It is Sunday morning. I am sacrificially making baked oatmeal for my family. And I am starting with the best of intentions–I will make it the healthy way, the way I like it. Then, I will separate part of it for my husband and add the exorbitant amount of brown sugar he likes. He will have his artery-clogging goo at the bottom of the dish.

And so I happily beat eggs and dump cinnamon while my one-year-olds watch from chairs and beg hungrily for raw oatmeal and sugar… They are whining more all the time–I must get this in the oven. Changing plans, I sprinkle blueberries and a little extra sugar on top of the oatmeal in the baking dish, without separating any of it. I wouldn’t know how much extra sugar to add anyway. Perhaps the fruit will compensate.

“There’s baked oatmeal in the oven for breakfast,” I tell Ben as he comes into the kitchen.

“What recipe did you use?”

“Well… I used the recipe I like, but I sprinkled blueberries and some extra sugar on top.” I read the skepticism in his silence. “I just don’t want the children eating all that extra sugar.” I am defending my actions, but I am not being self-righteous. I am merely right.

“Eating baked oatmeal occasionally while I was growing up never hurt me.” We have had this discussion before. I know exactly what kind of baked oatmeal he is referring to–and how much sugar it has in it. A cup. A whole exorbitant cup. My mom, in fact, used the same recipe while I was growing up, if I remember right. I must not pass this one on to my children.

“You don’t know that,” I mutter darkly. He is only thirty. It’s a little early for clogged arteries to manifest themselves. “Anyway, I don’t feel good eating so much sugar for breakfast.” I am not self-righteous. I am merely right.

We will not think about the times that my “breakfast” is a cookie and a cup of coffee.

Right or not, my conscience pricks a bit as we sit at the breakfast table, and I watch my husband spooning the offending baked oatmeal into his mouth. I apologize, if a little grudgingly.

“I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he says. The guilt pricks again, but I still believe I am mostly right…

And then it is Wednesday morning. I come to Ephesians 5 during my Bible reading time, stumble at verse 24, and stop in my tracks.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

“In everything, in everything,” I repeat to myself. “But husbands don’t know best about everything!”

The words in front of me do not change. My self-righteousness crumbles under their impact. The truth sinks in.

I can be right and still be dead-wrong.

May God protect our arteries, because the next time I make baked oatmeal, I have every intention of adding an entire exorbitant cup of sugar.

The End.