It All Started with a Fruity Chicken Salad

Yet another decision made by the seat of my pants. I am not immune to the creature-of-habit-habit, but I am highly adaptable and pretty easily persuaded. I went to Chic-fil-a for the 3rd time this week for lunch (not addicted, rather working with limited options) and ordered the new chicken market salad, as suggested by Jackie. It’s phenomenal. I'm certainly glad she chose to mention it to me today. New is exciting, when it is not busy being terrifying. But I digress.

 

The seat-of-the-pants decision was not about the salad so much as the blog. I am a slightly schizophrenic mother of two working full time in a church. My husband is also married to a nice quaint little jazzy Sicilian-American spot in the suburb of Chester, VA called Sapori. We both work, A LOT. Our hours are inverse, so we don’t see much of each other during the week. I have decided to busy myself with ALL KINDS of projects since taking this job (we used to work together at the restaurant).

When I say all kinds, I really mean ALL Kinds. Now soccer practice keeps us busy on Tuesday nights and AWANA at church on Wednesday night, but that leaves Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to find work for my idle hands. I have been the social media mouthpiece for the restaurant, trying to keep up with the foodies in Richmond, VA to squeeze in pithy and relevant tweets to grab their attention. (It worked, but that’s another post). I sell Premier Designs Jewelry, and I love it. Briefly addicted to Pinterest and Polyvore, I developed this neat little obsession with creating outfits on Photoshop to wear with my jewelry useful for creating a fun social media presence. I was really diligent with that, for about 2 weeks. Then I decided I wanted to stay busy other ways, ways that were more tangible, so I started my daughter's first year scrapbook (she's almost 3). I am still a bit more than halfway done with that project. Next up: quilting; I have finished about 5 squares, just about 20 more to go for a baby blanket. There is also the sewing machine I procured from my Mawmaw. A few YouTube tutorials in, I am still determined to get past stitching a straight line hem.

I keep getting distracted by the constant reminder of what I should be doing: reading my bible. Every good Christian should read their bible. Now, I genuinely WANT to read my bible, I do. But I'm just so...busy. My son Noah is 5 years old and getting ready to start Kindergarten. I am NOT ready for this, how did we get here so quickly? Not ok with me, but apparently time doesn’t care what I think (although it should). This means that he is going out there in the real world, where most people don’t pray or even know their bible stories. I am terrified that somehow teachers and other children will un-teach him everything I have worked so hard to teach him. Perhaps God is allowing me to tone up my saggy trust muscles this year.

This revelation about my son (and all Christians) growing up in our worldly culture that is overtly antagonistic toward religion makes me wonder, have I done a good job to prepare in my son a foundation of understanding about Jesus and his teachings? How much did we read the bible, and how much did he comprehend? How much do I comprehend, for that matter? Meanwhile, back at the church, bright neon papers were cropping up everywhere indicating that WE NEED A 4 YEAR OLD CLASS TEACHER! Well aware that I have little patience for my own 4 year old (now he is 5, but at the time he was 4), much less a room full of them, I did what logically comes next: momentarily lost my mind and decided to teach the 4 year old class in Sunday School. Lo and behold, God used it to bless the heck out of me. I love those kids like they are my own, I miss them when I don’t see them, and I am so proud of them for their strides in comprehension and retention of the information we painstakingly present to them.

Fast forward a few months and I start wanting to read scripture more and more. I can’t seem to get enough. I want to be talking to someone and have a relevant verse pop into my head. I want to be able to discuss calmly and confidently my beliefs with an atheist, a stranger, and eventually close friends and family members (a lot more at stake there) who need to hear the word of God and value it enough to determine their own faith journey. So, I began to co-teach my adult Sunday school class and apply for seminary. When I do things, I really do them.

So here I am blogging about it all over a fruity chicken salad. I hope I keep this up, its fun. I hope I don’t stop in the middle of this project. We shall see.