I was doing Taco Tuesday about fifty years before Taco Tuesday became a thing.
Actually, that isn’t quite accurate.
I was doing Taco Tuesday, Taco Wednesday, Taco Thursday, Taco Friday, and, when circumstances required it, Taco Sunday.
I have always loved tacos.
Growing up in Texas, tacos weren’t an event. Nobody needed a chalkboard sign announcing them in whimsical lettering. They were just food. Wonderful food. And when I went off to college in Austin, tacos became one of the primary reasons I survived.
I didn’t have much money, and tacos didn’t require much money. Ground beef. A packet of taco seasoning. Hard shells. Cheese. Salsa.
Boom. Dinner.
Sometimes I would put essentially the same ingredients on a baked potato, which I considered an entirely different meal because it involved a potato.
College teaches ingenuity.
Years later, when I became the primary cook for my own family, tacos remained firmly in the rotation. They were one of those meals I could announce with great enthusiasm on evenings when I had absolutely no enthusiasm for cooking.
“Girls! Taco Thursday!”
As if Taco Thursday were an ancient family festival rather than Dad realizing at 5:17 that people were apparently expecting to eat again.
And tacos had all the food groups. Meat. Cheese. Vegetables, assuming salsa counts. Grain, in shell form. Sour cream, which probably belongs to some food group.
I could put everything on the table and feel that I had once again successfully fulfilled my parental responsibilities.
Then, years later, I moved back to Austin, and something had happened to tacos.
Austin itself had changed. The funky college town I remembered had become a foodie destination, and somewhere along the way the humble taco had gone to graduate school.
There were breakfast tacos, brisket tacos, barbacoa tacos, fancy fish tacos, tacos topped with things I could not identify without assistance. There were taco trucks people would stand in line for and restaurants where people had very serious opinions about tortillas.
And I loved them. Of course I did. They were delicious.
But I carried a secret, one I wasn't sure I should admit in polite Austin company. What I really wanted sometimes was a taco kit.
Old El Paso. Hard shells. Ground beef—not the lean kind either. The little packet of seasoning. Shredded cheddar cheese. Sour cream. Salsa. And because I’m so gourmet, I would slice a little red onion in there too.
But that’s it. No cilantro crema. No locally sourced microgreens harvested under a full moon.
Just the taco of my childhood.
Honestly, I could eat ten of them right now.
There is something deeply satisfying about that first bite into a hard-shell taco. You tilt your head sideways, open your mouth farther than dignity would normally permit, and bite down.
Then the entire thing explodes.
The shell cracks in six directions. Ground beef falls onto your plate. Cheese lands in your lap. Sour cream appears mysteriously on your nose.
It is not elegant food. Maybe that's part of why I love it. Because I know I began doing with life what Austin did with tacos.
I started believing ordinary things needed upgrading. Food needed to become cuisine. Coffee needed tasting notes. Experiences needed to become memorable. Work needed to become meaningful. Vacations needed to become adventures.
And perhaps most dangerously, people needed to become impressive.
And I tried…hard…to become impressive.
A better pastor. A better preacher. A better writer. A better father. A more interesting person.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow. And there is certainly nothing wrong with a really good brisket taco. But there is a difference between appreciating something extraordinary and becoming embarrassed by the ordinary.
Jesus never seemed embarrassed by ordinary things. Bread. Fish. Seeds. Birds. Sheep. Coins. Water. Wine.
He kept pointing toward the most common things people could see and touch and taste and saying, essentially:
Look again. The Kingdom is closer than you think.
Maybe that is why, as I get older, I find myself increasingly drawn back toward simple things. A walk. A porch. A conversation that goes nowhere in particular. A cheap cup of coffee. People I don't have to impress. And tacos from a box.
There are extraordinary things in this world, and when they come, I want to enjoy them.
So order the brisket taco. Try the strange salsa. Eat whatever the chef has sprinkled microgreens over.
But maybe we don't have to spend our lives upgrading everything. Maybe some things were already good. Maybe some of the things we learned to be embarrassed about deserve to be loved again.
And maybe part of learning to see the Kingdom is recovering our taste for the ordinary.
So tonight, forget Taco Tuesday. Make tacos on Thursday. Brown some ground beef. Tear open the seasoning packet. Heat up the shells. Put the sour cream on the table.
And if anybody asks whether the tortillas are artisanal, tell them no.
They're Old El Paso. Then eat six. Or ten.
And don't apologize.