If I could just remember the sandwich ...

The first week of school is behind us and mercy if it wasn’t a long week. By Thursday I was flat out exhausted … and I wasn’t even the one going to school!

On Thursday I got this text from Brittany:

Four days into the new school year and I had already forgotten to add a sandwich?!?  I didn’t even make it a week before the wheels fell off the lunch making train!

A few years ago I got a text from Brittany that said I had only given her bread.  I didn’t really understand and when I asked her about it she said “MOM, my sandwich is only bread, no meat.”

Good heavens, how does that even happen?!

I know lots of people who have their kids make their own lunches. I think that is great! Those kids are learning responsibility and they have no one to blame but themselves when they show up at school with a lunch that doesn’t include a sandwich … I mean what is not to love?!  I don’t think there is a right or wrong on making lunches.

But I must admit, I enjoy making my kids lunches.  I mean I don’t LOVE it as in … “I can’t wait to make sandwiches and throw chips and an apple in a bag”, but there is something special to me about getting to hand my kids their lunches as they race out the door for their day.  Maybe it was all the episodes I watched of The Brady Bunch where Carol Brady and Alice passed out lunches each day.  I bet everyone in my house would get a sandwich if I had an Alice to help me!!

But here is the reason I make lunches for my kids.  It’s simple really … it’s a “get to”.  And before you roll your eyes, let me explain.  They are going to spend the rest of their lives figuring out their lunch.  I’m happy for the 13 or so years that I can do it for them.

One thing I try to do (it doesn’t always happen) is to pray for each child’s day as I make their lunch … what they will face that day, tests they may have … even who they will sit with in the lunchroom.

I’ve often wondered if the mom who packed 5 loaves and 2 fish for her son prayed over it that morning as she made it. Her son shared that lunch and Jesus used it to feed over 5,000 people!  Crazy!

A minister at our church made lunches for his boys and every day he put a note that included a bible verse in his son’s lunches. I’ve heard his sons talk about how special that was for them.

Last week my sweet friend Mary Jane (who no longer has kids living at home) sent me a message that said this:

“I made my kid’s lunches every day and cried over each of their last lunches their Senior year.  They each got a note in that last lunch that said “it has been a joy and privilege to make your lunch for the past 13 years”.

I almost cried reading it knowing I would be making one of those “last lunches” this year for my own child.

So, no, I don’t mind making them at all.  As Mary Jane said, it truly is a “joy and a privilege”.

And hopefully I’ll remember to add the sandwich!