Yesterday a really nice dude delivered the most beautiful red box to my door (looked like new shoes, was hoping it was new shoes) with the words “Edible Arrangements” on the outside of the card. The inside had a fun note from Travis and Angela saying how happy they were that I was coming to the taping of his new worship CD this weekend. I can hardly wait. I am so anxious to get back with my team and I also get to see my baby girl – and, by the way, Georgia Jan! I opened the box to behold the most beautiful array of big, fat strawberries and quarters of green apples you’ve ever seen and each dipped (maybe even double-dipped) in dark chocolate.
It’s sort of a joke between us. You see, I hate fruit. I don’t know why. I just never developed a taste for it. For one thing, it was expensive to buy for a family of eight and my family growing up not only didn’t have an extra dime. We could have used somebody else’s. We mostly ate Twinkies and Ding Dongs because they came in a family pack. I think I started the chocolate-covered fruit thing with the Cottrells several years ago when I sent a package for Travis’s birthday. I thought it kinda cleverly described our two families. They love fruit. We love chocolate.
Anyway, the only reason Travis Cottrell eats remotely healthy is because of his wife. I have long said that the greatest proof of God’s love for Travis beyond his salvation is Angela Cottrell. She is Wonder Woman. Years ago when she may have been at the summit of her culinary health-consciousness, I got to stay in their very sanguine home. Jackson, their oldest (middle schooler now, and, yes, where we came to love that name), was really young. Maybe five. Levi wasn’t even a twinkle in his parents’ eye yet. Jack and I were sitting in our pj’s at their breakfast table and Angela announced, “Beth, since we have company this morning, I’ll fix pancakes!” I was elated. I adore Angela Cottrell and would eat anything just to sit at the same table with her. She is one of my favorite women in the world to muse over God’s Word with. But, we weren’t having Bible study that morning. We were having breakfast. And, to be honest, I’d anticipated that we might have something like granola and soy milk and we’d chug it down with barley green. (I’ve witnessed this very phenomenon at their house a number of times.) I think I’ve told you somewhere along the way that I was raised on Jimmy Dean sausage, burned to a crisp, and cheap canned biscuits for breakfast. (Still love it. Had that very fare within last 48 hours.) Pancakes. I couldn’t have been happier. Then out came the whole wheat flour from the cupboard. Hope deferred.
Oh, but the company was good. Jack and I talked a million miles an hour. When he was little, he thought my first name was “Bethmoore.” He called me the whole thing like it was just one word. It was terribly endearing and made me smile every time he said it. (I still love Jack. He was my handsome, very polite and engaging date to a wedding in Nashville not very long ago.) We talked it up while Angela flipped whole wheat pancakes and I got hungrier and hungrier. Finally, she put a plate down right in front of me, stacked three-high. They looked a little odd. Kinda like someone had spilled the Quaker Oats in the frying pan and she forgot to wash it before she poured the batter. I was raised with too many manners not to eat what my host set in front of me and, anyway, my stomach was growling so loud that their wiener dog was practically growling back. I took my first bite.
And they were incredible. I couldn’t believe it. Listen, this is a woman who feels pious when she eats wheat bread and if I drink a bottle of water, I tell everyone all day long that I did. They don’t care but I tell them anyway. I mean, stinking incredible. My plate was empty long before Jack’s pancakes were even on the table. I looked at him while I was eating them and said, “Jack, these pancakes will change your life.”
“No, they won’t.”
“Yes, Jack, they really will. I’ve never tasted a pancake this good. Your mother is the best cook in the whole wide world. I’m serious. These pancakes will change your life.”
“No, they won’t, Bethmoore.”
“Yes, Jack Cottrell, they really will. They will change your life.”
About the time I swallowed my last bite, Travis hollered at me from the other room and told me that if I didn’t get with it, we were going to be late. (Don’t even remember now where we were going. I think I had a flight home.) I hopped up, thanked Angela, probably kissed Jackson on the head and shot upstairs before he even got his pancakes. Angela said the kitchen was silent for a couple of seconds. Then that precocious boy said, “Bethmoore makes me hungry.” We’ve howled about it ever since.
I know that’s random. I don’t even know why I wrote it. I think because I have HONESTLY eaten more fruit in the last 12 hours than I have ever eaten in my life. And I feel high. Do you think it was the fruit?
Or the chocolate?
Gotta go. Sausage and biscuits almost done.
I love y’all today.
Thank you, Pastor Steve, for reinforcing in me what I knew to be true when my husband of 8 years divorced me in the midst of my first go-round with dialysis and in waiting for a kidney transplant. I was abandoned at age 30.