The Gospel According to Debbie Irwin

Irwin family Christmas morning breakfast, December 25, 2008. Photo by Bethy Irwin.

Ask me what my mom, Debbie Irwin, is all about.

My answer: “Sweet rolls.”

From scratch.

You see, Mom used to make a special breakfast for our family every Sunday morning. She always made it from scratch.

She made sweet rolls, applesauce muffins, banana bread, coffee cake, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, and many other yummy carbohydrates.

Sometimes, she baked on Saturday nights.

Sometimes, she got up at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings. She baked and got ready for church while the rest of us slept.

In our family, one thing was as sure as the sunrise: We ate a special made-from-scratch breakfast every Sunday morning before we pulled ourselves together and went off to church.

In fact, we ate breakfast together as a family every day of the week. The only exception was Saturdays. On Saturdays, my sisters and I took turns going out to breakfast one-on-one with Dad. The rest of us ate Pop-Tarts and watched Saturday morning cartoons at home.

But we were all at the breakfast table the other six days of the week. We ate cereal on two of those days, which meant Mom baked or cooked our breakfast the other four days.

When I say we were all at the breakfast table, I don’t mean we passed through one a time and plucked what we wanted on our way out the door.

Mom set the table. We all had to be there at 7:15 a.m. Once everyone was sitting down at her or his place, we said a prayer and ate what Mom made for us.

We did not listen to the radio or watch TV. This was the 1980s and 1990s, so we didn’t have mobile phones yet. If we did, I’m sure Mom would have made us leave them in another room.

At the breakfast table each morning, Mom made sure we talked. Sometimes, Dad read to us from the Bible or another devotional book and asked each of us, in turn, to share our thoughts on what he read. Dad did this, but I am sure it was Mom’s idea and prodding. Dad was no morning person.

Family breakfast was a family custom for as long as my sisters and I lived at home and even after.

When I was a teenager, I was embarrassed that Mom made us do this.

On sitcoms, teenagers grabbed Pop-Tarts on their way out the door to school. Or they slurped down cereal while watching TV. That’s what my friends did, too. That’s what normal people did!

Why couldn’t my mom be “normal”?

Why couldn’t she let us be “normal”, too?

I think I may have tried to reason with her at some point. Why go to all the trouble, Mom? Nobody expects you to do all this extra work, Mom. Save yourself the energy and time, Mom. Sleep later with the rest of us, Mom. None of us will think you’re not doing your job if you just let breakfast be ordinary, Mom.

But now I understand: Love comes to life in the extra-ordinary little things we do every day for those around us.

Mom manifested her love by getting up early to make sure we had a good breakfast together every single morning.

Mom manifested her love by scratch cooking, setting the table, and trying to get five grumpy, tired people talking to each other before they went their separate ways for the day.

Mom manifested her love by making a place for us to start our days in prayer and words of faith and wisdom.

Mom manifested her love by making sure that we did not grow up thinking that real life, the real world, is what we heard and saw in the media. Day after day, week after week, year after year, we learned that true life and the world to come are a family–tired but together–at a table every Sunday morning.

This is the Gospel according to my mom, Debbie Irwin.

This is the Way.

Grace and peace.