Waffles and Ice Cream

Mom was attending a women's retreat for the weekend, so it was up to Dad to help my brother and I survive the weekend without her.  I don't remember having any strong feelings about it, actually.  It felt weird and we missed her, but we were still expecting it to be a fairly normal weekend.

Until Friday night.

Let me give you a little background first.  At our house, if my dad was cutting-edge with technology (having bought his first Mac in 1985, I believe), my mom was cutting-edge with health.  I think if I had been my mom's career counselor in college, I would have nudged her in the direction of becoming a nutritionist.  She tried for several months to trick us into drinking the newly-released "Better-Than-Milk" powdered soymilk.  Unfortunately, the Keele noses could smell the difference long before it made it to our lips, thus avoiding the catastrophe of a mouthful of the nasty stuff.

Mom trained us early to read food labels.  By the time I was six, I knew that Monosodium glutamate should be avoided at all costs (except the "Oriental" flavor of Ramen now and then). We knew that we couldn't buy cereal that had sugar as the second ingredient (much less the first).  Mom's health consciousness, which I am very thankful for now, was more than an opinion--it was a worldview, only to be briefly interrupted by special occasions like birthdays and holidays.

So on that Friday night when Dad suggested that we have ice cream on waffles...our little brains nearly exploded.  Was this even possible?!  Would it not throw the world--even the universe--into utter chaos?!  How could an idea be so genius and preposterous and wonderful all at the same time!  And how had we never thought of this before?  It is one thing for a kid to come up with a crazy idea, but I think what blew our minds was that this idea came from an all-knowing adult--our Dad!

Disbelief and shock melted into awe and wonder as we watched Dad pull out the ice cream, after he finished making the waffles.  He was really going to do it!  We could hardly believe our eyes or our taste-buds as, one bite after another, sweet, icey, waffley goodness filled our senses.  It was better than we ever could ever have imagined!  And with those precious mouthfuls, an ordinary weekend became unforgettable.

Believe it or not, we are quite limited in our human ability to comprehend God's plans--for our lives, and for the world around us.  As we pray for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, we should be prepared for our reality to be interrupted with God's waffles-and-ice-cream, mind-blowing reality.

"My thoughts are completely different from yours," says the Lord.  "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.  For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."  Is. 55:8,9

Honoring both my parents tonight.