Blueberry Waffle

ser·en·dip·i·ty

 noun \ˌser-ən-ˈdi-pə-tē\

I remember being very OCD when I was little.  I actually measured my pink bedspread on each side to make sure it was even and used a wire hanger to smooth the wrinkles out.  I think I was 8.  Don’t even get me started about my dresser drawers.  I had to fold my undergarments just so, and heaven forbid my mom put anything in them if they weren’t folded to my specifications.  Like I said, I was OCD.  I slowly mellowed as I got older but it wasn’t until God gave me boys that I truly got over it.

Which brings me to today.

Today is my birthday.  I had breakfast in bed.  Meaning I found a half eaten waffle under the covers at the end of the 5 year old’s bed this morning, smuggled in from the night before.  Along with a phone book (I didn’t even know we still had a phone book?!), 3 rubber bands, a cheese stick wrapper, a pen, and a sealed envelope which I think contains my birthday list that he painstakingly rewrote twice.  I then went to the upper bunk where my 7 year old sleeps.  No waffle.  But he did have one straw, a sleep mask which belongs to me, a hand full of legos, and a pamphlet on how to play a Tin Penny Whistle from Colonial Williamsburg.

Now if you didn’t know me based upon that last paragraph you would swear we were messy slobs.  Can I just tell you that not 24 hours earlier our house had been scrubbed clean from top to bottom and all the sheets washed and changed?

Let’s get back to today.  I have to believe that there is some significance to the fact that my birthday falls the day after Good Friday and the day before Easter.  The day after an ending so that there can be a new beginning.  But, wait, there is more…I’m 41 today.  I just completed 40 years.  A 40 something time period, whether days, months or years is always a period of testing, trial or probation and ends with a period of restoration, or renewal.  Think Noah and rain for 40 days and 40 nights, or Moses on the mountain…40 days, Israelites wandering…40 years, Jesus in the wilderness…40 days.

So today is a giant brand new renewal.  God’s been working on me in big and small ways.  The waffle is a small way but if 20 years ago I had found a half eaten linty waffle I would have changed the sheets and ranted.  Today I contemplated eating it.

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I think I just got a reminder in the form of one half-eaten blueberry waffle found under a bed. Coincidence, I think not.  Serendipitous, yes.