Put Some Love in It

I was driving down the road on my lunch break and I cut my eyes between the grocery store and McDonald’s.

Do I want to go in and get some home cookin’? Or do I want to wait in a line and be yelled at through a loud speaker? First world problems, I know.

I opted to go into Harp’s. This older black lady, grinning from ear to ear, called me “child” and “darlin’” after everything she said. There’s something about a buttery, Southern drawl that just gets me.

If there had been a rocking chair present, I would have curled up in her lap—she’d probably have me cut down on the fried chicken—and request that she tell me her favorite story.

She wrapped up my food and said, “You wanna know why you come here, child?”

I stopped the hurriedness that often overtakes my life and said, “Why’s that?”

“Because there’s love in this chicken. I bake love in my food.”

I sat in my car, clutching the free roll in my hand, and I felt my eyes begin to well up with tears. I don’t make a habit out of crying over macaroni and cheese (when it’s homemade, it’s negotiable), but for whatever reason, that’s what I needed to hear today.

Love is a word we throw around. It’s found in the Bible and in Taylor Swift songs. It’s what we declare to our ice cream and to our boyfriends.

We scream it at Justin Bieber and we sing it to Jesus.

But how profound is it when we say to someone else—this service I’ve provided for you; this labor I’ve performed for you; this phone call I’ve taken for you was done in love. It’s not much—but it’s what I have to give to you.

I can say that I rarely have that attitude when I go about my daily life; and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my spirit would not have matched hers if I was battering chicken tenders at my local grocery store.

God knows how to get my attention; if he keeps doing it through fried chicken, I wouldn’t complain.

But I have failed so many times this week (and it’s only Wednesday, heaven help us). In life, in marriage, in missed opportunities.

I crack a lot of jokes and have how-to marriage lists that run for miles—but sometimes ya’ll—I feel like I couldn’t be farther from having it together. Humor is sometimes as big of a mask as hypocrisy.

But I know that there’s love in me. God has created me in love and he’s baked plenty in there to last a lifetime.

It’s up to me to dish it out in heaping spoonfuls.

And I might even throw in some macaroni and cheese.