So yesterday my 11 yo son was COW. That means he was my go-to guy for the day. And he was going to help me work in the kitchen. I gave him the jobs of making corn bread and cinnamon rolls while I worked on spaghetti and bread. All was going just fine. The cinnamon rolls were rising while we were waiting on the oven to get hot. He asked if there was anything else and I suggested that he make salad. I could tell he was NOT crazy about this idea b/c his siblings were at the school playing. So I said for him to make the icing for the cinnamon rolls and call it a day.
I had been in the kitchen the whole time with him. I only stepped out a few minutes while he was making icing. When I came back, oh no! He put the icing all over the un-baked cinnamon rolls! I didn't know what else to do but bake them anyway.
The cinnamon rolls turned out perfect and delicious. My kitchen did not fare so well. Smoke everywhere and when I opened the oven it was like the door was stuck shut with sticky goo. How could this happen? It was just a little icing. It was a huge mess.
Well my fancy oven is self-cleaning so I hit the button. It's a long hot 4 hour cycle. When it was done, the oven did look much better but there was still work to do. Apparently it doesn't work on the bottom door part. Actually this was such a mess that it even went down into the bottom drawer and all over the pans. Yuck.
So this morning I gave that job to my son. I explained to him that it would not be easy and told him how to go about it. He scraped and cleaned and gave up. I turned him around and told him to try again. He worked some more.
This is a guy that likes to get all his stuff done as early as possible. It was 10am and he had worked on it all morning and had not even started on school. Plus his dad gave him a job to do too. I could see his struggle. This job, plus school, plus Dad's job was likely to take him all day. That meant no free time. His attitude was less than cheerful.
Time for a talk. I told him that while I could sympathize with his situation, it was just a fact of life that if you make a mess you must clean it up. It doesn't matter if you meant to make the mess or not. He asked me about COW and if it was a privilege then why did it mean more work instead of less. Good question. So we talked about not living for ourselves but living for God and serving others. He had the privilege of serving the family yesterday by cooking our meals. His siblings did not. I told him what it meant to live for Christ and that we are not our own anymore. We talked about his reluctance to make salad for the family yesterday so that he could live for himself. While free time is nice, it is also a privilege and not an entitlement. What a sad and boring life if we live only for ourselves!
Well as it turned out he finished school, finished the job Dad gave him, AND cleaned the oven all before Dad came home at 3:30. His attitude was better and the oven survived.
Who knew that there was so much learn by making cinnamon rolls? I am amazed at the lessons the Lord teaches me in the smallest things and I am glad for the opportunity to relate them to my kids everyday.
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