient missing from every meal that I chose to cook. I missed the heavy whipping cream I needed in order to make Marry Me Chicken. No problem, I will just move on to the next menu item of honey garlic chicken bites. But, I forgot the honey. Shucks. I will just cook the salmon, asparagus, and cauliflower. Are you kidding me… I didn’t buy the lemon pepper to season it with. At this point it was comical because who forgets to get hamburger meat for Hamburger Helper (This particular flavor also called for milk – didn’t have that either). The drive-thru was definitely utilized this week.
I wish that the story stopped there, but it continues.
My house was in need of its annual (or bi-annual at this point) pressure washing. The white vinyl siding cannot miss too many baths given our Louisiana humidity and dusty days.
When I called to make an appointment with the pressure washing business I soon remembered that the water hose spigot was broken. The freeze this past year made my water hose explode and caused a leak. I couldn’t remove the water hose because it was rusted onto the spigot, so I cut as much of the water hose off that I could with a kitchen knife. (Country girl can survive). But, it was still leaking so I gave up on life and put a bucket under the spigot to catch the water leak. In my mind, I assumed the plumbing bill would be a million dollars so I procrastinated. Ultimately, the water that leaked was used to water my ferns and summer plants.
If this story is exhausting, you should try living in my house with my kitchen where something is always missing!
The things that are missing at my home are traceable. I could make a list of everything that needs to be done, needs to purchased or needs to be repaired. But sometimes, the thing that is missing is hard to pinpoint. You can’t tell quite what it is, or what it’s not. You just know that there is a hole that needs to be filled. You may not even know how big the hole is or long it has been there. We even try to fill this hole with everything that we think will bring us comfort. It’s just that something is simply missing in your life and you can not feel peace or restful until you figure out what it is. More times than not, it is a spiritual problem.
There are parts of our heart and the deepest parts of our soul that can only be filled with a relationship with our Savior. He created us to be in constant communion with him. He created us to need him in our lives. He wants to be only source to fill the holes of loneliness, grief, sadness, anger and despair. My prayer is that when you feel like something is missing that you will turn to him and you will turn to the pages of the love story that he provided to us within the Word of God.
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Isaiah 41:10
Reba Phelps jreba.phelps@gmail.com
