On Lips and Miracles and Cookies and Gratitude

Today in Primary (little kid Sunday School) the kids were asked to discuss temporal (as opposed to spiritual) blessings that they were grateful for, and one little fella piped up that he was grateful for teeth. He was probably trying to think of the most ridiculous thing he could think for and then say that thing -- at least that's what I would've been doing when I was his age -- but all the same I really liked that perspective. I often acknowledge that I’m grateful for my body generally and all the miraculous things it does, but it isn’t all that often that I sit down and consider the individual bits and just how amazing and remarkable those individual bits are. In fact, it’s really only after I’ve done something to damage my body in some way and it is temporarily unable to do certain things quite so easily that I consciously recognize and am grateful for its abilities specifically rather than generally. So all day since Primary I’ve been thinking about what specific body parts and processes I can be more consciously grateful for.  And this afternoon while Shar and I were making her famous, award-winning (literally) peanut butter cookies, I had one of these lesser-acknowledged parts play a key role in saving a potentially unfortunate happening from happening.

At one point during the baking of the cookies I was in charge of taking a particular batch out of the oven while Shar was otherwise engaged. But, see, after putting the cookies in the oven I had forgotten to set a timer. And as I am wont to do, I got distracted (I was probably definitely watching highlight videos of BYU football), and, well, I let the cookies bake a bit too long and they got a bit over-baked. While this was a relatively unfortunate happening, it wasn't too bad because the cookies weren't too badly over-baked, at least they didn't seem to be. So the fact that I remembered, albeit a bit late, and took them out while still edible made me realize that the ability to remember things is a pretty cool thing our bodies do, even when it happens a bit too late, and I was grateful for it. But the ability to remember, while cool and a thing worth grateful being, it wasn't the thing I came here to tell you about.

Since the cookies were a bit overdone, I felt it incumbent upon me to taste test them. So I did. But also in this moment, while I was taking cookies out of the oven, I was also washing the dishes from dinner. (Which had likely also contributed to my forgetting the cookies. See, I had my computer up above the sink playing BYU football clips while washing dishes, so clearly my mind was at cognitive capacity and there was no RAM leftover to remember to take out cookies.) So in deciding to taste test cookies, it didn't feel appropriate to stop my dishwashing altogether just to eat a cookie. What would that look like if someone (Shar) came into the kitchen where I was supposed to be washing dishes, and instead I was standing there eating cookies. No. I had to eat the cookie while washing the dishes. It was the only logical thing to do.

Allow me to describe my process for doing both at once. Understanding my process here is important in order for you to understand the potentially unfortunate happening that was about to nearly happen. What I would do is take a bite of cookie, set it down, grab a plate to rinse in the sink, rinse the plate, put the plate in the dishwasher, wipe one hand on my pants, pick up the cookie, take a bite, set the cookie down, and grab a bowl, rinse the bowl and so on. I continued the process over the course of several bites (they're large cookies), and as I did so I was marveling at the way that my body could smoothly bend and flex and shift and grab and do all manner of things in order to just simply wash the dishes (and eat a cookie). It was remarkable.

Finally I got to the last two bites of cookie and I decided to try and just eat the whole two bites at one go. So I tossed the last, overlarge bit of cookie into my mouth, and as I bit down I continued in my smooth movements of dishwashing which at this moment meant that I was inclining my back and neck to lean over a big mixing bowl that was full of murky dishwater in the bottom of the sink. And now you may begin to see the unfortunate happenings about to happen. See, the cookie hadn’t quite made it all the way into my mouth before I bit down, so the act of biting, coupled with the movement of leaning over, sent the cookie ever so slightly in motion towards the bowl of murky water and certain inedibility. As the cookie lost contact with my teeth, for a fraction of a moment I was wildly disappointed as images flooded my mind of my now-soggy cookie floating in a bowl of tepid, soapy water together with bits of wilted lettuce, leftover rice grains, and other less-easily-identifiable food bits.

But before these visions of a mildly disappointing future could fully become reality, something miraculous happened.

My lips clamped down and caught the cookie bit out of the air, preventing its fall from grace my mouth.

I stood motionless at the sink, unsure if what had just happened had really just happened. Had I -- a man whose life has been defined almost exclusively with moments (read that years) of clumsy, awkward attempts to use my body gracefully really just snatched a bit of cookie out of the air with just my lips? It didn't seem possible. Yet not only was it possible, I was standing there with the cookie clenched between my lips as evidence of the actuality of the event.

Now, had I lost the cookie I’m sure that, in the grand scheme of things, my life would have continued on its course relatively unperturbed past this momentary and minor tragedy. I would likely have chided myself mildly for thinking it wise to eat so much cookie at once, finished washing the dishes, and then eaten another cookie afterwards, as much to prove to myself that I could successfully eat an entire cookie as to enjoy its sweet peanut buttery sweetness. So while the tragedy-aversion felt miraculous, it was certainly a miracle with the lowest of lower case “m”s. But see, that tragedy was averted, and it was all thank you to the miracle of my lips.

Outside of romantic settings, lips never seem to get much attention or credit for their vital, cookie-saving abilities. So I would like to take a moment to express my unequivocal gratitude for lips. And for cookies.