Day 1: Breakfast

This post is a part of 40 Days of Writing the Everyday, a creative exercise I’m doing along with Callie Feyen and other friends over at Exhale Creativity. “”Forty Day of Writing the Everyday,” is a creative endeavor designed to help us reclaim our days, and find the thrill in them, or, perhaps if that is taking it too far, feel content with creating something from our everyday lives.”

Mornings are a bit different with a kid in elementary school. Every once in a while, there’s a day when I actually have to go into her room and wake her up, groaning and pulling away from my touch, and my mind’s eye flashes forward to this scene, 6 years from now. I wonder if she’ll still ask me for chocolate & peanut butter sandwiches and Lucky Charms at 12. I probably had poptarts more often than not, not to mention Little Debbies in my lunch every day, I think to myself, and I turned out okay. 

I turned out okay. Poptarts and Little Debbies didn’t ruin me and, come to think of it, I wasn’t ever ruined at all. Even things less than ideal, painful as some were and even are, did not undo me. They made me. Even things formed in my  character and habits that I practice to undo, or false beliefs I work to un-learn, the undoing and the un-learning is all a part of a journey that leads me to greater discovery of self and of the world and God in and around me. 

Is there any way to ruin a person? Does a mother or father or perpetrator of some evil even have that power over another person?

Seems like we are made in the image of a God who can turn ashes to beauty, empty to full, heritage to inheritance, crooked into straight, unknown to known, known wrongly to known rightly, known in part to known fully, and death to life. Hungry to full. 

Breakfast does not make or break a person, no matter how many articles feed our mom guilt. These kids can’t be ruined, dear one. Take a breath, give them their breakfast, and watch Him do the rest for their lifetime.