When the Butt Fell Out of my Crockpot
It was 10:09p on 10.09.2018…
In an effort to meal prep for the next few days, I gathered and prepped all of the ingredients to begin making my Curried Lentil Soup. I honestly wanted to throw them all in the crockpot and let the magic happen; however, certain items needed to be cooked in advance. In a rush, I used the inside dish of the crockpot on top of the stove with the intentions of putting it inside the heating portion of the crockpot after I had added the other ingredients. After about two minutes, I added the remaining veggies and started to stir in the makings of my broth. I stepped away from the stove for a few seconds and all of a sudden, I heard a loud cracking noise.
PAUSE! I know what you’re thinking, lol. And yes, I realize I shouldn’t have done that but as you read ahead I believe you’ll agree that the Lord allowed me to have a momentary episode of “forgetting my way around the kitchen” so that the rest of this story could take place and the necessary lesson be extracted from this incident. That being said, please continue.
I looked over at the stove and everything looked to be intact but I heard a sizzling sound as if liquid had touched the eye of a blazing stove. Still suffering from a case of “I forgot my way around the kitchen” I was in denial about what had just happened. I hurried over to the stove and began to stir the soup while examining the perimeter of the eye for any drippings. Still hearing the sizzle I go to lift the crock pot to put it in its rightful place and the bottom fell out... along with what was going to be an AMAZING curried lentil soup.
In total shock, I watched as all of the golden goodness fell to the floor. The soup was literally everywhere - on the counter, under the eye, beneath the stove top, on the floor, on my clothes... it had even found its way inside the tiny crevices on the front of my oven. I stepped back and looked at the mess I had made, unsure as to where to even begin this intense cleaning process that would take place.
During those moments of realizing what a HUGE mistake I had made, I quickly snapped out of that momentary episode I mentioned earlier and became overwhelmed with discouragement. Why? Because in that moment, I also realized that it wasn’t just the butt of my crockpot that was scattered about the many surfaces of my kitchen. No. I was looking at a vivid depiction of my life. What’s worse? My initial reaction to the mess I had made mirrored my reaction to the mess that was my life... and that, that was downright depressing. This realization hit me as abruptly as you’d wake up from a nightmare. It was as if I had been sleep walking through the first 30 years of my life and all of a sudden, I woke up in the midst of a mess.
In tears, I immediately called my mom on FaceTime and showed her the mess I had made. Being the good mother that she is, she began to try to calm me down and talk me through cleaning it all up - specifically getting the finely chopped veggies from those hidden crevices that were now oozing curried broth. In that moment, I saw those finely chopped veggies as open wounds on my heart that had become infected and had oozed into every aspect of my being. Tender to the touch, these wounds weren’t fresh. No, these wounds were old, but very well kept. They had been nursed and tended to quite well over the years - so much so I couldn’t tell where they ended and my heart began. My heart had become one with them… one big mass of infection.
As I continued wiping the veggies from the counter into the trashcan, I started to get upset about the fact that the liquid had found its way underneath the drip bowl of the stove top. She advised me to get towels to soak up the liquid underneath. I thought to myself: This is a very tight, small space... how the heck am I supposed to get all the way under there? Is there an easy way that doesn’t require me to disassemble the stovetop? I don’t do bugs and critters so I have to finish this, but how? Once I got all the veggies and liquid up, I now needed to remove the sticky residue from all the different surfaces and sanitize my kitchen.
There came a point in the journey to my whole self where I had started to address a lot of the surface level stuff that had weighed on me for years. I gave myself permission to start venturing beneath the surface in an effort to tackle the “root work”. I was no longer sleep walking through life or numb; I could feel again. I started to care again. I was feeling pretty good for the first time in a while, but the sticky residue that was waiting for me was a lot deeper than I initially expected. But that’s a story for a later post.
I grabbed a fresh container of Clorox wipes as my mom suggested and got back to work. By this time, I had finally stopped crying and my mood shifted as I saw the progress I was making - in much less time than I initially thought it would take. Despite my tears and many moments of frustration I kept wiping, soaking, and draining. I accidentally figured out how to lift the stovetop to get better access to the remaining liquid, sanitized my entire kitchen, even got down on all fours and hand scrubbed the floor. As I got closer to finishing my mom said to me: “Krystal, one day you will preach a message about the day the butt fell out of your crock pot.”
Now I don’t know about preaching a message but a couple things definitely stood out to me in all of this.
First, my life has been full of challenging situations where I felt the butt had fallen out of my life. If I’m honest, I’ve wanted to sulk over the mess more than I wanted to do the hard, inner work to overcome. I wanted to be the victim because it was easy and had become my place of residence. (I’ll elaborate later.) The question of “is there an easy way?” had been my go to response to any and every difficult situation I faced. But this time, as I was cleaning, I saw a much different image of myself. I saw my most vulnerable self. The more vulnerable and exposed I allowed myself to be, the more I saw God’s hands at work in me. The other takeaway... just as I already had everything I needed to clean up the mess, God had already equipped me to clean up the mess I never thought I would make.
After cleaning my kitchen from top to bottom I stepped back and let out a deep sigh of relief. I knew that there was a long journey ahead but in that moment it didn’t matter. What mattered was that for the first time in my life I wasn’t intimidated by the mess staring me in my face. When the butt fell out of my crockpot, I knew I was equipped and ready.
