The way french toast softens and expands

  I watch the bread get soft, expansive. All of the liquid protein, calcium, and vitamin D now hiding within the bread.

Mornings in this house, I am the first one awake, and the second one awake is my one year old son.  He and I have become very good at cooking delicious breakfasts together.  I hold him in one arm and cook with the other.  My right hand holds (in turns) the spatula, the fork,  and does (in turns) the mixing, flipping and covering.  My left hand holds (all at once) the fascination, curiosity, wonder, delight, and sometimes frustration of a 20+ pound boy.  

He loves to watch the cooking process.  

    All this week, I have been feeding my household French Toast.  Before this week, I have never fed them french toast, but they loved it the first day, so I keep right on making it and changing up the recipe. 

My Method:   First, soak the bread in a mixture of milk, cinnamon, and egg, one or two or three or more eggs depending on how many children you have and how much protein you are trying to sneak into them. I let the bread soak for at least 5 minutes so that it is really soft.  (Especially if you are using gluten free bread.) Then I put butter in the skillet and let it melt and spread.  Put the pre-soaked bread into a skillet.  Pour most of the liquid in which the bread was soaking on top of the bread in the pan. This next step is optional but very wonderful: I then cut banana wheels and cover the bread with them, and on top of that, I sprinkle a little brown sugar.  Cover with a lid and let cook on medium to medium low for 5-7 minutes-ish.  Flip over.  Flipping while keeping the bananas in place is a bit of a trick, You will have to put your one year old child down for this,  and he will not understand, but he will be comforted once you pick him up again and show him what you have just done. (Singing him a song also helps. Giving him a drink of milk while you flip also helps.)  Then cover the other side of the French Toast with a layer of banana wheels and a sprinkle of brown sugar.  Flip a few more times until it looks just golden tinged enough.  The whole thing will be expansive and soft, easily breaking apart with a fork.  

Serve with butter.  

It does not need syrup. 

   

The trick to French toast is just that it has to sit and soak the good stuff in.  It has to soften and expand. 

 (And I sit with the Lord, I spend time soaking up His word, I spend time in prayer, I spend time resting quietly at His feet.)  

And There is no way my one year old can understand this.  

(And there is no way my 38 and a half year old mind can comprehend what the eternal Lord of the universe is cooking, or how.) 

 One Year Old son sees the food about to be prepared and put together and wonders why he isn't already eating right this instant.  When I look at my one year old, I think to myself all of the loving that a mind can think. I think so many loving thoughts that my mind feels it may explode. I feel all of the mushy softness of my own heart and soul, mushy softness born of sitting and soaking in the Lord's goodness to me, where I could never have understood his thoughts, His ways, His timing and reasons,  and I know that no explanation will make sense of this to my one year old.  So I comfort him, I hold him, I sing to him, I SHOW him what I am doing.  He gets distracted and fascination takes over his regret.  And then again, he does not understand when the food has been cooked, but is still too hot for his mouth, so he has to wait another two minutes, tops? But then after that two minutes when he sits down to eat?  Pure pleasure, satisfaction, contentment.  He sits back in his high chair and asks for milk.  I gladly refill his cup.  He drinks delight, having forgotten his former frustrations, and   never even having the hindsight to understand why he had to experience frustration at all. He is happy and content with his full belly.

I think sometimes I am both the food my Lord is preparing, softening, soaking, filling with every good thing on this side, and also the child on his other hip, resting, waiting, watching, wondering, yet in no way comprehending.

My heart is a shell, and it has been cracked,

and crushed,

but out of shell oozed the useful stuff,

equal parts translucent and gold, for soaking in the Bread of Life.

What is the song He is singing to me, as I wait for my softening to be complete?

And if through this, I am made a meal to nourish someone else's starving soul, wouldn't all of the waiting, confusion, and discomfort have been worth it?

These words are easy to say.

They are not so easy to endure. 

We cannot know the things that the Lord is making of our lives, and we don't even always (ever?) know who we are being used to feed.

All I know is that the more I pray to be made into the person He wants me to be, to be used in the ways He wants to use me, the more I find myself in the kitchen, cooking newer, ever more creative meals for my family.

I don't think that is a coincidence. I  do think there is a lesson in that, which I am *maybe, barely, babyishly* beginning to grasp at the edges of meaning.

"But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you." -Philippians 2:17

-XOXO,