A Ruined Routine

Routine gives us security. For instance, the alarm goes off on my IPhone every morning of the work week at 5:00 am. I do the double click click and go back to sleep. Five minutes later I am double click clicking and trying to make up my mind if I really have to pee bad enough to get up right that minute. Five minutes later I am up and in the bathroom staring at the toilet bowl from on high, ---not the up close college stare. I let the dog out, start the coffee and jump in the shower. I brush my teeth first, lather up head to toe next, and then break out the razor to tidy up the beard outline. The curtain is pulled back from the right side; I grab my towel, close the curtain to dry off, then pull the curtain all the way back from right to left and step out. Any deviation from this routine can send the whole morning spiraling out of control. Routine is good.

Many mornings I stop at the rural Shell station just down the road from me. I park in the same spot most days, walk in, get my Diet Pepsi and ask for a sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit from the guy who has been working mornings forever. Our relationship represents the perfect world of mindless transactions. I ask for the biscuit almost every day; he walks over to the warmer, deftly plucks me a biscuit from the mass of biscuits with his shiny tongs, and plops it down on the counter and every morning, promptly asks me if I would like a sack, to which I reply every morning “No.” I swipe my card and every morning he asks me, “Debit or credit?” to which, every morning, I reply, “credit.”

This scene was played out every morning for several months with no mishaps, no prying questions about me, my family or my health, and certainly no feigned wishing me a great day. I came I bought I left. He could care less about me and my day. It was a nice arrangement. Then one morning all that changed.

The day started as usual, and I arrived at the usual time and the usual spot at my rural Shell station. I walked in, got my Diet Pepsi and came face to face with New Guy. He didn’t look like my Old Guy---a balding, frumpy fellow with an 8 o’clock shadow whose sparse hair was always disheveled and who had a haggard hang dog look most mornings.He had to be in his mid-thirties going on old. No, New Guy looked crisp. A thick head full of black, I suspect Persian, hair neatly combed and slick to the eye. His dark, bright eyes peeped out from behind his not unstylish glasses and his broad mouth peeled open to dazzling white teeth and the words, “Good Morning.”

The whole incident startled me. My routine appeared in jeopardy. I asked for my usual sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit. New Guy’s movement to the warmer seemed sure and practiced. He slid back the rear glass deftly but then haltingly took the tongs in hand. He repeated again what kind of biscuit I had requested and I concurred. He nervously clicked the tongs together and peered in amongst the biscuits like a clerk at Petco trying to decide which Neon Tetra to nab. He nervously clicked his tongs again and then started lifting every biscuit under the hot lights and looking at their undersides like he was trying to pick out a male kitten. After a considerable number of misfires, he settled on the biscuit with the right look and marched it over to the register.

 Without asking my druthers, New Guy commenced the painful task of rubbing open the plastic sack that I was apparently required to take along. His thumb and pointer finger couldn’t manage the task, so an application of saliva to the finger tips made the operation possible and my biscuit and Diet Pepsi were bagged as I swiped my card. I derived some security from the inevitable “Debit or Credit” utterance but that small comfort was destroyed with the beneficent benediction of “Have a good day, sir” being flung at my back.

I crawled in the truck depressed and out of sorts at such a bad start to the day and drove under a cloud all the way to work. Perhaps my Old Guy was just sick. Tomorrow’s a new day I told myself. But it wasn’t. 

For weeks now New Guy has been picking out my sausage-egg- and cheese kitten, forcing me to take a sack and flashing that dazzlingly bright smile of his. I suppose this is to be my New Normal. But, it is maddening that on those days when I lather up first and brush my teeth second and let the dog make the coffee and start my day out all wrong that I can’t just hustle in for my Diet Pepsi and biscuit. No, I have to wait for the search and wait for the bag and feel the weight of “Have a good day, sir” cast on my hurried back. But it is a routine…I guess. 

Hold the Fort

My sweet wife just asked me why she has to have a child who needs so much help on school work. I didn’t answer. I know her heart.

She wasn't faulting our kid or lamenting having a child with a learning need. Neither of us would trade Caleb for some genetically altered picture of human perfection. She was asking a question with deeper roots: Why is life so full of toil and vexation? Oh, she knows the answer. We both know the theology of the Fall of Man. What we struggle with is the accumulated weight of that Fall, the weight that bears down on us from every angle all the time with never a reprieve. Or so it seems. Heather speaks as a battle scarred mother who has lost a son to cancer after a long, loosing fight. I heard her words not as a complaint but as a plea, a plea for the rest promised in Christ.

Living makes us weary, and for the life of me I cannot see how anyone can look at this world and not see the weight looming over all creation slowly grinding all things down. What fool can look out their window at the world and glory in the progress of Man? Where is the upward climb from the primordial sludge? I look out and see a rapidly accelerating slide back to that sludge. Since we will not return to our real origins as image bearers of the Most High God, we return to the ones we fabricated. We reduce ourselves to single celled filth dwellers and wonder why we live in a world of filth.

But what to do for now, until Christ returns or calls us home? We do like Paul and pour ourselves out like drink offerings for those who need us and by so doing we pour ourselves out to Jesus. When Heather slaves with our son over the math that he just can’t seem to get, she does something eternal. She is pouring herself into another, someone weaker, someone who needs her just as much as she needs Christ. She wears herself out once again--- at a good thing --- and grows weary.

Scripture commands us not to be weary in well doing, but does it command us not to be weary of having to do well? It strikes me that on some level we should be weary of this sin cursed world and long for another. But like good soldiers, we are called to fight on, weary as we may be, knowing that where and while we fight the weight of this world is pressed back and hope springs anew. The rest of Jesus is coming. We just need to hold our forts. 

Salute to Hot Biscuits

I just recently rediscovered the power of biscuits. The other evening I came in from the cold, dark, dampness of winter to be greeted by a cookie sheet bejeweled with golden brown goodness. Honestly it was a nostalgic moment as I wedged my butter knife into their flaky middles and gently pried upward in an attempt to get the perfect proportion of top to bottom. Then I sliced off a pat of butter, a generous pat, pinched its slippery sides with my fingers and tucked it between the two halves. Then I repeated the whole process for every biscuit on the sheet.

Biscuits and Karo syrup will forever represent all that is really good in the world to the little kid in me. Biscuits mean security. Biscuits mean Granny Lou and Aunt Motel and Aunt Lucille. Their homes were places I could go and stay a week or even two and never miss home. At their homes there were always biscuits, iron skillets, and the sliding of iron cookware on oven racks followed and the warm thump of oven doors closing. I don’t ever recall worrying about anything at their homes, except maybe if there might not be enough chocolate gravy for my second pair of biscuits.

Growing up so often ruins appreciation. I think I had forgotten the beauty of hot biscuits. So that night, to honor the biscuit, the ladies who made them for me, and the security of warm places, now and from my childhood, I ate three, butter laden, Karo sodden, perfectly parted symbols of warmth and security. And toasted their perfection with a tall glass of cold milk. Sometimes it’s good to be  a kid again.