Let’s Skip to the Good Part . . . or not

Today I was on Pinterest looking at cookie recipes, and I found one that looked delicious! But, then I saw that you had to chill the dough . . . I found a different recipe. This one. I saw the ingredients, but no directions. I decided to make them anyway :). (A reminder for the next time I make cookies: confectioner’s sugar = powdered sugar, not regular sugar. Oops! ;))

So there I was (Ben), making cookies in the kitchen to the tunes of Pandora <3. Let’s Skip to the Good Part by He is We came on, and I thought to myself, “This is just how I feel sometimes!” 

Sometimes I’m impatient. I want what I want to happen, to happen when I want it to happen. (Uhh. Sorry about that sentence.) I get frustrated and angst-y and don’t understand why I’m not getting what I want. This makes me sound like I’m two years old, but it’s true. 

Then I remembered something I thought of after I watched How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended on YouTube (Don’t watch it.:P). Instead of having the whole story, it just showed Frodo fly over Mount Doom on one of Gandalf’s eagles and drop the ring in. At first it seemed like How it Should Have Ended made a lot of sense. Let's face it. Using the giant eagles from the very beginning would have probably really simplified things, and we would have had ourselves a pamphlet instead of a trilogy. But, as I thought about it more, I realized that getting rid of the ring wasn’t necessarily the point of the story. It was the end objective, but J.R.R. Tolkien had more for us. 

If Frodo had just been carried to Mount Doom he wouldn’t have learned, grown, and become who he became. The same goes for all of the other characters. Aragorn wouldn’t have taken his place as the King of Gondor. Legolas and Gimli wouldn’t have become friends. The struggle of the journey helped the characters reach their full potential and discover things they wouldn't have otherwise.    

I’ve realized that this is how life is for us. We may want to “skip to the good part” but going through the hard things and waiting is part of the good. It’s one of the ways God helps us become more like Him. Achieving the end goal isn’t as sweet if we skip over everything in the middle. The middle is where all of the real good things happen. It’s where we progress and actually become.

Back to the cookies. The dough was kind of soft, but I baked some anyway. They turned out pretty good, but guess what. (You: What?) If you click the picture of the cookies one more time the directions pop up. Who knew, right!?! And do you know what the directions say? “Refrigerate two-hours or overnight.” Ha! Problem solved.

And so, my friends, it looks like the same thing goes for cookies, Lord of the Rings, and life: it’s okay if you don’t get just what you want right when you want it. Sometimes you have to wait and go through a process before you get it. The process may involve something along the lines of gallivanting across Middle-Earth trying to save it, or it may be as simple as chilling in the fridge. Either way, don’t try to skip it! It’s there for a reason! Take a leaf from the book of Treebeard and “don’t be hasty.” Haha! ;) (That pun was for those of you who made it to the end of this long post.) 

Okay. The end. Make it a great week! <3