Recipes are telling things

At first I didn't think it was too big of a deal that I'd added 4 tablespoons of cornstarch instead of 4 teaspoons to the oil. I simply tried to scape out what of the powdery substance hadn't yet mixed with the oil -- and promptly plopped it in the sink. But this was not to be my most egregious misreading of the night.

Turns out I needed an additional tablespoon of cornstarch right at the end, and I should probably mention that a few tablespoons was all I purchased out of the oh-so-convenient bins at the market (I'm a cheapskate).

I had not read through the entire recipe before starting. This is the story of my life. Except instead of cornstarch, I throw time down the drain. Instead of mixing up tablespoons with teaspoons, I confuse vision and reality.

Sure, there are worse vices than not looking ahead, but it's a vice all the same. Just as my eyes are always bigger than my stomach in the buffet line, my ambitions are bigger than my abilities. Some day I'll learn to stop and think it out.

Of course, if I'd started doing that five years ago, I might not have landed my husband...

Oh how I love Jesus because He first loved me

The scripture that song is based on was the theme of a women's social I recently attended at church. I thought the speaker gave an amazing illustration of what this means to us in our limited human comprehension. Like a couple expecting a new baby, all the love in the world is already there, before he or she is even born. An expecting dad will talk to his wife's tummy while she lovingly caresses is it as if the baby could feel her touch. They love that baby -- a baby who's done nothing to earn that love but simply exist. That love will always be. Mom and dad can't wait to get to know their little one, to wisely impart tenderness and discipline. And one day soon, a cherub-faced toddler will look up at them and say, "I love you."

We love Him because He first loved us.

Most embarrassing moment

How did this become the go-to topic for social functions and conversational lulls? I never know what to recount when I'm asked about mine. And even if I could quickly drudge up the information, why would I want to re-tell such a thing? This is a mystery to me.

One of the reasons I have a hard time answering the dreaded question is that I don't embarrass easily -- haven't for quite awhile. When I was young, and loads more shy, I may have blushed when I inadvertently stepped on a stranger's toes or I might have wilted like a shrinking violet when I crossed the street too soon and a car honked at me. But as one of those unfortunate souls with feet that are magnetically drawn to walls and furniture corners, who also has a propensity for spoiling perfectly good shirts with splashes of coffee and red punch, it becomes exhausting to feel ashamed every time someone sees you goof. Life's too short for that. So I'll save my embarrassment energy until the day I make a (donkey) out of myself on a loud speaker or on some jumbo-tron screen.

In closing, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that if ever there was a prime opportunity for a grown woman to be embarrassed, it might have occurred last night when I put on a pair of roller-blades for the first time in seven years. I all-too-cavalierly took two glides outside our apartment building before I drifted onto grass and promptly fell on my butt. Well, that was fun while it lasted.

Thoughtless

Well not literally, but I do seem lacking in the energy and cleverness departments, which supply my writing. So I'll instead leave you with some of the great thoughts, as communicated by Mr. Clive Staples Lewis...

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

"Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed."

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."