Acceptance: Cornbread Catastrophe -By Karla

Not Your Everyday Decoration

The second Sunday of August is deemed as a decoration day, a special occasion for our family. I sometimes explain these gatherings with a more familiar term known as family reunions, but at a church. Like many small towns in the South, our churches are often adjacent to a cemetery. Once a year, the tradition is to assemble at the church for a service. We bring flowers to decorate the graves of loved ones, honoring them and their influences in our lives. Three summer Sundays I find myself weaving the roads toward where my heart always resides, Fannin County.

A Little Too Busy

Being busy with the beginning-of-the-year school preparations, I had not been to the grocery store in a while, but  concluded that I had the ingredients to make the family popular cornbread salad. On Saturday evening, I shook the cornmeal into the bowl and added the oil. Reaching in the refrigerator, I frowned, noticing all I had was almond milk. Oh well, this will have to do. The liquid flowed into the cornmeal mixture. Realizing I  had reached the point in life when I can not beat myself up for having to use the wrong kind of milk to make cornbread. I smiled proudly, and anticipated sneaking a few bites when I took it out of the oven.

Cooling it as long as my taste buds would allow, I popped in a small bite into my mouth.

Hmmm…Something is not right! What is that?

I reached for the carton hoping it was not out-of-date when I noticed the words, “coconut almond milk”! Now, I love coconut, but not in a cornbread. How could I have not seen the picture of the freshly cut coconut on the milk? To my serious dismay, I fed some of it to the dogs, who did not seem to mind the added fruity flavor.

Consoling Myself

I went to bed feeling quite defeated. I consoled myself glad that I am the new me because the old me would have beaten myself up for messing up the only recipe I had the ingredients to make.

For so many years, I tried to be perfect. Please do not get me wrong; I knew I wasn’t. But, I somehow felt I needed to be flawless to be accepted and loved. I am not really sure where those feelings came from since I had an unconditionally loving mom, but the anxiety that accompanied my imperfections was real and not healthy for me.

Saved when I was eleven, I learned many things about Christ over the years, but during the last seven years, I have really began to mature spiritually. Carving out a daily time to read my Bible and having prayer time has made a huge difference in my life. I don’t understand how God transformed me, but He has. Now, ninety percent of the time I am totally fine with the goofy mess I am. And when I do forget the other ten percent, I try to remind myself that God created me, and He does not make mistakes.

I decided to pick up some fried chicken on the way over the mountain. However, when I got to the grocery store, they did not have any ready. So, I picked up some potato salad, which no one ate!

The Bright Side

Note to self: While it may be perfectly acceptable to bring store-bought fried chicken to our decoration dinners, don’t bother getting any store bought potato salad. It won’t get eaten. Just come on emptied-handed; you’ll be just as loved!

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4 thoughts on “Acceptance: Cornbread Catastrophe -By Karla

  1. I share in those feelings of trying to be perfect, but oh did I lack and like you I came to realize that God was truly the only one that I needed to care about, which has given me so much more freedom and Happiness! Because I’ve come to also realize that the most important thing about our family reunions is my presence which gives me so much Joy to My Heart ? So look forward to seeing everyone and just enjoy being TOGETHER ❣ I Love being a part of such a Wonderful family and pray that our children the next generation continues our Blessed tradition ?!

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