To Boast or Not to Boast

Tonight, me and my husband are being blessed by a visit from his sisters, their husbands and one little baby. I am very excited to see my family and have them spend the day with us tomorrow; however, as the evening advanced my feelings slightly changed. When Dominick, my husband, and I first invited them I was really cool and relaxed about having guests. When he left for work, I began to think of all the things I really should do to make our guests' stay welcoming.

My first thought, naturally, was: what are we going to give them to eat? I started with breakfast. We have plenty of cereal, English muffins and bread in the house to make a sufficient for breakfast. However, this was not satisfactory to me. I decided I should make something special for them. My first thought, cinnamon rolls. Who does not like cinnamon rolls?! I pulled out my handy-dandy cookbook and found the recipe. My already forming headache slowly grew as I read the directions. I had all of the ingredients in my tiny kitchen, but I did not have the patience or energy to go through all of the pounding of dough and waiting for it to rise, etc.

I sat for a good fifteen minutes trying to decide if I should make something special for the morning meal or not. I grew frustrated and finally decided to go the grocery store to get a couple of ingredients for the onion dip and lasagna I planned on making.

I left my apartment building to brave the freezing cold. When I got to the store, I grabbed an eight ounce container of sour cream and a sixteen ounce tub of ricotta cheese. I also grabbed a bottle of soda, four small pizzas which were on sale, ice cream and salad dressing. My under-ten-dollar shopping trip turned into a twenty-dollar-plus shopping trip. Oh, well. Wait until Dominick hears that one.

I came back and tackled the onion dip first. Reading the ingredients I realized I was supposed to have sixteen ounces of sour cream, not eight. My headache throbbed especially hard after reading that. "Oh, well. You really should not be surprised about this, Christen." My mind was right; I do dumb things like that allll the time. It's really annoying.

After making half of the onion dip, I decided to have a one-on-one conference with the cookbook once more. This time I searched under muffins. Nothing exciting grabbed my attention except a fast recipe for muffins. Key word in the title being fast. I quickly made two batches of muffins which turned out okay considering the bottoms were a little overcooked and the muffin papers are not coming off too easily. Oh, well!

After making muffins and my half-amount of onion dip, I sat on the couch in preparation to watch some TV before our guests arrived. This attempt of relaxation only lasted a moment when I thought of how dirty my stove was. I groaned as I got up to defeat the grease that had accumulated on the pans under the burners. As I scrubbed those sparkling clean, the bathroom popped into my head. "I really should clean that before they come". Again, I groaned as I grabbed my equipment to clean the bathroom.

Why am I explaining to all of you my particularly pointless evening? There is a reason. Yes, I do have a point. It's probably not an interesting point to any of you out there, but I find it intriguing. Why do certain people...no, no....Why do I try so hard to please others? Do I truly have pure intentions of wanting to make my tiny apartment comfortable for my guests or are my reasons more selfish? Do I want them to think how well I take care of my apartment despite my age? Do I want them to pat me on the back and tell me how good my cooking is or how nice my apartment looks? I do not know. It just goes to show that we all need to stop and evaluate every single motive we have in every insignificant situation. This may be a sin I have to deal with. It may be small, but small things can grow to be extremely large. I encourage everyone to have a heart-to-heart with the Lord and ask Him to show you small sins that need to be recognized and defeated. God, please take away my urge to prove myself to others. "Therefore, as it is written: 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord'". I Corinthians 1:31