Embracing the Bread and the Wine....Love, Rest, and Grace.

Let me start off by saying I am not planning on editing this.. I hope you don't grimace too much when you read. I don't want to go back and change what I really mean. Thank you for indulging me.

I love to cook.

It happened by accident really. My grandmother had Alzheimer's disease and lived with us a for a season of my childhood my mother spend many evening with her. When she was hospitalized my mother spent her evenings there, with her. While my dad and brother would have been fine fending for themselves those evenings, I enjoyed the time and space in a kitchen trying to figure out how to feed people. Little did I know those moments stolen in the kitchen were a foreshadowing, a dry run, of the life of feeding a family of six I would eventually lead. Once my grandmother passed, I was soon shooed out of the kitchen. As my mother and I did not have a mentor/mentee  relationship. The kitchen was her domain. I fell back in line.

Fast forward to marriage, moving to a farm, and 4 kiddos in 5 years, and I was a quick study in cooking. I really learned to love it. I love feeding people. I love trying new things, different cultural foods and a myriad a spices. But the hardest part? Sitting down to eat with people.

In Shauna Niequest's book, "Bread and Wine," she hit the nail on the head when she expressed that:

"Both the church and modern life, together and separately, have wandered away from the table.....modern life has pushed us into faux food and fast food and highly engineered food products cased in sterile packages that we eat in the car or on the subway-as though we're astronauts, as though we cannot be bothered by a meal."

What hit me right between the eyes when reading that was that eating with others is intimate and beautiful. And that intimacy is something we avoid. Something I like to avoid.

I have had disordered eating for as long as I can remember. There's not really a category for it, just messed up, marked by food anxiety and feeling of unworthiness that correlates to food and eating in front of people. {Weird.} 

I fear the intimacy that the table brings.

I love cooking for others.

I love being an isolated astronaut.

But I do want to practice that intimacy.

Learn how to be intimate.

At the table.

As as Niequest mentioned, food connects us with memories. Comfort at it's best. It connects with people; their stories, their hearts and their journeys. It's time well invested. 

She hit the nail on the head when she talked about dealing with our own insecurities in the "Magical White Bean Soup" chapter:

"Either I can be here, fully here, my imperfect, messy, tired but wholly present self or I can miss it-this moment, this conversation, this time around the table, whatever it is-because I'm trying, and failing, to be perfect, keep the house perfect, make the meal perfect....Let's be courageous in these days. Let's choose love and rest and grace. Let's use the minutes and hours to create memories with the people we love instead of dragging them on one more errand or shushing them while we accomplish one more....thing."

That has become my prayer, that I am fully there, at the table. Love, rest and grace. 

I loved this book with a million kinds of puffy hearts. I only tried a couple of the recipes but I hope to try more. This book has pushed, encouraged and compelled me to make my table more intimate, a place where joy, tears and life happen. 

Love, rest and grace. 

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Looking forward to your thoughts ladies.

Good pick Jen!