Cracking the Egg

25 Apr 2011 6 Comments

by toyacam in Learning Tags: breakfast, breaking, cracking, egg, growing, learning, living

It was Tuesday morning. There was nothing much different in my routine that day:

1) Get up. 2) Get my 4-yr-old up. 3) Send him to the bathroom immediately. 4.) Help him get dressed. 5.) Head downstairs to get a quick breakfast started before packing the kids up to take my oldest to preschool.

As I went about my routine that morning, I paused momentarily after a very innocent, yet thought-provoking question from my son. As he stood on his step stool in the kitchen so that he could see what I was doing on the counter, he carefully observed my process of making breakfast. Slightly irritated with his proximity to my ingredients, I kindly asked him to “back up”. With reluctance, he got down from his step stool, grudgingly moved it a few inches back, and stood upon it once again. Just as before, his eyes were fixed on my every move.

As I picked up an egg and tapped it’s firm shell on the edge of the counter, I quickly broke it open and dumped its contents into a bright red bowl. Without a second thought, I took the other egg and began the same process. But just before I tapped the egg, my son said, “Mommy, why do you always break the egg first?”

My immediate thought was: “Oh yeah, he’s only four, so I guess he wouldn’t understand that the egg has to be broken so we can eat it. (Duh).” But, as quickly as that thought came and went, another thought quickly followed. “Why DO I always break the egg first? Boy, do I feel like this egg sometimes…”

When I think about being “broken”, I often think of pain. I think of someone having to endure extreme difficulty or very hard times. But what does not often enter my head is the fact that brokenness is just a precursor for goodness. Oftentimes, it’s the inner contents of a thing that has far more value than it’s outer shell.

Christmas presents. Coconuts. And Oreo cookies. All have various outer packaging. Some bright and flashy. Some tough and hairy. Some crunchy and tasty. But, once you break through the outside, each has something very special and unique to offer the waiting participant willing to break through to the middle.

From time to time I wonder, “What’s my middle? What is so special deep down on the inside of me that’s causing such turbulence in my life?” I can almost feel that light “tapping” of my outer shell against the substance designed to break me. Most often, the tapping is soft and gentle, a subtle coaxing of my inner most being to be swayed in a particular direction. But now and again, that tapping is forceful and mighty, like the sound of a drill sergeant standing before my face with a bullhorn, barking out deafening commands.

Both are designed to expose a side of me not yet revealed to the world. The breaking feels strange, foreign and uncomfortable; but once the light from the outside enters in through the cracks to dispel the darkness of the unknown, there is such a dawning of newness, almost like the birth of something never imagined before.

I’ve now come to always expect the breaking, although I don’t believe I’ll ever fully become accustomed to the physical and emotional consequences of the destruction. I have, however, come to embrace a portion of the process. I believe that we can get to a place where we learn to embrace hurt, as long as we know that hurt is not our final destination.

During these divinely planned cycles of life, I am expecting such a brilliant revealing of myself that it literally impacts an entire nation, or maybe even the entire globe. Only my God knows what “it” is that He is after. And with every breath and prayer, I have earnest hope that He will find it in me.

That morning, we had a simple breakfast of eggs, bacon and cinnamon toast. All three are my son’s favorites. I hated having to rush him through breakfast to get him to school on time. I would have loved to have had a brief “four-year-old” talk with him about why the egg had to be cracked, then broken.

When he asked me the question that morning, I believe I said something very elementary like, “I have to break the egg so that we can eat it”. I know that statement somehow quenched his curiosity for the moment because I was not immediately barraged with five follow-up questions (as he often fires off when he’s not satisfied with an answer). So I took his questioning that morning as a slight cracking of my own outer shell. A way to dig deeper into my own thinking and perceptions of life.

Today, I am grateful for the breaking. Tomorrow may be another story, but at least I know that my breaking tomorrow could just lead to another great breakfast with my favorite four-year-old.