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She’d been so busy thinking about kids and businesses and her dad and everything that the smell of something burning hadn’t registered right away.
“Oh my goodness. I think I burnt the eggs!”
She grabbed the skillet and pulled it off the burner. Smoke poured out from underneath the eggs, which were runny on top, but as she used a spatula to peel them away from the bottom, they were burnt black underneath.
“I should have just admitted to you to begin with,” she said, disgusted with herself as she scraped the eggs into the garbage can. “I’ve never cooked eggs. Anything but scrambled. I’ve never done sunny side up, nor over easy, and I was just hoping I was able to do it without breaking them.”
She didn’t realize until her voice broke on that last sentence that tears were pooling in her eyes, and they spilled over, running down her cheeks. She’d ruined her wedding evening by going on a call; now she ruined her wedding supper by burning it. He was going to think he married the most incompetent woman in the world.
She used a spatula to scrape at the skillet where the eggs had stuck in the middle, using her sleeve to swipe her eyes and sniffing so her nose wasn’t running everywhere.
“Hey,” he said softly, right beside her ear before his arms went around her, and he pulled her back against him with one hand while he grabbed a hold of the skillet handle with the other. “Let me have that,” he said gently, and she let go.
He set it on the sink and pulled the spatula from her hand as well before he wrapped both arms around her and cradled her there against his chest.
She turned so her cheek snuggled up against him, and she wrapped her arms around him, trying to stifle her tears. Now she was ruining everything even more by crying.
“I feel like I can’t do anything right,” she finally said softly against his chest, getting her tears under control but still sniffling.
“You do a lot of things right, and no one expects you to be perfect. And I kinda like that there’s something that you can’t do that I can. You’re not going to be upset if I cook the eggs?”
“I think I can manage to butter the bread without doing anything terrible, although I’m sure I’ll probably drop at least one piece.”
“And it will land butter side down because it always does.” She could feel him smiling over her head.
“Are you going to laugh at everything I do? Aren’t you ever going to get angry?”
“I hope not. I don’t ever want to be angry with you. I don’t think you would ever do anything on purpose to make me angry, and even then, I’d really rather love you than be angry with you.”
She froze. He said he’d rather love her.
Love.
“Hey. I need to turn the bacon, or it’s going to end up like the eggs, and then it will be a true catastrophe, because burning bacon is a federal crime, whereas burning eggs is just a misdemeanor.”
She laughed and backed up so he could grab the spatula. It was like he hadn’t said the L word at all.
She didn’t want to talk about that. Not now. Everything just felt too...too much. She didn’t feel like she was good enough for any of it, and she didn’t want to feel even less worthy, to have this man who seemed to do everything right loving her too.
It would just make her feel even more like she wasn’t enough.
“You know,” James said as he casually opened the egg carton he’d gotten out of the refrigerator and cracked an egg. “You said you keep ruining things. That you don’t feel like you’re good enough. You know that you are good enough, just because God loves you. That’s where your worth is.”
She moved to the toaster, grabbing the toast that popped up sometime during her crying spell. “I know. I guess... I just have trouble believing it.”
“Don’t think that you have trouble believing. Just believe. Say to yourself, God loves me, and that’s where my worth is. God thinks I’m special enough to die for, and that is where my worth is. God calls me His child, and that’s what makes me worthy. It has nothing to do with what you do, what you say, who you are, although as a child of God, of course we’re always trying to do things that please Him. We want to. That’s our goal, because He’s done so much for us, but He accepts us however we are. It’s our heart He looks at.”
She listened quietly, knowing he was right, knowing she needed to hear these words. Because so much of what she had felt lately had been along the lines of her not being good enough.
“Maybe it’s harder when we have parents that we feel like we could never please, that we could never be good enough for, which kind of translates over into feeling like we can never be good enough for God. You know? Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I want to include our children in our decision-making and let them know that they’re important to us. Not only do I think that will help them learn to make good decisions, but it will let them know that we value their opinion and make them feel valuable.”
“I want that for them.”
“Me too. But I want it for you as well. I want you to be able to see that whether you’re a vet, or whether you’re a stay-at-home mom. Whether you have a big, fancy degree after your name, or whether you have nothing, not even a high school diploma. It doesn’t matter. Not in God’s eyes. That He loves you no matter what. No matter whether you can cook eggs or not. Whether you go out on a call or whether you don’t. Whether people give you accolades or whether they don’t. You can stand in a corner and know you’re worthy, just because you’re standing under the love of your heavenly Father.”
Mabel finished buttering a piece of toast, setting it on a plate, then she set her knife down and took two steps to where James stood at the stove, watching the bacon and eggs and not burning either one.
He was right.
