This week, my mom made a big old batch of the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. I've literally been eating batches of this cookie since I could eat solids. Which is probably why I will die from Crisco congestion rather than aspartame tumors. The latter problem only started in about 5th or 6th grade with the Diet Pepsi-and-dill pickles-as-an-after-school-snack phase.
Mom always puts in more chips than Mrs. Crocker calls for in said cookie recipe, which you think would solve the problem of too much dough and not enough chip once the baking process is complete. Well, it doesn't always go like that. You see, today, when I was eating these pieces of heaven, I noticed something interesting.
Most of the cookies were perfectly balanced. Just enough dough to keep things neatly suspended, not to many chips that would cause unwanted crumblings in the hand. But there were others. There were some cookies that had too many chips, so that they did crumble. These cookies left "chip tracks" on my warm palm. My mouth took a bite and said, "Woah. Not normal. But super good times."
Then I would come across the cookie that held just one, single, solitary chip. I kid you not. For all of the extra thought and love that went into the entire batch, there was still these few cookies that fell way below the median on chip quantity. I was eating one and it felt like I was lost in this vast brown sugar, butter and flour cloud. My mouth said, "Woah. Not normal. But I sure do love a break from chocolate that includes butter and brown sugar."
I finally found the one chip, hanging out way on the edge of the thing. I wondered if my mom had suddenly come to the end of the bowl realized that she had more dough than chip. Then I found other similar cookie situations. At that point, I also realized she was baking really late that night and probably just didn't pay attention to that part of the process. I mean, who would?
Even though my mom baked these in the fashion she's been doing since 1970 and even though there was a bunch of love baked into that batch, because they weren't just for me (half went to someone that needed a little extra support this week), there was still the imperfect specimen. I inevitably found under-loaded or overloaded cookies. And they were still the best cookies in the world and worth gobbling up.
So how does that relate to my feelings about where my life is at these days? Well, I just realized that sometimes we make it seem like a "less than" situation when we get less chips in our cookie. Less isn't always bad. Sometimes we give too much importance when we pull out the "more than" cookie to enjoy. More isn't always better. As someone once said, sometimes it's just more.
When we go through times of more or less, it doesn't mean that God planned on giving us less or more to make is feel a certain way about ourselves. He gives us exactly what we need at exactly the right time. He loves us at the same level whether we are satisfied or not, broke or not, out of gas or ready to carpool. When we start only looking at what we had in the past or at what He has chosen to allow others to experience and have, then we get in trouble.
I'll be honest. I've been funked out lately. I am starting this new path but I still get side tracked when I look at where my friends and family all are. It can go down hill quickly from there. Yes, I know that what things look like on the outside is often not what is going on in reality. But I still will find my self wanting more, wanting one of those chip overload editions. I don't want stuff, but things like kids, my own living space, to be able to have only my food stocked in the fridge again, a car that doesn't sound like it's going to launch to the moon.
So, I'll be practicing cookie contentment for a while. I know that there is a purpose to what I am doing now. I also know that God is the one that made this path for me. When I am in the middle of a one chip cookie, that's is o.k. I will take the time to relish in the brown sugar and butter. It's all part of the same batch, you know.
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