Breakfast is Served

I spent the last few days at the beach with my family. We had four generations there and it was a wonderful time of fun and fellowship. Laughter rang out around the campfire most evenings and the grandkids were full of lively antics. It was so nice to forget about the rest of life for awhile.

One morning the guys kindly offered to watch the kids so we could have a girls’ morning out. We eagerly climbed into the car and set off for our favorite breakfast spot along the beach. As we approached the restaurant, we didn’t see a lot of activity. On the door was a sign: Closed on Tuesdays.

This was disappointing, but there were many more restaurants. We would just find another one. We walked across the street to sit at an outdoor table at what appeared to be a cute little place. After being gruffly handed menus upon our entrance into the restaurant we didn’t hear or see any wait staff for over ten minutes. At that point, we decided to try another restaurant.

Some of our party had been to breakfast at another restaurant a few days before and loved it. We headed there. But they didn’t have any openings for another two hours.

It seemed the beach was busier than usual and we had just wasted one of our precious hours searching for a breakfast place.

We finally decided to just order take-out from a little restaurant along the beach. We took our takeout containers and our beverages and walked across the sand to where a few in our group had already set up chairs a ways back from the water.

We all made ourselves comfortable and prepared to dig in as we listened to the waves crashing along the shore and felt the rays of sunshine upon our heads. It had been frustrating to get to this point but this was perfect, after all.

And then…

Just as everyone was about ready to take their first bite, an unanticipated, giant wave reached its fingers far beyond the normal shore line and swept over us. We sat there in disbelief as our bags and towels and beverages went floating off behind us.

As we struggled out of our beach chairs, we realized that, surprisingly, none of us had lost our breakfasts so all was not lost! We started gathering our things and pulling our chairs further away from the water.

And that’s when the birds came! Hundreds of hungry seagulls flying so close to our heads we could touch them or standing there staring at us with their beady eyes, forgetting their fear of man in their desperation to reach our food. We felt like we were in “The Birds” movie (which I haven’t actually ever seen but have only heard about but, surely, a scene like this must be in it??)

One bird grabbed an empty takeout container and flew off with it. Another grabbed two pieces of bacon before we could stop it.

At this point, we all burst into laughter. What else was there to do? We couldn’t stop laughing. Our girls’ breakfast out was a complete and utter bust. We sat down with whatever was left of our breakfasts and laughed some more.

I don’t really have some deep, spiritual lesson to share today. This was just too funny not to share.

Perhaps, if there is any lesson, it is that we remember to laugh. As we face hard things and endure trials, may they never take away our ability to laugh at ourselves and at the humorous happenings around us. God created laughter and it is a gift we should treasure.

Have a great day and I’ll be back with Part 2 of last week’s post next week!