Even My Hardboiled Days Belong to Him

When trauma boils us down, Jesus seals us in His fire.

📍 Neon Sermon — Waffles & Hardboiled

It hummed, steady and playful, like a voice breaking through static on an old radio.

One word blinked alive, bright and insistent, as if whispered straight into my ear:

WAFFLES.

Not menace. Not noise. Something stranger—sweeter. A divine wink. Not a hornet’s nest buzzing me away, but a Father tugging at my sleeve: “Hey, it’s Me again. Pay attention. I’m here.”

Suddenly it wasn’t just a motel sign. It was a sermon in neon, absurd enough to make me look twice.

I sat there, kids shrieking in the backseat, EMDR aftershocks still buzzing in my chest.
EMDR is a kind of therapy where I tap through memories like beads on a string—left, right, left, right—until the thunder doesn’t swallow me whole. The storm doesn’t vanish, but the thunder moves farther away.

The names I’d tapped through earlier—fat, ugly, crybaby, bad mom—still echoed like voices in a cheap hallway.

And then came that absurd beacon:

Absurd? Yes. But even nonsense signs can hum with neon sermons.

Ridiculous. Waffles don’t belong in boiling water. Pancakes aren’t made for pots. And yet the sign glowed with a strange confidence, like neon truth disguised in nonsense.

Sometimes His sermons aren’t eloquent—they’re absurd, but they’re still holy.

The absurdity became invitation. The invitation became worship. And the worship became a whispered truth, right there between motel buzz and shrieking chaos:

Even your hardboiled days belong to Me.

So I answered the sign: a deep breath, a whispered, “I see You.”
A small obedience became a small altar as I drove past the motel with the kids in the backseat.

🍳 Casper’s Egg — Half-Resurrected

Before I could even process the motel neon, another scene bubbled up in my brain—The Little Mermaid.
Chef Louis banging pots, Sebastian darting for his life, shrieking in rhythm:

🎥 René Auberjonois – “Les Poissons” (Sebastian escaping the boiling pot)

That’s what trauma feels like sometimes—dodging heat, always skittering, never resting.

And then, right on its heels, another picture flickered through memory: Casper’s half-resurrection.
The Lazarus machine whirred and sparked, promising a miracle but spitting out nonsense instead. Instead of a boy restored, Casper came back gooey—half miracle, half meme.

Half-baked hope

That’s how healing feels sometimes.
Not raw anymore, but not whole either. Not dead, but not fully alive. Just… gooey. Half-baked. Unfinished.

Like when I could finally sleep through the night—but panicked at sirens. Healing in one room; gooey in another.

What looks foolish on a screen often mirrors the ache inside us.

Shame whispers: See? You’ll never be whole. Always gooey, half-formed, embarrassing.
Jesus answers: I am the Resurrection and the Life.

Casper’s goo makes us laugh, but pause here:
What if the gospel only gave us goo?
What if resurrection were half—oozing halfway alive, pulsing but powerless?

Hope would always be fragile.
Faith would always be embarrassed.
Salvation would sputter but never sing.

But Jesus is no cartoon.
When He cried, “Lazarus, come out,” the man didn’t shuffle half-formed.
He walked out—lungs filling, heart pounding, graveclothes clinging but life undeniable.

That’s the difference:
Casper goo versus Lazarus breath.
Faulty machine versus flawless Messiah.
Half-life versus whole resurrection.

Christ doesn’t leave us halfway. He seals us whole.

In Hebrew, the word for boil is bāshal—the same word used in Exodus 12:9 when God told Israel not to eat the lamb boiled, but roasted in fire.

Why fire?
Because boiling leaches life away into the water, but fire seals life in.

That night, two seals held Israel safe:
the blood on the doorposts outside,
and the fire in the lamb inside.
Blood covered. Fire preserved.

That’s the covenant thread: not half-cooked, not boiled thin, but sealed whole in blood and flame.

And now, through Christ—the true Passover Lamb—that sealing continues.
Trauma may try to boil us down, but the Lamb roasts us in holy fire, keeping what life would otherwise leak out.

Isn’t that the picture? Trauma tries to boil us down until life leaks out.
Anxiety leaves us gooey, half-resurrected.
But Jesus roasts in holy fire, sealing life within us, finishing what He begins.

The Passover lamb wasn’t half-cooked, and neither is resurrection.

Because my Savior is not a faulty machine.
He is the Resurrection and the Life.
He doesn’t spit out ghosts or gooey eggs.
He calls forth sons and daughters, wrapped in breath, fully alive, graveclothes dropping one step at a time.

💡 Reflection & Takeaway
Healing may feel half-baked, gooey, or unfinished—but Jesus never leaves us halfway. He seals life within us. He finishes what He begins.

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🧥 The Coat of Many Colors — Poverty, Shame & Redemption

As a little girl, I often felt like Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors—stitched together with love, but mocked in the schoolyard.

I didn’t have brand-name jeans or polished shoes. My “coat” was hand-me-downs and thrift store finds, patched together with whatever my mom could manage. She wrapped me in love, but the world didn’t see that. They only saw the lack, the pieced-together fragments, and they laughed.

Scripture shows we’re not the first to wear a coat misunderstood.

Joseph’s coat marked favor (Gen. 37:3), but favor was misread as threat. I know that misreading in my bones.

Joseph knew that ache too. His father’s gift—a beautiful robe marking favor—should have wrapped him in belonging. Instead, it provoked jealousy. His brothers stripped it, dipped it in blood, and handed it back to Jacob as “evidence” of his death.

What man strips, God rewrites. What the enemy presses, God preserves.

🎶 Dolly’s version names the wound—poverty, shame, and laughter at what was stitched with love.

🎶 Brandon Lake’s version declares the healing—red as the blood that saved me, white as the light that pulled me from the dark, gold as the crown He placed on my head.

🎶 And Forrest Frank & Cory Asbury’s Misunderstood names the ache in between—the sting of words that cut deep, the shadow that stretches long through the years. But it also sings the gospel turn: “It’s okay if you feel misunderstood. There’s a Man who did as well when they nailed Him to wood.”

Songs tell the ache, but Scripture tells the redemption.

Some days I still feel like the girl in the patched coat, laughed at, “too much,” too fragile. Other days, I feel the crown heavy on my head, clothed not in shame but in glory. And most days, I am both—still carrying stitches of sorrow, yet already wrapped in redemption.

That’s the mystery of the gospel: He doesn’t discard the old coat. He redeems it. He takes the same fabric the world mocked and weaves it into His story.

💡 Reflection & Takeaway: The cloaks that once carried shame are the very garments God weaves into His glory story.

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🫏 Donkey’s Cloaks — Crybaby Tears Turned to Glory

Matthew 21:7 says: “They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks and prayer shawls on them, and Jesus rode on them.”

No velvet procession—just dust, sandals, and borrowed beasts (Matt. 21:1–11). The King of Glory chose ordinary surrender as His throne.

Not a throne. Not velvet. Not royal fabric. Just ordinary cloaks—dusty, wrinkled, stained—spread across the back of a trembling donkey. That was enough for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem.

Ordinary cloaks are enough when surrendered.

Because I, too, have been marked by cloaks—some stitched in love, some soaked in shame, some wrinkled with tears.

They called me crybaby. Heaven called me beloved. 👑 Even the tears the world mocked can become cloaks He rides upon.

Labeled crybaby in ink. Heaven whispered tender. What the world mocked, Jesus chose as His throne.

I think of that newspaper photo from when I was six—crying on a street corner. My tear-streaked face labeled crybaby. Mocked. Immortalized.

But here’s the story beneath the ink: I wasn’t crying for nothing. I wanted to take a dead butterfly to school for show-and-tell. In my little-girl heart, it was wonder, beauty, a treasure worth sharing. But instead of delight, I was met with impatience. My father’s words, edged with the sharpness of alcohol and weariness, landed like stones: Why are you such a problem?

That moment, snapped and printed, told the world I was too much.

But that label didn’t land on a blank slate. By six, I was already stitched with names too heavy for my small shoulders—poor, preacher’s grandkid, daughter of an alcoholic, child of domestic violence.

So when the newspaper photo came, it wasn’t a one-off humiliation. It pressed deeper into wounds already open.

Not a cherry on top, but salt rubbed raw.

That photo became a haunting emblem—my insecurities printed in ink, my failures displayed for the whole town to see, every child my age given front-row seats to my shame.

But my grandma saw something else. She didn’t call me crybaby. She called me tender. She reframed the humiliation as belovedness. She whispered a gospel I couldn’t yet hear: what the world mocks, Heaven redeems.

And isn’t that the gospel of the donkey? Ordinary cloaks—threadbare, dirt-stained, unimpressive—become a throne when laid down.

My tears are those cloaks. Stained. Wrinkled. Labeled weak. But when I lay them down, Jesus doesn’t scoff. He rides on them. He turns fragile into fragrance.

Even the tears the world mocks can become cloaks He rides upon.

💡 Reflection & Takeaway
The labels of the world—crybaby, too much, too fragile—are rewritten in Christ. Your tears, your cloaks, your story: all of it can carry the King.

💡 Reflection & Takeaway — Questions to Linger With

• Where am I “gooey”—half-alive—and what might sealing look like?

• Which label (crybaby, too much, outsider) is Jesus riding in on today?

• What’s my neon—absurd but holy—sign of God’s nearness this week?

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✝️ Let’s Pray

Jesus, even my gooey, half-formed days belong to You.
When shame names me half-resurrected, You call me wholly Yours.
When the world mocks my patched coat, You crown me with favor.
When tears stain my story, You turn them into cloaks fit for a King.

Seal what trauma tries to boil away.
Roast me in holy fire, preserving the life You breathed into me.
Turn my fragile places into fragrance,
and remind me daily: not boiled, but blessed.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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🕊 Benediction

Beloved, lift your face like a sunflower to the Sonbeam. 🌻
Even your hardboiled days belong to Him.
Go with this truth stitched into your story:
what feels like gooey half-life is being sealed in holy fire.
Your patched coat is not your shame—it is His glory cloak.
Your tears are not wasted—they are thrones He rides upon.

Walk free in this: You are His beloved.

✨ Pocket Benediction

Even your gooey, hardboiled days are not wasted.
They are being sealed in holy fire.
It is finished.

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🎶 Worship to Carry You Further
Resurrecting — Elevation Worship

The resurrected King is resurrecting me.

💛 If these words lit a neon flicker of hope in you, you can help me keep writing more sermons from nonsense signs and cloaks of tears:
☕ Buy me a coffee
🌐 Read more & connect here

With love and grace,
Beth 🦎🌻

➡️ Coming Next (Bridge)

If Part 1 told my story—neon sermons, gooey half-resurrections, patched coats, and donkey cloaks—then Part 2 carries the ache into my daughter’s world. It unfolds in Nirvana shirts, Cobain’s lyrics, purple bruises, and the desperate ache of belonging.

That’s where the story continues. Part 2: Even My Bruises Belong to Him

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✨ The ache doesn’t end with me. It spills into their story—stitched in Nirvana shirts, Cobain’s lyrics, and purple bruises waiting to be redeemed.