It was a big night in our house. A VIP from my work was in town and was coming to our home for dinner.
My wife decided to make a very safe but tasty entrée for our meal, baked chicken. She had made it many times before and it always turned out great.
As our guest arrived we invited him in and sat in the living room and chatted while we waited the few more minutes until the oven timer went off and the chicken was ready. When the buzzer sounded my wife excused herself and went to get the chicken out of the oven and put it on the table.
Our guest and I made our way to the table and both commented on how good the chicken looked. It was golden brown and the scent wafted through the air and I know I couldn’t wait to dig in. We prayed. I pulled the chicken in front of me to carve it as we conversed. I sliced through the colorful outer layer of skin and immediately knew something was wrong. The chicken below the beautiful outer surface was nearly completely raw.
My wife had inadvertently left the oven on preheat when she put the chicken in after the oven had reached its proper temperature. The preheat setting was enough to bake the outer layer and give it a look of being ready and finished but was not enough to do any more than that. I knew my wife was completely embarrassed but our guest was very gracious. He offered to buy pizza and we ended up having a great evening.
This incident happened well over thirty years ago and yet I am reminded of it often as I encounter people that may be short tempered or don’t respond in an appropriate way to a situation. We present ourselves on the outside as having it all together and being completely in control. Yet, on the inside we are raw over things that have hurt us or not gone the way we had anticipated. Unfortunately, I must admit I am often this raw person as well.
Our current world wide Coronavirus situation has greatly increased our fears and feelings of uncertainty. This fear makes us raw and short-tempered. We aren’t as rational as we would have been just several weeks ago. I believe it takes great grace and courage to give others the benefit of the doubt knowing that there may be some tremendous rawness going on in the inside. I know that others have been gracious with me when I didn’t deserve it.
I believe it also takes great courage to admit that we don’t have it all together, that we are raw on the inside. We, obviously, don’t need to let the world in on our rawness but we need to have people in our lives we can trust to accept us in spite of not being what we appear to be on the outside.
Do you have the grace and courage to give to others when they look good on the outside but maybe still need a bit of work below the surface? Do you have people in your life you can trust with your story?
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This is an updated version of a post that originally ran on June 23, 2014.
