on sandwiches and grace

I'm taking a break from lunch salads this week in order to give some well-earned attention to sammies.

There's nothing better than a good sandwich (and there's nothing worse than a mediocre one... I mean, life's just too short for that sort of thing. Really. I know.)

To make a great sandwich, you must start with great bread. For today's sandwich, the open faced Chicken-Chard-Gouda, I used bread I made yesterday.

It is the best bread ever recipe from my previous post, only with 2 cups bread flour, one cup whole wheat and no molasses. Cut a thin slice, and slap that baby into the toaster oven  to toast. Now slather on a layer of mayo, then a light sprinkling of truffle salt (manna straight from heaven), now a layer of Swiss chard,

then sliced chicken. Now get a jar of green tomato relish (or something similar), and smear on a thin layer.

 Top with thin tomato slices, fresh ground pepper,

then sliced smoked Gouda cheese. Slide this back into the toaster oven and toast it till the cheese is melted. Enjoy with a tall glass of sweet tea with lemon.

I used to think I'd die if I couldn't be a writer one day. Now, I'm coming to believe that my main talent may lie in being a good eater. That, and taking pictures of things... like my food.
     Could be worse, right? Coming from my family, I figure hey I've made fifty-one and haven't married a prisoner (yet), so I must be doing okay. Sometimes I say that jokingly, but the sentiment is true. My mom did such a thing, and the skeleton is still jangling in the closet thirty years later. Well, actually now, I guess he's jangling outside of the closet.
     More than anything, I want to know how it happenned. I mean this was a beautiful, intelligent woman. And while I'm sure there are lots of delightful convicts out there, this particular one was a bad dude. I wonder: was it the empty nest, hormone imbalance, a garden-variety con job, or martyerdom on her part? Who the heck knows. I never will because she died nearly thirty years ago, taking all of those reasons with her.

     In life, we want every package tied up neatly with a bow. We want things to be tidy and reasonable. We want certainty, but life hands us mysteries. Who, but God, can fathom all the contents of another person's heart? 

     I've been fifty-one for a month now. Maybe it's the almost dying in the car wreck last year, with all the mulling-on-steroids that spurred, or maybe it's just a function of getting old, but here's what I've finally learned: It's Okay. Mysteries abound, but that's okay. Beside the mysterious lies grace. Lots and lots of grace. We breathe in. We breathe out. We make a space in our minds for the not understood. We accept our smallness. We accept God's bigness. We make friends. We talk. We laugh and take pictures. We cuddle when we can. Sometimes with a person. Sometimes with a dog, or a cat, or a book. We give thanks. And we pray. Most importantly, we must remember to breathe and to pray.