How Would You Like Your Eggs?

Nancy is not a morning person. Still, she, a new bride, and my son had gotten in late visiting Grandma and Grandpa on the farm the night before and when she and Wally heard the rooster crow and smelled the bacon frying and the coffee brewing they knew it was time to get up.

Like every new bride, Nancy wanted to make a good impression with her new husband’s family so, since she’d not gotten to the table in time to say how she liked her eggs, she couldn’t complain when she was served those golden gems sunny side up. Now what was she to do? Runny yolks nearly made her regurgitate but there they were, looking up at her, daring her to possibly hurt Grandma standing there beside her, smiling down with a platter of buttered toast. She managed to consume them but it was not easy!

Now I’m asking you to make a mental leap and imagine Mother, God, standing beside you and asking, “How would you like your life?” If you’re too late to have heard the question because you’ve run out recklessly to make wrong choices or rolled over in bed for another snooze,  must you then take whatever comes along? What if you had slept in during your youth and wasted those early days dreaming, must you now take whatever comes along and deal with it politely or risk offending God when you can’t stomach the “eggs” the way She serves them?

I have yet to meet the person who has made no mistakes in life, going willfully ahead and off track or sticking to the road dutifully but begrudgingly. Either way life has not always turned out to be to our liking. Often in one’s youth, sometimes even later in life, we make wrong choices only to suffer the consequences. Breaking rules is a fact of life. Human life, that is. We want to live life to the fullest even if it means getting hurt now and then.

Why is it we hear of people with great talents and the discipline to improve them sometimes breaking away in other directions to taste the exhilarations of temporal dangerous choices? There seems a terrible attraction of the devil (or some force like it) to find a chink in our armor, a way to side-track our potentials for success. The good meal set before us gets old so we try out other spicier fare.

When I taught an older class of high-school boys in Sunday school one of the cockier of them challenged me. He said, “Aw, who wants to go to heaven? That sounds dull to me. Rules and regulations are no fun!”

I wasn’t prepared for such straightforward talk. Usually they’d sit dutifully in class and answer what they thought I wanted to hear, checking their watches to see how much longer before they got out. I’d seen that the Biblical characters and their lessons for life hadn’t taken hold in the imaginations of the new generation before me.  They hadn’t lived long enough to grasp the connection of Moses, Jesus, the disciples, to their own lives. Teaching had been a challenge for me and I wondered if I, myself, needed an answer to this. 

Then I was hit with an idea. It was as if God was saying to all of us, “How would you like your life, harmonious or chaotic?” There’s an argument to be made for chaos. The use of darkness and shadows relieves the glorious colors of light. The struggles of life make it at least interesting, if painful. This is, after all, the story of being human. Who wants to sit and play a harp all day?

But the space program had begun then. Our astronauts had set foot on the moon and left their footprints there. They’d seen our beautiful blue earth smiling back at them from the vastness of space. No doubt they were happy to get home safely, even though it had taken a lot of people a lot of discipline and sacrifice. I said to my young challenger, “Do you think it would have been more fun for the astronauts or the engineers to have not followed the rules and failed in their endeavor?” My answer at least gave him pause.

Looking back on my own life I see how I could have more diligently applied my talents and been a greater contribution to society. I’ve been too content to stick around in the lower grades where life is easy. I’ve ventured out on wrong paths just enough to see the consequences and turn back. The one thing that grabs my interest most is learning more about what is real and what is not. I believe in a better world, a heaven on earth, that is even now cooking.

On U-Tube the other day I saw a 12 year old girl who played the piano so professionally and joyfully it held the audience in breathless wonder. Obviously, she'd faced the challenges of obeying the rules, overcoming mistakes, and the joy on her face as she felt the same music of its composer was enough to make me cry. I love to play the piano but I never got past my recital piece when I was 14. Perhaps it was not my calling. One has to have a deep passion for whatever he or she pursues. I think I’m getting near to mine although not completely defined. Maybe I still have time to get out of the playground and back to work as if it were play.

On my computer screen I see Earth sailing in space. I’m on that gorgeous orb! I’m moving thousands of miles per hour, I’m  alive! I’m glad to be free, to be of help to some and I’m grateful that I can believe in those things invisible to the naked eye, like eternal life, joy, excitement, adventure, and excellence in all things good.

How would I like my life to be? I’ll take it any way, hard-boiled, scrambled or even sunny side up! I'll look for the good and give the bad reasons to shrink. I have a dear friend who is in her 101th year and she's doing just that. So can I!