This pizza is my very favorite in all the world to eat. I have had incredible Chicago pizza (which I love.) I have had great New York pizza. But given the choice of eating either of those and eating my husband's pizza I would, without hesitation, choose his.
One of the things I love about this pizza is the process, which begins the moment we come home. (Actually, Glen makes the dough early in the morning even before we leave. This allows the dough time to rise sufficiently.)
While Glen works the dough, I prep the pan applying a thin coat of olive oil. The oven is turned up to 500°. I slice the pepperoni and Glen shreds the cheese. Then we both begin assembling the pie. Glen applies the sauce (because he knows if I did it there would hardly be any on the pizza.) He sprinkles a light dusting of spices brought to us from France by our daughter Marie on her recent trip there. The cheese is piled high and the pepperoni applied. Of course the pepperoni and the cheese must have a "quality assurance test" to make sure they are worthy of being put on our pizza. I prefer that to be my job.
One of my goals in this process is to have any tool Glen will need at his hand when he needs it and to remove, wash and dry any tool after it has been used. I love it when, just as the pizza is sliding into the oven, the last dish is dried and put away.
We have done this so many times now, there is hardly any need for conversation. We both know what needs to be done, which activities we will each perform and then we just do it. We mutually enjoy the activity. This is what my friends didn't understand.
I was telling them about this incredible pizza that is worth burning the roof of your mouth each Sunday, and they said, "You have to do that much work each Sunday just for pizza?"
What they didn't understand, our pizza is not a "have to" it is a "get to." We surely don't have to do it. We could easily pick up a pizza from any number of pizzerias along our way home. Or we could pay $5 for a frozen one. But the outcome, the pleasure in the eating, would not nearly be the same.
We "get to" create this pizza for the joy of eating it, for the joy of our daughters eating it with us, and for the enjoyment the process of it's creation brings mutually to us both.
This reminds me so much of our walk as Christians. There are things the Lord has called us each to do. Sometimes we will be tempted to see these things as "I have to," when the truth of the matter is they are clearly "I get to" things. I know when we do services at area nursing facilities we receive so much more blessing than we could ever give to those dear ones.
The change in attitude, the choice to see it differently, changes our whole outlook, our focus and our experience in the matter. We choose to see things not according to the physical, temporal view, but according to the spiritual, eternal view. In doing so, we enter into His joy and pleasure in doing those things which He has called us to do. It becomes not a solitary, individual event, but an event shared with the Lord who strengthens and enables us to do His will.
"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen
but at the things which are not seen; f
or the things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal."
2 Corinthians 4:17,18
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