The Waffle House Confessional

By Tracey Dann

What happens on Spring Break, stays on Spring Break. Or at least that is the theory.

It was March and 25 degrees in Southern Georgia. Wind knocked out power lines up and down the east coast. Felled trees crisscrossed I-70 from Savannah to Atlanta. Snow had taken out the roof of the World Trade Center and along with it all of the ATMs east of the Mississippi. It was the kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare that could only mean Tracey Fajen was on vacation. I left at 4:00 am with only two hours of sleep and a half a tank of gas, clinging to the hope of finding any place along the highway with electricity. Two hours later, driving on fumes, I pulled into a gas station in Dublin, Georgia. The buzzing neon sign said “Open 24 hours.” Perfect. I put the hose in my fuel tank only to hear the empty click of a pump with no power. The station had electricity, but apparently “Open 24 hours” was more of a weekly estimate. Frustrated by their lack of truth in advertising, I slammed my car door and drove off.

I heard the crash immediately and I knew what I had done. I could see the gas pump in the rearview mirror leaping from its island and being dragged by the hose behind my car. I did what any panicked college girl would do and ran to the Waffle House next door and confessed everything. My honesty was met with dull stares and shrugging shoulders. No one cared. “Is there someone I should call?” I asked. One of the patrons pointed wordlessly out the window toward the station next door and went back to his chewing. An 82-year-old pump jockey had arrived thirty minutes late for his 7:00 am shift. As I approached him, stooping over my incriminating mess I heard, “That musta been a purdy strong wind knocked over that there pump!”

What happened on Spring Break could have stayed on Spring Break except I had already confessed.

Many people see confession as the end of the Ten Commandments. God gave us rules. We blew it. Now we have to face the music. But we know Christ faced our music on the cross. Our God is the Alpha and the Omega and in every ending His grace gives us a new beginning. The two parts of confession are no different. Confession is the end of sin and Absolution is beginning of a life lived in Christian freedom. By confessing our sins we no longer have to carry them with us.

I could have left that gas station. No one knew my name. But I would have spent the remainder of my days wondering if someone had seen my license plate, if someone called the police, if there was a warrant in Georgia for a crazy pumpjacking redhead who fit my description. The helpful question and answers section in the back of the Catechism remind us of Proverbs 28:13. God knows that sin follows us. He sent His Son, as 1 Peter tells us, so that we will be “dead to sin” and “live unto righteousness” because of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross.

My confession cost me a police report, a hefty insurance deductible and a whole lot of embarrassment, but I learned two very important things: First, when you drive while angry you tend to miss important details—like being connected to a gas pump. Second, and most importantly, if confessing my sins to the shouldershrugging clientele of a Waffle House gets me freedom in this life, how much greater is the freedom God’s only Son has earned me and YOU in the next?

Tracey Dann is a member of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Smithfield, Rhode Island, as well as a youth leader, Sunday school teacher, and mom. She is the entertainment coordinator for the Corum Deo conference in Bloomington, Illinois and can be reached at tdann1@cox.net.