I toss the potatoes into the pressure cooker and lock on its lid. Levi, waiting for me to announce his next spelling word, looks up from his stool perch at the island. “What is a pressure cooker, anyways?”
Scooping up a crying little Shalom whose yanking desperately on my pant leg, I mumble out an explanation.
“Well, a pressure cooker is a pot with a lid that doesn’t let the steam escape. Put the pot on the heat, the heat brings the water to the boil, and if the steam doesn’t escape, the food cooks faster.”
I look around at counters with books and papers, sideboards of teetering stacks of laundry. Over the whistle of the pressure cooker, I think I hear Caleb ask me something about how to figure out the plural accustive case of the first declension in his Latin exercise.
I’d like to escape: check email, read a few pages of the book in the washroom, surf into some online conversation, see if anthing on the pantry shelves can sweetly transport. Let off some steam.
I have forgotten:
Habitual escapism, when the heat of life gets turned up, circumvents the efficacy of the Refiner’s Fire.
Lock the lid on.
Let life get hot.
Stay present.
Don’t let off steam.
Don’t escape.
Let the pressure do it’s work.
Isaiah 48:10 I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.
Lord, I confess. Too often I let off steam. I escape. Refine me, Lord. Let Your fire do its work. Take off the dross and purify this life.
