The Sausage Angel

     Every morning it is the same ritual.  Egg sandwiches for breakfast.  I fix my husband a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich and I have bacon on mine.

     The sausage is round patties that I cook up in advance, then heat them in the skillet.  While the eggs cook, I cut the sausages in half because two round patties do not fit well on a slice of bread.  I place two of the halves, round side out in the upper corners of the bread.  Then the other two halves are placed rounded side in on the rest of the exposed bread.  This makes a somewhat angel shape, thus the name, a sausage angel.

     The next ingredient is the cheese.  It is a large round slice of cheese that I also cut in half, one for each sandwich.  I have discovered that to use a whole slice usually ends up with a lot of melted cheese dripping out of the bottom of the sandwich.  I take this half slice of cheese and break the outside corners off of it, this leaves the half looking like an odd shaped triangle of cheese.

     I take the two small corners and place them on the top edge of the sausage angel's wings.  While I preform this, I say to myself, this is the armor of God, faith and truth.  I then place the triangle piece of cheese over the rest of the sausage, pointy side up, the breastplate of righteousness.  The angel and my husband are now ready to face whatever the day may bring to them.

     The recent news has been filled with yet another tragedy.  Many young lives snuffed out, seemingly, way before their time.  A senseless act of desperation brought about by a troubled mind.
There is much outrage and calls for more gun control.  There is talk about certain religious groups being targeted for their faith, in a land where their faith has reigned supreme. 

     We live in a society that pushes our youth into things beyond their scope of understanding.  We push them to make decisions about their future before they are teens.  We enter them in beauty contests when they are hardly out of diapers.  We make sure they are in every sport available and spend countless hours on the road or sitting in the stands, cheering them on.  We sign them up for dance, gymnastics, wrestling and a plethora of other activities and work two jobs to pay for it.  We want to keep them busy, so we cater to their needs.  We want them to be well rounded in numerous subjects.  We want them to be successful.  We tell them they are special, and they are, but.......

     While we are doing all this, we are forgetting something.  We have forgotten that we are all in this scheme of life together.  We are spending too much time focusing on individualism instead of community.  We are letting precious lives slip through the cracks because we have the mind set that being the 'top dog' is the only way to be.  We are not taking the time to take that kid who is odd, smelly, has head lice, comes from a poor, messed up family, under our wings and letting them know they are special too.  We are not telling them that they have a purpose, that they are just as much a child of God as the next person is.

     We all have a guardian angel, but they cannot interfere with free will.  It is written that we know not when we entertain angels, so with that in mind, we should be watchful of the way we treat others.  Just one small act of kindness can make a huge impact on someone's life.......maybe even fixing them a sausage angel.