“Lord, grant me a sense of humor to laugh at myself”

  

After my humiliating flailings and flounderings during those first few days, I decided that with God's help, I would do Lomalinda life the best I could until I knew how to do it better.

“No matter what went down yesterday,” writes Ann Voskamp, “today’s your very own fresh new canvas and there really is hope: ‘The future is as bright as the faithfulness of God.’

 

“Right now through your unlikely desert places, God is making unbelievable roads. . . . You better believe it! Just go face the day with brave joy—God’s got your back.” (Ann Voskamp)

 

“Brave joy.” I like that.

 

And these words of Jesus sound so good at such a time: “I don’t condemn you. Proceed with peace. Choose to act with strength so you can live differently in the future”(John 8:11).

 

My heart felt cheered.

 

But in reality, I was still in transition, and transitions can be a time of fumbling through blunders.

 

On one of those first few days, someone asked me to make cinnamon rolls for an event, but I didn’t know weevils lived in the flour.

 

I’d never heard of weevils living in flour—what a sheltered life I had lived.

 

And I didn’t know what to do about them.

 

Only later did I learn I could (1) put the flour in the freezer and freeze those critters to death, or (2) spread the flour on a cookie sheet and bake them to death. Then all I had to do was sift out their crisp dead little bodies. 

But I didn’t know that yet, and I stood there in my kitchen, clueless, with flour in the bowl and a few dozen weevils jumping into the air and diving into the flour again. 

What could I do? 

That day I stumbled upon a third way to murder weevils: I added the liquid ingredients and drowned them. They experienced a slow death. They kept trying to escape but I punched them back into the dough. 

And then I baked them. Dead. 

And I arrived at the big event with my cinnamon rolls, speckled inside with little black crunchy bits. 

Still today I laugh when I think about those cinnamon rolls. 

I’ve often wondered if anyone recognized what I’d done and snickered behind my back. 

On the other hand, several other people also brought cinnamon rolls—so maybe no one knew which were mine. . . ? 

Nah, I was the only newcomer at the gathering. Everyone knew I was the only one who’d show up with weevils in my cinnamon rolls. But those dear folks extended grace upon grace to me during my transition. 

And, like discovering a third way to murder weevils,

I would learn new ways of living, and even thriving,

in Lomalinda.

(from Chapter 9, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)