comfort at the table

Dinnertime growing up
was always a comforting routine.
Nothing was exotic, everything familiar.
Some dishes took years to love,
but now Mom’s shepherd’s pie ranks high on my list –
always made with a pie shell from the freezer,
tomato-y beef, canned green beans,
salty, buttered mashed potatoes from a box,
and cheddar cheese on the top.
I’d smash it down with a fork and enjoy every perfect bite.

Mom’s spaghetti sauce over angel hair
and extra-buttery toasted bread
never disappointed.
And Saturday mornings brought a reliable rotation
of homemade waffles, pancakes, and French toast —
the best way to start a morning before my double shift at Chick-fil-A.

The cereal cabinet was never empty,
so I’d go there for a bowl four times a day;
(thank you, teenage appetite and metabolism.)
Ever reliable and easy,
cereal is still my breakfast staple,
even through my own children reach for granola bars.

The perfect toast and oatmeal Mom would bring
when anyone was sick in bed
met us with its warm grace.
Excellent eggs, bacon, and biscuits
was a dinner we’d always welcome.
The chicken pot pie that felt like it took forever to make
was always a masterpiece with that flaky crust, gooey filling,
and perfectly tender chicken.

We would venture out and try new dishes more often
when I started making a weekly meal for the family.
I did this as a teenager, and still love it now,
the adventure of cooking through a recipe book, front to back.
My ranch chicken became a new staple.
My couscous stir-fry became the reason for one sister’s lifelong stir-fry aversion.
My Dad-requested chicken fried steak stirred in me a deep enjoyment
for the slow process of care and handiwork
in making a warm meal for ones you love.

Mealtime was typically short and sweet
but we’d always sit together, always at the table.
Sometimes silently scraping our plates,
other times laughing hard and loud,
other times pondering Dad’s deep questions.

Opening our home to host others wasn’t frequent,
but it was a thrill when it happened,
especially for my sisters and me,
because then we could show off our toys and talents
to whichever eye would turn our way.
As we grew older, though,
the thrill came in sitting and soaking in
all of the adult conversations
and I’d learn so much about my quiet parents
when they’d be open and transparent
in their gospel hospitality.

Family dinner was a consistent liturgy,
joyfully prepared, lovingly served.
It was an anchor at the end of our days,
a light that drew us near to one another, into fellowship.
It was a quiet yet strong holding-back of disintegration and decay.
A peek into our future,
lasting togetherness and fullness.

There was always the kindness to wait for everyone,
the solemn bow of giving thanks,
or the doxology sung in unison.

Even still, when we gather at the holidays,
our mealtimes hold those comfort dishes of childhood,
met with our new favorites of today.
Those fork-fulls can take us to those times and places of years ago,
and we “remember when?” as well as wonder when —
all of our times and places meeting together around these meals.
And deep down, in ever hungry body,
we hope forward to distance no longer being a grief.
Lack no longer being a fear.
Home always and ever being where God is,
dwelling among us,
feasting beside us.

brighter yet

Ten years ago in May, I graduated college then drove straight to camp the next day. It felt like my life was turning an enormous, heavy page and every page to come looked confusingly blank. I knew that summer would be hard, good work — but no plans or ideas lay beyond that. My body churned with a thousand questions as I drove that last, wooded stretch. I’d step out of my car onto the gravel and I’d meet Seth.

Our romance was surely a whirlwind and I’d be his wife before a year ran its course. How little we knew, besides that unshaken surety that from then on, we’d stick together. Some of our plans have rolled out butter-smooth, others have splintered and been swept away. We have become so many different people to one another, yet our God has stayed the steady same. Many of our promises have been broken — not one of God’s to us has moved an inch.

I have grown to feel true home in the place we live. It has taken time, but I feel settled and love it here. Some of those early years were hard with homesickness, and wondering if I truly belonged. Now, there’s no question and I hurt to think of ever leaving. The people I miss still feel far, but visits are the more sweet, and our good stories are still being written and tied together, across our miles between.

Next year, our marriage will cross the ten year mark, too. The odds have stood against us over and over, unspeakable sorrows have nearly drowned us: but God has been nearest. He has proven himself more sweet to me with every bitter cup. It has always been worth it to fill myself with him and to take him at his word.

When those moments came that knocked the wind right out of me and I gasped for breath to endure — what felt crushing was only a pressing down, for a moment. There was and still is rising to come, healing, and taking hands with others in their own face-down grief. I have felt the tenderness of being someone who knows another’s pain, and above everything else: drinking deeper of everlasting communion with the Man of Sorrows (who knows deeper still.)

I have unlearned and relearned many things, and always will be. Like: Christ is more kind and good than I have ever dared to imagine. And how important it is to be teachable and willing to be wrong. And how to be gentle with myself and gentle with the ones Christ loves, especially the ones in my home who look to me. The things I thought I knew about parenting, I barely do still — but it’s a sweet thing that I get to mother these two little ones as I raise and teach them with Seth.

I have gained some confidence. I have not been so afraid, so anxious for myself as before. It has grown smaller and smaller, slowly — but at the pace I have needed, as I have been learning who I am and gaining muscle to set aside what has hindered me. I am seeing that I am needed and loved and wanted as I am. That I have gifts of beauty that bless and build and should not be tossed aside.

The church universal and local has grown sweeter. The longer I’ve stayed and the more I’ve learned about it has only made me love it more. I’ve been helped, ministered to, made stronger by its transparency, consistency, uprightness, mercy, discipline, care, and humility. Even in the disagreements and the changes and the difficult people, I can see the hand of Christ “saving, helping, keeping loving. He is with us to the end.”

There has been so much worldwide grief and strife in the past decade. My political views have shifted multiple times. So have Seth’s. We’ve often found ourselves both shifting, but not always in the same direction. It can be easy to forget the common, first things we share (and have since day one.) I want to have a wide welcoming embrace for the family of God, across political and cultural lines. I’ve seen some divisions come, and to some they have been too wide to keep going on together. And even if the distances between have looked small to me, I want to love even still. To consider them, and remember my own changing, figuring out, questioning days. To strive hard in prayer for all of Christ’s body, that we would not lose sight of him, his goodness, his exaltation over all kings and all people. He is all and in all.

All of these days in each of these ten years, the bright ones and the dark, have the sum total of grace, through and through. They have made the eternal day shine brighter yet to my waiting eyes.

summer mercy

the fence of our routine gets tumbled aside
and i hope for free, dreamy-eyed wanderings
and spontaneous adventures,
taking our time and taking our ease.

i’m trying to figure out how that looks for us this summer,
in our own unique challenges.
like: holding plans with a light touch
and being ready to dive in and work hard
through a hard thing,
for all of our ultimate flourishing.

today, i acknowledged that it’s hard.
little pattering feet rush to wake me at earlier hours,
so the start of summer days feels sudden and the hours long,
but we get to take more time now,
and i take in those early morning greetings
with an embrace —
because it is her.
she waits for me to be ready,
and she rubs my arms with her angel touch
and she lets her brother sleep.

then we braved the pet store, five below,
and the burger king drive-thru.
little hands held on and little feet stayed close.
(signal my exhale)
the fries were blissfully fresh
and the skies were medicinally blue over the mountains,
perfectly crumpled in their dimension,
their gentle curves bordering
the serenity sky of june.
and below my joy was my current of grief
for the hardness of parenting my children well.
summer is for rest from some things,
but it’s also a different sort of hard work.

i made a bucket list of things to do –
big and small. we’re checking them off:
the sandbox has been refreshed with new sand,
a free hammock has been hung in the side yard,
scooters and bikes are left where they’ve been dropped,
the picnic table’s sticky and littered with books,
the chalk is once again spilled on the sidewalk.
we’ll do playground dates,
we’ll run free in friends’ yards,
we’ll go to get ice cream
and we’ll treasure hunt at the thrift store.
we’ll take our wic card to wegmans
and pick the biggest watermelons
and stain our chins and our shirts with their syrup.
we’ll watch the new season of stranger things
and hang on every scene.
we’ll slip towards our instruments in the spare minutes,
to hymn loud along the window breezes.
we’ll dream of ocean days,
of a road trip to the loved ones in the south.
we’ll make more campfires
and make more room at the tables
for sharing glad summer dinners.
the littlest ones are pulling out daily puzzles,
and mirroring meal preparations
in their own miniature, pretend way.
we’re sharing our creations and keeping the back door open.

and we’ll look closer.
the greens this year are overwhelming me,
are they greener? are they deeper?
is it Christ displaying velvet hope to me
in their lush abundance?
bidding me to slow my step and exult, eyes high?
the sky is surprising us all,
little voices have called me to look,
hands lifted with a shout:
“the sun is so beautiful!”
while the grass is freckled with white clover blossoms
and i watch my lone dahlia leaves for their awaited blooms
of deepest blood-red.
i didn’t try any vegetables this summer,
but i nestled an herb or two in the soil
for dressing up our saturday pizza.

and i am pleased by the simplicity of
painted toes in sandals,
a wide-open bedtime window,
the ease and comfort of a summer wardrobe,
outdoor meals under honeyed evening skies,
those golden edges blurring their shalom
into my spirit,
blurring my eyes with their mercy.

my reading life

I read Rilla of Ingleside on the living room couch as a teenager. I had always enjoyed reading, but this is the first book I ever remember feeling so much, the first book that made tears roll down my cheeks. The entire Anne of Green Gables series was dear to me, but that beloved Walter and his tender, brave self just broke my heart.

There is nothing quite like being wrapped up in the just right words of a good book. When I can’t stop reading on, but my heart beats a sorrow song for the story’s coming end. So I do my best to stay in it, to savor it even when I’ve set the pages aside. I proceed again soon, though — taking every sentence and watching carefully what they are about to do. Such power in words.

I find deep joy, too, in the sharing of books. In receiving recommendations and adding them to my ever-growing, thousand-long list I’ll never reach the end of. But somehow that just makes me want to read all the more.

I love the honor of teaching a child to read — I taught my own big-feeling, brilliant boy who grabbed right on and now wants to see the pages of his Frog and Toad bedtime book as I read it aloud, so his eyes can track the words with me. He is finding out what books he likes, which ones are truly delightful and fun to share — and my boy who barely speaks to people outside of our family is suddenly telling his favorite friends all about the books he brought along, reading them and sharing his favorite parts.

I love the way a good book helps me feel what another might feel — I believe that it widens me for greater compassion, wisdom, and humility.

I love when I am swirled and spun into the pages and just want to take my book along with me my entire day through, so in each extra moment I can continue following the wonders of the weaving sentences. I’ll take it to the bathroom, to the kitchen, on the errands I am running. My reading life is a main part of me, a major love and an enveloping thrill.

I love the frequent library stops that we make to pick up my next book, held at the desk with my last name taped to the spine.

I have the hardest time ever giving up on a book. There are not many books I’ve hated, as I stick to what trusted others have read and loved. I love to look for redemption’s glow, however faint, in all of them.

I love feeling the swelling and sinking of my spirit as it searches out a rooting foothold to stand on as I begin and test out the first pages of a book. I’m feeling out the atmosphere, the author’s voice, the story and the rise and fall. My eyes dart for those spots of goodness to keep with me, those true and apt turns of phrase that sweetly alarm me.

It is a celebration. When I witness the wisdom and the weight in a well-crafted paragraph, I can weep, I can laugh, I can worship the maker of words and minds and creativity itself. And I get a peek into the ocean-deep thrill of discovering more of the “light and high beauty” that lives ever on.
____

Ten selections that have met me and shaped me:
The final book of The Wingfeather Saga (actual heartbursting sobs for the love, brotherhood, and loud chords of beauty)
The Supper of the Lamb (tactile, earthy, the beating heart behind creating hands)
The Jesus Storybook Bible (“Every story whispers his name.”)
The Great Gatsby (unforgettable longing, grasping, aching, dying)
Beloved (the anguish and the glory)
Hannah Coulter (simple, stunning marriage words)
East of Eden (a masterpiece set apart from the rest)
Any books by Frederick Backman (full of humor, humanity, and all of the heart)
Station Eleven (hope glowing warm in deep darkness)
Gentle and Lowly (life-changing, tender, necessary)