My kitchen mostly has been my bane. I cook there. I clean there. I stress there. I don’t want to be there, but feeding three growing boys keeps me there indefinitely. I want a trap door, to go through the floor, to disappear to a quiet world of no cooking and rest in God’s blessed presence. But breakfast and snack and lunch and snack and snack and dinner and snack tie me there. Of the many rooms in my home, the kitchen has become my castle and it’s from here that I rule. Sandwiches, ladles and soup make for lousy scepters yet the children rush in with their demands. And I command and cook, cuddle and coddle, encourage and flourish for my family in the kitchen, but in the kitchen I had been missing what I desired most: to bring unadulterated worship into this space, to shed the labor and lavish my Savior with love. How can you go into the Savior’s presence when in your presence is a pile of dishes, a dirty floor and demands for more? How can you transform the routine into a greater thing?

After nine years of pleading and pressing through
After stumbling from false prayer starts to settle fussy babies then trying to make it through
After murmuring and complaining that I can’t make it through
After wanting to give up, sometimes giving up, prayer and knowing without it I couldn’t make it through

After crying and crying out and snottin’ and shouting out I made it through with the “afters” in my rearview, my daily list of gratitude driving them far from me. So in the kitchen on an early morning after quieting the 2 year old back to sleep and making lunches for the day I began to praise: the gift of running water to rinse the knife makes me utter praise; the gift of three types of sandwich spreads has me in praise; the gift of wheat bread AND spelt bread has me singing praise; the gift of feeding my kids has me roaring in praise; the gift of a loving husband who wants to make his lunch has me in praise; and the gift of unadulterated worship comes and I am overcome and want to fall to my knees but hesitate, not wanting to drop to an unclean floor. But the One I adore was born on a dirty floor, hay maybe, among smelly barn animals and surely noises coming from more than His mother. The manger, the only place available for His birth, became the praise room for the magi, the mother and the earthly father to worship the miracle. God, the Great I AM, came in flesh, born among animal flesh and probably mess, to fulfill prophecy, His pre-creation destiny to rescue us from self. So I drop myself to my dirty floor and I worship my Savior even more, knowing that He sacrificed, coming in contact with dirty floors, soiled hearts, and unrepentant souls, ministered to know-it-alls and received anyone who called on His name. The manger door was open. When the door is open sometimes you just have to go in. I went into His presence, became reborn in His presence and came out an anyplace worshipper that only Jesus could make me be.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#391-400
Listening to the Thursday Night Bible Study CD in its entirety early this morning
Nate waking up early so I was able to put him down for a nap when Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah came over to watch a poetry DVD
The comedic styling of Nathaniel
Nathaniel and his self-satisfied looks
Hosting Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah at my home and the sweet fellowship we enjoyed
Reading Motherhood for an uninterrupted period
Waking up about 10 minutes before Justus did and was able to release, turn on the stove to be cleaned and peel an orange before he awoke
Curt calling just to check in and telling me he was thinking about taking me to the Esperanza Spaulding concert
Being able to read in bed in the quiet of morning