Yesterday, after changing my sheets, taking Digory for a walk, and doing a few other household chores, it occurred to me that it would be a good day to make some homemade chicken soup that my dad and I could eat later in the week. I knew I had a chicken carcass in my freezer and I had been needing to use it up for some time now. And so it was that I eventually found myself standing at my kitchen sink and picking through the chicken broth, fishing out all the gross skin, fat, and bones of this chicken. It reminded me of something that had occurred years ago.
When my oldest daughter, Sarah, was in Junior High School, she was taking an A.P. Biology class. She came home one day with an interesting assignment. Her job was to get a chicken carcass and somehow reassemble the skeleton. Needless to say, Sarah did not approach this project with enthusiasm! I did my part by buying a whole chicken, boiling it, and then taking all the meat off the bones so that I could make soup with it. As I pulled everything apart I put the bones on paper plates with general labels - "breast", "legs", "wings", etc. I was trying to help her at least have some idea of where stuff went. This was long before we had the internet to Google directions. We let the chicken bones dry out for a few days before beginning the "Humpty Dumpty" marathon.
Sarah was extremely grossed out by the whole idea. After much complaining, she donned my heavy, rubber cleaning gloves. No way was she going to touch a part of a chicken! I had set her up outside on the patio where she labored for the next few hours. You know, a chicken has a million tiny bones! She actually did a pretty good job of it. I remember watching out the windows and laughing so much because she was so obviously disgusted. Her chicken was glued back together and ended up looking like it was kneeling in prayer. She told me that if she wanted extra credit, we could go to the butcher and buy head, neck, and feet pieces. We passed. Later, she was outraged because, after turning in the heinous project, she learned that everyone got the same grade, so long as they did produced a skeleton, no matter how lousy their chicken looked. Neither one of us are sure what she was supposed to learn from all this but I doubt we will ever forget that chicken!
Back to my kitchen sink yesterday. I tend to analyze things, or over-analyze according to my kids, so I was thinking about the pile of tiny bones I had set aside. I could have never put them back together in any semblance of order - no more than I could put my marriage back together, no more than I could undo the mistakes I made as a parent, and so forth. Only God, our Creator, can put the broken and mixed up pieces of our lives back into a functional whole. We think sometimes that there is only one way to do this, just like a chicken leg has one specific place to be on a chicken. However, since God designed us and planned our lives, He has the ability to "reassemble" us in any fashion He desires. I am now single. I didn't think that was what God had intended for me but obviously, it is, for this season of my life. Graciously, He has allowed me to function and even flourish, though my skeleton doesn't look the same as it once did. As always, it comes back to trusting God and His sovereignty. I am merely the bones. He is the soup maker and His soup is always going to taste better than anything I could make on my own!
Jeremiah 29:11
New International Version (NIV)
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
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