The Slow Cooker Lid I Lifted at Noon Even Though the Recipe Said Six Hours
The Slow Cooker Lid I Lifted at Noon Even Though the Recipe Said Six Hours
I put the roast in at seven that morning, read the recipe card twice, set the dial to low, and told myself I would not touch that lid until at least three in the afternoon. By eleven thirty I was standing in the kitchen in my socks, telling myself I only wanted to check the liquid level, which was a lie I believed for about four seconds before I lifted the lid anyway and let out a cloud of steam that cost the whole pot twenty extra minutes of cooking time I did not have to spare. I did this twice more before noon. Each time I knew exactly what I was doing to the roast and did it anyway, because some part of me could not stand the not knowing, could not stand trusting a process I could not see happening with my own eyes.
I am eight years sober, and I used to think impatience was a minor character flaw, the kind of thing that only cost you a chewier cut of meat or a few extra minutes in a grocery line. What that ruined roast taught me is that impatience is rarely about the roast. It is about a man who has spent years needing to see the proof before he will believe the process is actually working, whether that process is a slow cooker or a marriage or his own slow and uneven recovery, and who keeps lifting lids on all of it because waiting in the dark feels too much like losing control he was never actually in.
Scripture does not treat waiting as wasted time or an unfortunate gap between the asking and the answer. Solomon lays it out as the actual architecture of a life lived under God rather than a delay to be tolerated. "To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NKJV). A season, not an inconvenience. James reaches for the most patient image he can find in all of agriculture to describe what is being asked of me. "Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand" (James 5:7-8, NKJV). A farmer does not dig up the seed at noon to check on the roots. He has made peace with a timeline he does not control and cannot speed along by worrying over it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten a roast, or anything else, done any faster. I could tell myself accurately that just one more peek would not really hurt anything, that I was simply being thorough, that a man ought to know what is happening in his own kitchen. Every sentence was true enough, and none of it changed the actual math, because the problem standing in that kitchen was never really about moisture loss. It was about a grown man who still has not learned to leave a closed lid alone and trust what he cannot verify with his own eyes. Lamentations names the posture I kept failing to hold. "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). Wait quietly. Not wait while pacing the kitchen rehearsing every way the thing might be going wrong without me there to supervise it.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that eight years of trying harder at patience never could. Paul does not list patience among the virtues a disciplined man eventually earns by gritting his teeth through enough slow cookers and slow seasons. He lists it as fruit, something a healthy branch simply produces because of what it stays connected to. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Longsuffering was never going to be something I manufactured by sheer willpower standing over that pot. It grows, slowly, the same way the roast was always going to finish whether I watched it or not, in a life that stays abiding in Him instead of straining against Him. Paul tells the Romans plainly why the waiting itself is not a sign that nothing is happening. "But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance" (Romans 8:25, NKJV). Perseverance, not panic. Hope that does not need the lid lifted to keep believing the heat is doing its work underneath.
David had learned that same lesson long before any of us had a kitchen timer to argue with. "I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry" (Psalm 40:1, NKJV). Patiently, and still heard. Waiting was never the same thing as being ignored, and quiet was never the same thing as absent.
I left the lid alone the rest of that afternoon, and the roast came out fine, a little tougher in spots from my own meddling but fine, which is probably a fair picture of most things I have ever tried to rush. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which lid you keep lifting, which process you cannot leave alone long enough to trust that something good is actually happening underneath where you cannot see it. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you supervising every hour of it, and He has told you Himself that the waiting is not Him going quiet on you. He is making you patient the same way He is finishing whatever you are so afraid to leave covered, and He will never leave you alone in the kitchen to figure out the timing by yourself.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 3:1; James 5:7-8; Lamentations 3:25-26; Galatians 5:22-23; Romans 8:25; Psalm 40:1.
I put the roast in at seven that morning, read the recipe card twice, set the dial to low, and told myself I would not touch that lid until at least three in the afternoon. By eleven thirty I was standing in the kitchen in my socks, telling myself I only wanted to check the liquid level, which was a lie I believed for about four seconds before I lifted the lid anyway and let out a cloud of steam that cost the whole pot twenty extra minutes of cooking time I did not have to spare. I did this twice more before noon. Each time I knew exactly what I was doing to the roast and did it anyway, because some part of me could not stand the not knowing, could not stand trusting a process I could not see happening with my own eyes.
I am eight years sober, and I used to think impatience was a minor character flaw, the kind of thing that only cost you a chewier cut of meat or a few extra minutes in a grocery line. What that ruined roast taught me is that impatience is rarely about the roast. It is about a man who has spent years needing to see the proof before he will believe the process is actually working, whether that process is a slow cooker or a marriage or his own slow and uneven recovery, and who keeps lifting lids on all of it because waiting in the dark feels too much like losing control he was never actually in.
Scripture does not treat waiting as wasted time or an unfortunate gap between the asking and the answer. Solomon lays it out as the actual architecture of a life lived under God rather than a delay to be tolerated. "To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NKJV). A season, not an inconvenience. James reaches for the most patient image he can find in all of agriculture to describe what is being asked of me. "Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand" (James 5:7-8, NKJV). A farmer does not dig up the seed at noon to check on the roots. He has made peace with a timeline he does not control and cannot speed along by worrying over it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten a roast, or anything else, done any faster. I could tell myself accurately that just one more peek would not really hurt anything, that I was simply being thorough, that a man ought to know what is happening in his own kitchen. Every sentence was true enough, and none of it changed the actual math, because the problem standing in that kitchen was never really about moisture loss. It was about a grown man who still has not learned to leave a closed lid alone and trust what he cannot verify with his own eyes. Lamentations names the posture I kept failing to hold. "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). Wait quietly. Not wait while pacing the kitchen rehearsing every way the thing might be going wrong without me there to supervise it.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that eight years of trying harder at patience never could. Paul does not list patience among the virtues a disciplined man eventually earns by gritting his teeth through enough slow cookers and slow seasons. He lists it as fruit, something a healthy branch simply produces because of what it stays connected to. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Longsuffering was never going to be something I manufactured by sheer willpower standing over that pot. It grows, slowly, the same way the roast was always going to finish whether I watched it or not, in a life that stays abiding in Him instead of straining against Him. Paul tells the Romans plainly why the waiting itself is not a sign that nothing is happening. "But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance" (Romans 8:25, NKJV). Perseverance, not panic. Hope that does not need the lid lifted to keep believing the heat is doing its work underneath.
David had learned that same lesson long before any of us had a kitchen timer to argue with. "I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry" (Psalm 40:1, NKJV). Patiently, and still heard. Waiting was never the same thing as being ignored, and quiet was never the same thing as absent.
I left the lid alone the rest of that afternoon, and the roast came out fine, a little tougher in spots from my own meddling but fine, which is probably a fair picture of most things I have ever tried to rush. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which lid you keep lifting, which process you cannot leave alone long enough to trust that something good is actually happening underneath where you cannot see it. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you supervising every hour of it, and He has told you Himself that the waiting is not Him going quiet on you. He is making you patient the same way He is finishing whatever you are so afraid to leave covered, and He will never leave you alone in the kitchen to figure out the timing by yourself.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 3:1; James 5:7-8; Lamentations 3:25-26; Galatians 5:22-23; Romans 8:25; Psalm 40:1.
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