Blessed by the Effort

 Have you ever watched somebody do something and thought, “Wow!  Look at them!  It’s great they’re trying that!  That is such a blessing!”  And in the same breath think, “It would be perfect if ________,” and fill in the blank with half a dozen things you think would make it better?  No?  Just me?  Hmm.  Ok then, moving on.

I got home from church last night (first night of revival), and my son had cooked supper and saved me a plate.  Bless his heart!  (And I mean that in a nice way.)  Was it perfect?  Nope.  Was I blessed by it?  You better believe it!  But, it would have been perfect if ___________.

After eating my 9:30 p.m. reheated supper, while everybody else had already gone to bed, I decided I’d go ahead and clean up the kitchen.  I didn’t want to.  I wanted to go to bed too.  But I knew if I left the mess I would have to look at it and smell it this morning.  Nobody wants that.  So I loaded the dishwasher, handwashed the iron skillet; but when it came down to that last pot that held the scraps, I had the real internal struggle.  Do I go out in the cold wind to rake these out, or do I leave it for tomorrow?  Everything else is done; I hate to run the dishwasher without all the dishes in there; isn’t that wasting water and detergent?  I snapped the dishwasher closed, hit the start button, and walked away.  I rewarded myself with a Little Debbie while I folded a load of towels.

I was so proud to walk into a clean kitchen to make my coffee this morning.  Until....

I got to the stove and saw the pot I had left last night.  It would have been perfect if ________.  That’s when God spoke to me, reminding me of my blessings from yesterday.  (I can just see Him standing there, rolling his eyes, one hand on His hip, the other extended to reveal the scenes.)  

“You’re not blessed by the perfect.  You’re blessed by the effort.” 

Y’all!  God doesn’t want our perfect.  He wants our effort.  Our willingness to do the simple and the hard that He asks us to do.  Not with our own abilities, but with His.  To maybe step outside our comfort zone and try, without worrying about being perfect or what the outcome will be.  Give what we've got and He'll take care of the rest.  

Y’all probably don’t see all that in my pot of leftover mac & cheese, but God gets my attention in weird ways.  Because I’m not perfect.  (Could it have been better if I had taken the scraps out last night?  Possibly.  But we won’t chase that rabbit right now.  Let’s just work with what we’ve got.)

So, is this writing perfect?  Absolutely not.  But I’m running it.  One pot short of a full load.  And I’ve already been blessed by the effort.