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Help Them Rise

She flips through that old box pulling out the stained tattered piece of parchment.  The one her dearest friend had scribbled out instructions upon.  It's one of the few tangible things she has left.  Lying it on the granite before her, she pulls from the pantry.  She labors to grind the wheat.  Runs the water paying close attention to it's temperature.  Too cold - the loaves won't rise.  Too hot - she'll kill the yeast and the loaves won't rise.  Either way she'll have bread good for nothing but pig slop.  Carefully, she stirs.  Waits.  Eventually it comes: the turning out of cool dough.  Then the work begins as she kneads the mound into something pliable.  Her hands consumed with the sticky mess.  More waiting.  Finally, the shaping of loaves.  She places them in the cast iron and lowers them into the heat until they're golden, beautiful and ring hollow.  The process takes time but it's therapeutic to her soul.

Tonight they'll slice the loaves...slather with butter and spread the jam thick.
Tummies full...all is well.

She's been making bread since she was five.
It's an art.
It takes patience and practice and a willingness to learn.
She loves it.

She's been a mom for almost twenty-two years now.
Shaping lives is an art.
It takes patience and prayer
A willingness to learn...always a willing spirit to learn even from those she is to teach.
It's been her calling.
The greatest thing in her life.
She loves it...even the chaos.

Bread making can be like child rearing.  We need first to read the right instructions.  Place before us the right ingredients.  It always starts in our own hearts...doesn't it?  If we're too cold - our children won't be nurtured won't rise to their potential.  Too hot - we kill their spirit and make them wither away.  Slowly, we stir everything together and wait.  We wait.  The hardest part of the journey is in the waiting.  Then the kneading. It always comes stretching both child and parent.  Then we wait some more.  All this so they can be shaped into what God made them to be...so we can all be shaped into what God made us to be.  They'll walk through the fire of this life and God will refine their hearts.  Emptying themselves of themselves.  Hollow.  He will fill them.  So when their lives are shared with others...the glory of God shared with others...It will be golden...beautiful...rich and make those they serve full.


Until then...
Jessie
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