Feeding People

Again and again and again

That’s my Nanny’s bell on the windowsill

My earliest and best food memory is of my grandmother’s breakfasts. My parents went to work early in the morning, and they would carry us (my sister and I) asleep to the old Bronco and take us in town to the grandparents house. Then we would be carried to their bed and we would curl up beside Nanny and fall back asleep. When it was time to wake up, Pop would bring us all coffee, and once Nanny finished her cup she would go into the kitchen and make a wonderful breakfast. This wasn’t just a special occasion thing. She did this all the time. It was bacon or sausage, eggs, the most perfect crispy shredded hash-browns, a thick slice of tomato, a piece of toast with jelly and a glass of milk. She would bring it to us on a tray with a little brass bell, in case we needed anything else.

True story.

There are only two ways to grow up after a childhood like this: either you hunger for that kind of service or you become that kind of servant. Well, there is a third, and that’s me— with a foot in each world—my spirit is willing, but my flesh would love nothing better than breakfast in bed again… with cartoons and the newspaper.

My good friend Heather has been someone for me to look up to for a long time, since I was a teenager and she had little babies. Now I have little babies and she is the mother of three adult sons and two preteen girls. Straight out of college she worked for a commercial dairy and learned many of the dark secrets of that industry. When I first met her, she was sharing a milk cow with her friend Kimberly and they were going after the homesteading lifestyle with all the energy they could muster while raising small children. There were many stressful mistakes and funny stories and costly successes. They were absorbing a huge learning curve for their children, and in many ways for me too. I wanted to be like them when I grew up, and my dreams have come true. I milk a cow every morning for our family and for a few good friends, and when I am at my wits end— in farming or parenting or anything— they are the ones I call for help.

I asked Heather recently what advice she would’ve given herself as a young mom, and I was surprised by her answer. She is a reader and deep thinker, so I was expecting something profound, but she said “I would say to myself: All this cooking you’re doing? Press into that. It’s not going away. This is what you’ll be doing every day for… well, for what will seem like the rest of your life.”

She went on to say how her boys and their wives/girlfriends still share many meals with them, which is wonderful, and how she is also cooking for her aging parents. She said for many years is was just a chore and then at some point she realized it was one of the biggest parts of her life, and she started to see it less as a rut and more like a calling.

I really felt that deep in my bones, because man, I do a lot of cooking. I’m sure you do too. I often think of a quote by Austin Farrar, who said of C.S. Lewis, his friend and parishioner, “He really was a Christian—by which I mean, he never thought he had the right to stop.”

I love this, because it’s not that I grow to hate or belittle my life as a believer, but just that sometimes I do feel like I should have the right to stop.

“A vacation from my problems!” is a line from the movie What About Bob, and my husband and I tease one another about this often, because of course, it isn’t going to happen. Especially when you have small children, vacation is just like being at home only harder, and wherever we go, we’ll be there. And there’s the rub.

Endurance is a muscle and so many times a day, I must repent for just wanting to quit, and this applies to everything— patience, laundry, going after that wayward child, dishes, reading aloud, cooking, prayer— and so much more. Thankfully as a mom, the Lord will quickly land your face in it if you stop, and thankfully (as my own mom has always reminded me) when I fail, I’ll get another chance— probably in just a few minutes— I’ll be getting another chance, which is a mercy.

Of course, we will get stronger and there is rest, but it seems like we have the choice to grow stronger and rest in misery and dread, or in joy and hope.

“I think a mature Christian,” Dallas Willard said, “is someone who is very difficult to offend.” I’ve been thinking about that kind of sturdiness and how it might and really ought to be carried into the most mundane aspects of our lives. It is the work of God if you are not offended by a rude word or harsh tone, and also if you are not offended by the ordinary ceaseless tasks which fall to you.

And so I think in the same way it might be said that a mature Christian cooks and just keeps on cooking. She’s got meat in the freezer and meat thawing in the fridge and a pot of beans in the instant pot and a sink full of tomatoes and watermelon juice dripping down her cabinets and bread rising and granola in the oven and jars falling out of the spice cabinet when she opens it and a pizza box cramming the trash can and dishes that have done their job piled up on the counter and enough crumbs to reassemble a whole muffin in the highchair. She’s thinking about food for tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and all of this is a delight because she loves these hungry people. Maybe she doesn’t offer them a bell to ring, but they know who to find when they get hungry. Maybe she’s not ready in that moment, but that’s okay. They will come back and she will get another chance.

My mama was away from home recently for many days, and I had the lone task of harvest in her garden. You wouldn’t think it, but harvest is the hardest part of the whole thing. It won’t wait on you. It’s impatient. If you come back tomorrow, the cucumbers and the okra will be twice that size. You have to do it now, and then you have to figure out what to do with all of it today. Planting and weeding are slow gentle tasks, but harvest is intense, and it’s often the most urgent when it’s hot and the mosquitos are hungry and wasps are upset. Sometimes it is back-breaking or your arms break out from the prickles of the plant. We’ve known so many new gardeners just not realize that the beautiful garden they planted will have to be picked, just didn’t enjoy picking, or maybe they forget about harvesting at all! But this is comical and backward isn’t it… doesn’t it seem like our hearts would be happiest when the vines and stalks and arms and skirts and counters are full?

You know where I’m going with this: a garden metaphor. It just lends itself to lessons for all of life, effortlessly. I think this is why the Lord placed us in a garden from the get-go: so these stories and memories and lessons would be written on our hearts, that we might say O of course, of course.

If you have someone to feed, even one friend, that is abundance. If you have many mouths to feed, that is a garden laden and overflowing with ripe fruit. Get out there and get to it. Get calloused and sunburned and sweat and ache and say Thank you Jesus, because this kind of work is the best there is— and don’t forget it.