The one who reveals secrets is a constant gossip; avoid someone with a big mouth.” Proverbs 20:19
The more I chewed the bigger it got. I have lots of food memories from growing up. First you need to remember that I was born in the South and folks from the South have a whole different way of eating. And trust me…that means it was good…mostly. I can remember fried chicken Sunday dinners with green beans and mashed potatoes…the kind that didn’t come from a box but from a real potato. A lot of Sundays we had pot roast with those same yummy potatoes and green beans. And “dinner on the grounds” at church was a potluck straight from heaven.
My mama was the biscuit queen. You can’t imagine how good they were hot out of the oven. While we did occasionally have desert, we really didn’t need it. We would just take one of mama’s biscuits, slather it with butter and then pour cane syrup all over it. Shoot-that-thing! You don’t know good if you’ve never had homemade biscuits and cane syrup. Now with all that said, there were a few things we had that were a bit—different.
I remember I decided to try something new with peanut butter. It could have been that we were out of jelly but anyway I got the mayonnaise out of the refrigerator, smeared it on some bread and then loaded on the peanut butter. Bam…just like that a new delicacy was born. That became one of my favorites for years. One day, though, I had one and then got the stomach flu and well, we parted ways. No pun intended.
We didn’t have a whole lot of candy growing up and I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Somewhere along the journey I discovered the sugar bowl. Did you know you can get a teaspoon full of sugar and put it in your mouth and it tastes like a candy bar? Well, it probably didn’t taste like a Snickers, but it was plenty sweet. You know what they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
School lunches were always an adventure. There were deviled egg sandwiches (awesome), deviled egg sandwiches with potted meat mixed in (not so awesome), potted meat sandwiches without deviled eggs (yuk) and finally Vienna sausages (uh, well, somewhat good). You just never knew what mom was going to put in the lunch bag. My all-time favorite was and is pimento cheese. And then there was—tripe.
Tripe wasn’t a lunch item, it was always for supper. Some of you may not have discovered the wonder of tripe or even know what it is. Well, for those of you who don’t know tripe is cow’s stomach. Yup and let me just tell you it was an experience. It always smelled great cooking but eating it was a real challenge. Mama usually cut it up in pretty small pieces, but you still had to get a sharp knife to get it down to bite size. Now tripe was…chewy. In fact, tripe was very chewy. Which is why it never made it into the lunch bag—it took two hours to eat one small piece. You see, the more you chewed it, the bigger it got!
I’ve heard it said that celery is one of those negative calorie foods…it actually takes more calories to chew it and digest it than are in the food itself. I think tripe must be one of those also. In fact, I am sure there is a tripe diet somewhere out there. You take a bite, chew for two hours and bam…lose two pounds. Good, ole, tripe. The supper of champions.
Did you know that tripe and gossip are first cousins? No really. You mutter a few words about your friend and before you know it, you have yourself a belly full of trouble. Those few hurtful words just get bigger and more hurtful each time they are repeated. Feelings get hurt, relationships are broken and talk about a belly ache…oh yeah. While the Bible doesn’t say much about tripe it does say a lot about gossip. One of my favorites is Proverbs 20:19, “The one who reveals secrets is a constant gossip; avoid someone with a big mouth.” How’s that for being straight to the point?
One of the best ways to avoid gossip is to remember a couple of things. If the person you are telling isn’t part of the problem…don’t say it. Also, if you wouldn’t say something to a person’s face you shouldn’t share it behind their back. Now the problem is, most of us just love a good piece of juicy gossip. The Bible says, “A gossip’s words are like choice food that goes down to one’s innermost being.” That might be true but I know one more thing about tripe. If it gets stuck in your throat you are in deep weeds. That choice piece of gossip can get stuck too, and can cause heart breaking consequences.
Well, I gave up tripe a long time ago. I guess I had enough when I was a kid. I wish I could say I have totally given up gossip the same way. I have found out given half-a-chance I can find myself saying, “Hey, did you hear…” and that tripe-like-sin is right back in my mouth. We just need to be careful to keep it out of our mouth. The good news is Jesus is more than willing to help if you ask. He can handle all kind of things whether it be a tough piece of tripe stuck in the wrong place or a juicy piece of gossip right on your lips. Just ask Him. He will help…cause He’s got …even this. Bro. Dewayne
Grits with Grace 