When I was a kid, I used to play down in our basement with my best friend, Karen. I remember how cool the basement was compared to the hot summer days outside. In fact, it was so cool in the basement, Karen and I would drag down blankets and pile them on top of ourselves. I always felt very snug and safe during those times. I felt somehow, like I was hidden from the world where nobody could ever find me. Of course, this was all an illusion since we were just underneath the stairs and anybody could have walked down them, peered through the slats and seen us. But nonetheless, I felt like I was safe in that cubby hole beneath the stairs, wrapped in the scratchy Afghans my grandmother had crocheted.
Fast forward to the other day. I was walking in Walmart of all places, looking for a loaf of bread. I searched up and down the aisles and couldn't find the bread anywhere. This Walmart had only opened up recently and I'd only been there once before for something completely unrelated to bread. Finally, I asked someone and they pointed me to the "bakery" section. It was a nook with shelves lined with soft loaves of bread in plastic wrappers proclaiming names I was very familiar with like Wonder and Aunt Millie's. Suddenly, as I stood there, surrounded by the familiar and comforting smell of starch, I had that same feeling of safeness that I used to get as a kid under my basement stairs. It was tempting to stay in that safe little nook surrounded by bread indefinitely. Don't ask me why a bread area in a box store made me feel that waym but it did.
It also brought to mind that lately, I've felt like I have been free falling. Circumstances and frustrations have given me the uneasy feeling of walking on a very shaky bridge, never sure if the next step will hold me or not. To be honest, it makes me feel very tired and weary. But amongst those shelves of bread, I suddenly felt cocooned and insulated from the real world, like its noise was somehow muffled.
As I made my way to the check out, my Wonder Whole Wheat Italian loaf in my cart, it hit me that I am always safe, starch or no starch. I am wrapped in the love of the Father who never lets me go and never leaves me. Not to mention, Jesus is my ever ready "bread" of life. Walmart is a strange place to have an epiphany, but I find God is just as much present in the mundane as the sublime, somehow transforming something daily into something holy. At any rate, eating toast has a whole new meaning to me now! :)
~ Blessings, Bronte
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