Aunt Cat was one of my grandmother’s four
sisters. She and Uncle Polly lived in
Mobile and we did, too, from the time I was two years old until I was six. I once asked her if she was named Cat because
she looked like a cat when she was a baby.
She told me that they called her Cat because it was short for
Catherine. That made absolutely no sense
to me until Mama wrote it down and explained it to me. Even then I was a little skeptical.
One night Aunt Cat invited us to her house for
supper. I was all for it. I loved Aunt Cat’s house and I knew that she
would fix something wonderful – like a hamburger. She knew how I loved hamburgers and that’s
what I ate at her house. But, this time,
I was wrong. So wrong, She fixed beef stroganoff. Really.
I had never come face to face with beef stroganoff and I certainly was not
impressed. It is not a very kid-friendly
food. Mama understood that I didn’t really
want to eat anything more exotic than a grilled cheese sandwich. Clearly, the message had not completely reached
Aunt Cat. I had no idea what I was
looking at. The only thing I recognized
was noodles. Where on earth was that
hamburger I thought I was getting?
Supper wasn’t quite the event I had hoped for. We managed to reach a compromise. I ended up with a lot of noodles compared to
everything else, but I didn’t escape that glob of jumbled beef stuff
entirely. As it turned out, the beef
stroganoff wasn’t as awful as it appeared.
I mostly ate it because Mama made it clear that by no means would I hurt
Aunt Cat’s feelings. It remains my one
and only beef stroganoff meal, even after all these years.
Sometimes it feels like life just handed me a giant
plate of beef stroganoff when I was really hoping for a hamburger. Or even a grilled cheese. But there is good news. God is always there – even in the midst of
the gloppiest, yuckiest, most unappetizing circumstances. I know.
I’ve been there. So was He.
Taste and see
that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. - Psalm 34:8
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