By Rick Moore
It wasn’t really a diet. We weren’t trying to lose weight. It was more or less a plan to stop gaining weight. Because we were on the road for hours each day, both my wife and I would purchase several of our meals from fast-food chains. Our plan was to stop eating french fries for a month to see if it would make a difference. A week into the self-imposed plan, my wife called and asked me to pick up dinner from a drive-thru on the way home. Driving past one of my favorite hamburger joints, I couldn’t help but notice a huge banner which read, “Buy 1 Combo And Get The 2nd Free!” I did a u-turn and pulled into the drive-thru. Suddenly remembering we weren’t supposed to be eating fries, I did the math and realized we would still be better off to order the combos and throw away the fries. After receiving the meals, I pulled over to the dumpster behind the restaurant and ditched the french fries.
As we are sitting at the kitchen table eating, my wife looks at the receipt taped to the side of the bag from the restaurant and saw where I had received two orders of fries. She became irate. “I can’t believe you ate two orders of fries in the car on the way home!” I promised I didn’t and began explaining how the cost of the two combos was cheaper, and that I had thrown away the fries in the dumpster. She wasn’t buying it. She said she knew me too well and there was no way in the world I would throw away two orders of fries. Then, out of no where, she came up with a new label she tried to put on me, a label I’d never heard before. She said, “I knew you would go fast-fooding on me.” I didn’t even know “fast-fooding” was a thing. Now I’m upset. I jump in the car and do the only reasonable thing left to do. I drive back to the restaurant dumpster. No, this isn’t a Seinfeld sketch.
I leaned over the dumpster, stretching as far as possible, but the french fries were still inches away out of reach. I grabbed a long stick and tried to pull them towards me, but that didn’t work either. Taking a picture of them as proof would have been a reasonable thing to do, but that could never be as good as securing the evidence. So, I jumped into the dumpster and picked up the two containers of french fries. After gently setting them on the ledge of the dumpster making sure they would not tip over, I began realizing getting into the dumpster was easier than getting out. It is at that moment a bunch of young people pulled into the drive through. With their windows down and cell phones out taking pictures and videos, I heard one of the teenagers say, “I’ve never seen someone dumpster diving at a restaurant before.”
To this day, I’m still not sure my wife believes I didn’t eat the fries. In her defense, I was known to sneak around and eat candy bars when I shouldn’t. We want to be trusted, and we want to trust others. My father used to say trust isn’t given, it is earned. No matter if you agree with that or not, that was the rule in the home I grew up in. If I snuck out in the middle of the night and was caught, I would be grounded and not allowed to drive the car for a week. The punishment of being grounded was bad, but what really hurt the most was to hear my father say, “I can’t trust you.” One of the highest honors a person can receive is to be told they are trustworthy. Trust is the fragile cornerstone of all human connection. Go earn it.
Rick Moore is Communication Pastor at Destiny Worship Center.
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