Food For Thought

Yesterday was a day jam-packed full of parties, soccer, errands -all the things which make me feel like weekends are way more work than a regular old weekday.

Cooper (my youngest son) and I attended the Baptism of a dear friend, after which we celebrated by eating CAKE.

Cooper pointed to a corner piece with a giant red icing flower on it, "I want that one."

"Of course you do, " I thought, with my eyes rolling in my head. What I said was, "Coop, we are going to be eating junk all day, how about half of this piece which is already cut."

"OK, but I want the whole piece."

I gave in, he ate it. Then we dashed from the Baptism celebration to a friend's birthday party. During which he had bubblegum ice cream and CAKE. Oh boy, I am thinking we are on sugar overload.

Then last night, we had our family celebration for Jackson (my middle son who turned 9). I should preface this next sentence with the fact that we did eat a nice big, healthy, home cooked meal, but we all also had...you guessed it...CAKE! And for Cooper, it was his third round of cake.

I was thinking about this as I tucked him into bed and he was completing melting down - I guess coming down off his sugar high. It's often all or nothing, feast or famine.

When there's too much cake it just isn't special anymore, it doesn't seem sweet or like it's something to be savored. Like too much soccer, too many parties, too many emails, phone calls. It all just becomes ordinary and we don't savor the fun and celebration of life.

But, also when there's too little cake we crave something more, so we search and search for something to satisfy that hunger. Like when there's too little love, too little forgiveness, too little enjoying what we are given.

Feast or famine, all or nothing. It leaves us with a stomachache.

What was it Jesus prayed? "Give us this day our daily bread." Give us what we need, what satisfies our hunger. I truly believe that we are given more than we need. Saying it's all about 'moderation' seems way too easy to me - we know that. I think digesting all that fills up our lives is more about savoring....