Oatmeal Lace

"Can you make those oatmeal cookies now?" my husband asked.  Earlier, he had been perusing the cookie aisle in the grocery store, and seeing his indecisiveness, I offered to make some cookies. We had just put a round box of oats in the basket, and I knew I had butter, vanilla, and other ingredients at home.

But after the Christmas-spirit high of shopping in other stores that afternoon and fixing a hasty supper that evening, my spirits were sagging.  Baking didn't sound very appealing. Then the thought occurred to me that instead of plain old oatmeal cookies, I would try my hand at Oatmeal Lace!  I remembered eating the crispy, buttery cookie a long time ago but had been unable to find the recipe. Now I could look it up on internet!

Wow!  Three sticks of butter?  That was all I had!  Well, there was a stick of margarine I could swap out for one of the butter sticks.  Mistake!  The margarine must have made the batter too thin, because when I dropped the mixture onto the cookie sheet, even though the dollops were inches apart, they spread over the whole pan!  I was more careful on the second sheet, and although they came out too large, they were still separate cookies.

I was supposed to bake the cookies on a parchment-lined pan.  I didn't have parchment, but I figured with all the butter, they would be easy to remove with my spatula.  Wrong!  I managed to scrape most of them off, some even in a shape resembling a cookie, but most were carmelized onto the cookie sheet.  I scraped what cookies I couldn't save intact into a mound of crunchy, brown oat flakes. (Maybe they'd be good as cereal?)  Spread out on a silver tray, the lacy, golden cookies I had salvaged looked almost presentable.

Later, I took a cookie to have with a glass of milk and sat down to enjoy it when I heard a crash. The tray had slid off the baker's rack where I had absent-mindedly shoved it.  The Oatmeal Lace shattered like crystal all over the floor in a million pieces!  Howard helped me sweep it up, and it wound up in the trash can.

You'd think by now I'd know to follow the recipe!  But just as in so many things in life and like so many other people, I had decided to do my own thing.  No big deal when it comes to cookies, but there is a parallel with rules and instructions given in the Bible for living a holy (and wholesome!) life that, if violated, can cause a mess and even leave lives shattered in many cases. Only God can pick up the pieces and restore wholeness to the repentant.  Thankfully, He gives us that chance!