Fry, Fry Again

A friend was telling me about going to a restaurant for...are you ready for this...chicken fried bacon. No kidding. Can you imagine looking at bacon and thinking, “Okay, just in case it’s not unhealthy enough, let’s just fry it again”? Chicken fried bacon! I think it comes with a side order of defibrillator.

Couldn’t their slogan be: “double your pleasure, double your heart disease”? Although I have to wonder if the extra fried stuff really does make it that much better or if you just end up losing the whole bacon-ness of it all--missing the best part.

It made me think of the privilege of prayer, and the double pleasure we can find there. Sometimes we do miss the best part of all. There is power in prayer and I believe our prayers can even influence God’s decisions. But doubled with that truth is the truth that prayer is not designed to force God to see things our way, to change his mind about what we want. Prayer is about helping us see things his way, to help us put on his mind.

Deuteronomy 4:29 says to “Seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul,” (NKJV).

So I’m asking the Lord to help me keep that heart-and-soul-seeking kind of prayer in mind. Every day.

And as far as that whole chicken fried bacon thing goes, maybe I should be a little more open minded. You know, maybe if before that second frying, they rolled it in LIPITOR....

Ready for Heart Day!

I went to buy a Valentine card for my Valentine. Last minute this year. That means I had to shove ten thousand guys over. All the women? Most of them did their Valentine’s Day shopping a couple of weeks ago. It was so embarrassing to be stuck in there with all those last-minute guy-shoppers.

The card rack told the story. All the cards for hubbies and boyfriends? Picked almost clean. Then there was the wife/girlfriend section. Fully stocked with hardly a card out of place.

Yeah, the last-minute life really can get embarrassing. That’s one reason I want to do what the Bible tells me and “be ready” when Jesus comes. I don’t want to be red-faced when we hear that trumpet solo and I know my One True Love has arrived. I want to get to say something like, “Knew he was coming. Bought the card weeks ago.” Yessiree, I want to be ready.

Hey, I’m shooting for being more ready next Valentine’s Day, too. This year, I bought two cards.

Holy High-Calorie Breakfast!

I started a new diet around the first of the year--with about a hundred thousand other Americans. I’ve had to set a 1200-calorie goal for myself. Of course, being the goal-oriented person I am, I keep meeting my goal…before lunch.

Hey, I’m an over-achiever.

There’s one particular goal, though, that we all need to set. And achieve. Our ultimate goal should always be holiness. To look like Jesus. It’s like the banner goal that flies over every other little goal in life.

Once we understand the goal, distractions are so much easier to sort out of our day, and they lose their power to rob us of our fruitfulness. So. Time to rethink a few goals, maybe?

Incidentally, I have been rethinking some of those calorie goals. I just found out that a couple of my favorite coffee drinks have enough calories to take up my allowance through mid-afternoon. Of next Tuesday.

Hair with SIZZLE

I’m so glad I’m past the perm days. You know, those days of chicken-fried bangs that look like Velcro?

Actually, that really only means that I’ve found NEW ways to chicken-fry my hair. Hair color, highlights, flat irons, various other sizzling chemicals and tools--I’m telling you, I usually stay just this side of some kind of hair implosion. I think I smell smoke.

Fried bangs may come and go--and I may not always love my hair--but loving others in the name of Jesus is always in vogue. Always will be. Even when people get difficult. And do they get difficult? Oh yeah. Sometimes they can sizzle our last nerve.

I do love it that God gives us everything we need to respond in grace when we’re living in HIS grace. And that really is the only way to live. It makes life sizzle in all the right ways.

No effect on the bangs, though.