the devil's eggs

Coffee hour duty is spiritual warfare for me.
Those Sundays, I am like an inactive soldier reporting for boot camp. When that one weekend a month arrives, I am in for a serious kick in the pants.
For me, cooking for 50+ people is not a delectable desire, it is a duty that usually ends with a culinary death, and leads to spiritual suicide. Truly, coffee hour duty has been one disaster after another. Whenever that Sunday approaches I moan, I stress, I panic. I start cooking, boiling, steaming. . . hormonally speaking. The night before, the verbal battery begins when I spout off all the reasons my coffee hour offering will be doomed. For example, last time I made beans, in my dimented state of mind, the congregants had already complained about them being bland and crunchy before they’d even made it in the crock pot. Another time, I was so fired up about getting my fruit salad to the church on time, I put the china dish on top of the roof and drove off full speed.
So this time, I prayed a special “coffee hour duty” prayer as I boiled the eggs the night before. Piece of cake, I thought, as I climbed into bed. Just peel, scoop, and mash in the morning.
At 8am the peeling process wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. The whites were gluey and stuck to the shell, making my so-called hard boiled’s look like mutilated poached eggs.
“They don’t look cooked all the way” said my observing husband, 15 minutes before our scheduled departure, as I’m standing at the sink with my robe still on estimating my losses, and wondering how a seemingly simple task has come to this. So I frantically reboil them, as my hormones also begin boiling. It doesn’t take but a few minutes, and I see that eggs have started to crack and ooze. Subsequently, my emotions also begin cracking and oozing. Soon, my spirit is completely scrambled.
For 30 minutes, I cry, & declare I can’t possibly go to church in this forlorn state with such forlorn looking eggs. Then I drink a coke for consolation as I nurse my emotional battle wounds on the couch.
But then it occurs to me how important it is that I not let my temperamental emotions and temperamental eggs spoil my day and my meager offering to God’s people. So I peel myself off the couch and pull myself together. Later than usual, we make it to church along with 50% of the eggs, paprika and all.
Silly as it may sound, as I reflect on the morning’s mahem, I am convinced that this was a war waged by the Evil One. The battlefield, my mind (and the kitchen); the assailant, my thoughts (and the devil’s eggs). He used the culinary comotion to ruin my spiritual appetite. In the end, did I devil the eggs, or did they bedevil me?