Parts of a sermon ... My Hamburger Helper Confession
This blog is a shrunken version
of a sermon I gave at St. Paul Lutheran Church in the Spring of 2016. Many continue to comment on it, so I thought
I would do some editing and add it to this blog. Bon Appetit! - Pastor Kelle
You know
those times in life when life just comes into greater view? It’s like you realize you are in this moment
where the lens of life adjusts just so to where the focus of who you are and
where you are is just so much more visible and real.
I had a
moment such as this. It was a, “everyone
is going to everywhere type of night.” In
preparation for such a night, I took some hamburger out of the freezer and put
it on the counter next to the box of Hamburger Helper that my eldest son
Tristen was told was his dinner, once he made it.
Confession
time! My boys love Hamburger
Helper. Although it’s hard for me to
admit publicly, I buy Hamburger Helper with coupons, sometimes double coupons
because there always seems to be Hamburger Helper on sale with coupons – and I
take the reviews my boys leave me on their favorite flavors, and I buy them in
groups of two as it takes two boxes to feed the three boys. They love their Hamburger Helper.
I came
home from my meeting that evening, I stood there by the counter watching Tristen
make his meal, as he told me about his day.
As I’m listening, I find my eyes fixated on the Hamburger Helper as he moves
the meat and the creamy saucy concoction around in the pan, and that is the
moment that my life’s lens came into view.
I
thought to myself “This is probably not the meal that I intended when I bought
this grass fed, organic hamburger meat from Whole Foods.”
Because
that’s what I do. At least that’s what I
try to do. I shop the Whole Foods coupon
app on my phone and when protein goes on sale, I buy it. A lot of it.
Four chickens at a time. Eight
pounds of hamburger meat packaged conveniently so we can just take it out of
the freezer as we need it. I spend my
day off on Mondays finding the best deal I can on the things I think my family
needs, and I buy it. A lot of it. So, it’s there and we have it and it’s
ready.
And as I
buy it, I think of the recipes and the creative things that I can make with my
on-sale protein. And part of me feels
fulfilled as a mother, that I’m buying my family what it needs at what we can
afford to pay for it. And that is what
I’m supposed to do.
Never in those day
dreamy times at the butcher counter in Whole Foods did I get excited that
ground hamburger was on sale so we can make Hamburger Helper with it. No! That
has not been my intention ever.
And
while it may not be my intention, it is my reality. Do you see?
Am I alone here? Please, tell me
I’m not.
When we
look at this metaphorically the whole “grass fed, organic, I promise the cows
were smiling all the way to the butcher meat” is my life’s intention. It represents how I intend and try to live my
life. For myself. For my family. For God’s creation. In my effort to be authentic. To walk my talk. To literally practice what I preach. This brown wrapping bought on sale represents
who I want to be.
But the
Hamburger Helper? That’s my
reality. Monday night meetings. Baseball until 7:45pm. Homework.
The chaos of the little brother who’s never been able to find his
shoes. That’s my reality.
In
that pan, was the combination of my intention and my reality, and I watched as
my fifteen-year-old stirred, mixed and adjusted the heat because somewhere
along the way, he learned how to mix my very best intention with our reality in
a way that fed him.
For
sure, you can look at life and consider the reality of Hamburger Helper to be
subpar to what we dreamed of while at Whole Foods, or the thing you pinned from
Pinterest. Or you can realize that
sometimes reality has this way of giving us these unexpected, unplanned and
unanticipated things that maybe are even better than what we could ever have
possibly imagined them to be.
And
life is about how you let that result of your reality move you. It’s what you do when things come into focus
and you become aware.
Your
life probably has a mix like this. Maybe
it’s not Whole Foods meat and Hamburger Helper.
It’s probably something else. But
inside of your life there is this dichotomy of your intentions and your reality
that you spend some time battling with and trying to come to peace with.
And the
battle usually comes from some part of our lives that we cherish and want to
get right. What I’d like to remind you
is of the love and grace that we are given along the way. We are to love ourselves in the way that
Christ loves us. We are to see ourselves
as chosen children of God, in the same way that Christ sees us. Full of grace. Only for who we are. In our intentions, and in our realities. And in those moments when the lens adjust and
life becomes clear, we see the beauty when our intentions and reality not only
mix, but feed the people we love.
May
God’s grace remind you that your intentions are beautiful, and so is the
reality that they live in, with and even in spite of at times.