How Much Do I Need to Be Like Everybody Else?

Would you have imagined that a loaf of homemade bread could send me into a crumpled pile of tears on the couch?

My brother would say, Yes, please tell me what does not send you to tears, dear sister.

But ignore my brother.

We got a call last week that a very close family friend was diagnosed with colon cancer and would need surgery immediately. At the same time, his wife had fallen and broken her hand. The colon surgery was Friday, and on Sunday my husband and his brother drove to Helena to check on Bill and Shirley.

Here’s what’s going through my head before Matt leaves. (I know you’ll think less of me when you know the truth.) I should make a meal for them and send it with Matt, but I can’t. His brother is going with him, and I should have made a meal to give to his family when they were all sick with the flu last week, except I was a total loser and didn’t. What will his brother think if I make these guys a meal?

I didn’t send a meal. I didn’t do it.

The Proverbs 31 lady would have. Baaagggh.

I was in bed when Matt got home, so it wasn’t until the next morning that I saw the bread on the counter. A beautiful loaf of whole-grain bread. Shirley knows it’s my favorite, and she never fails to serve it to us when we visit or send it home with Matt when he’s over there.

Husband fresh out of surgery and a broken hand, and she manages to make me bread.

Now you see, dear brother, why I was curled up on the couch with a box of Kleenex?

Here’s something you may not know about me –I stink at food. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stood in the kitchen at 5:30 crying and apologizing to my family because I haven’t cooked anything.

I’m actually a good cook, so I don’t know what my deal is. Food just stresses me out.

I’m so weird.

But oh wow –how I love meetings and books and ideas and lesson plans and writing blog posts. Give me a conference to attend or a Bible study guide to write. Ask me to edit your paper. Invite me to lead chapel for an entire grade school. Then watch how my blood flows and my eyes light up. Need information about parenting or marriage or knowing God? Ask me and let’s talk.

But do you need chicken soup?

Um, I have a can of Progresso.

What woman hasn’t compared her abilities and giftedness to another woman and said, If only I were like her…

I love the two questions Job asks, even though they are regarding a different topic:

“Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?” (Job 31:15)

God made me.

God made Shirley.

It is by God’s design that one woman is not the same as every other woman.

I like who you are.