Mental Maintenance Day
Some days you just wake up on the struggle bus. You know the kind of day where the minute your mind clicks into to gear, it’s headed in the wrong direction. I had one of those days recently. “What if this, what if that, am I really, maybe I’m not, nobody….”, and on and on my thoughts rolled down the negativity highway, no off-ramps in sight. So I tapped the pedal and pulled up the emergency brake sliding into a “mental maintenance” day – a day just to pause and wait for the gears to cool down so the Great Mechanic can do some fine tuning.
He got right to work…signaling me to make homemade flour tortillas…”Huh, what? Why? Really, Lord? Is it because I have fond childhood memories of sitting at my friend’s tables watching their mamas, tias and abuelas crafting flour+lard into love? Lord, do I just need a comfort food hug right now? Okay, I can roll with that!” Flour, baking powder, sea salt, water and coconut oil (because only abuelitas use lard 🙂 check-check-check-check-check, I had all the ingredients for a warm embrace.
Tortilla Truths
After combining all these ingredients and kneading them into a smooth little pillow, it has to rest. 10 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is only the second time I’ve made this recipe and I have zero patience for baking, so it’s an eternity! Timer set, tidying up the flour explosion while I wait, and He begins to speak – “You know I made you, just like you are making tortillas, I made you.” I laughed a little at the cheesy illustration, because it seemed kind of basic, but I’m listening. He goes on, “I put all these ingredients together, mixed them with My hands, kneaded, rolled, formed and rested.” Now I’m fixated on His hands doing the work, then BEEP the timer goes off, time to flatten some dough!
He keeps working, re-calibrating my negative thoughts to His truth. As I roll out each tortilla, He points out how different each one is, all shapes and sizes, some a little mangled, some appear more perfect, but the same amount of love and care went into every one. Then cooking and tasting, He shows me how some turn out crispy on the edges, others are soft, some are saltier, and others more coconutty (lol, that’s me!). Gosh, these are going to be good – breakfast tacos, flatbread pizzas, dinner tacos, or just warm with butter – same batch, but all different and all delicious! I’m so proud of each imperfect one, and so is He.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
For You formed my innermost parts; You knit me [together] in my mother’s womb. Psalms 139:13
Re-routing The Struggle Bus
His love begins to pour out on me like He’s power washing the engine, blasting away the gunk. He’s overhauling the struggle bus on the highway of negativity, and transforming it into the love bus on the expressway of truth, “You are crafted by My own hands, made special and imperfect, but with love and purpose.” Did I get flour in my eyes? Why am I crying over tortillas? Because He is God, and He is good, and He can use even the simplest of things to show me how much He loves me. The truth that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by Him, what I perceived as basic like “I know this, heard it a thousand times”, hit differently in that moment and was exactly what I needed.
I will give thanks and praise to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. Psalms 139:14
I knew the minute I woke up it was going to be one of those days, BUT GOD redeemed it like only He can…from my struggle to His love through the simple, warm, beautiful truth of tortillas.
God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 1 John 4:9-10
