This morning I baked a batch of wheat bread--nothing special, just the usual household restocking. When I glanced at the loaves before sliding them in freezer bags for the coming week, I noticed something on their surface I hadn't paid much attention to before: stretch marks. The bread's scarring matches the way I've been feeling lately: stretched thin. Taken by the arm of a two-and-a-half-year-old, pulled by the leg of an army-crawling eight-month-old, and tugged on the heart by a servant-husband. The everyday pulls.
The everyday and the extra yanks leave me burning, burdened, burned out. I know my tasks are kingdom work--relentless work--, but it doesn't prevent me from wondering how much more elasticity I have in me before I break.
Like the bread on the counter, I wear the scars of a work-in-progress, uneven and battered. But those flaws give the bread its character, its beauty; they are marks of the Artist, re-purposing the brokenness for his glory.
A bed-headed boy wakes hungry from his nap. Points to the scarred bread. I cut two slices, slather on crunchy peanut butter and homemade blueberry jam, and we commune together, feasting on the broken bread in the quiet afternoon.
Lovely post, Orpah. My paternal grandfather took up stitchery in his retirement, and one little piece he made for my mother perches on the top of the fridge. Your post made me think of it. It reads:
ReplyDeleteMaking Bread
Baking Bread
Breaking Bread
Being Bread