Family, Community, and the Healing Powers of Food

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Shauna Niequist's third book, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes. When I got the email that a copy was being sent to me, I did a happy dance so crazy you would have thought I won the powerball.Food and community have taken on a completely different meaning to me in the past year. And as I read Shauna's beautiful words about life and how food brings us together, I couldn't imagine a better book for me to be reading at this season of my life to bring it all together. As you read, all quoted material is straight from Shauna Niequist's, Bread and Wine.Growing up, I was an extremely picky eater. Everything I ate was plain, I never tried anything new, and my foods could not touch...ever! My mom made the best tacos, and I ate each item separate - meat on one side of the plate across from my pile of shredded cheese and my tortilla across from that. I was known to sit at the table for hours after a meal was served because I wouldn't even try it, and trust me when I say cold liver and onions is way worse than if I would have ate it warm.But, as I aged into my early 20's, it seemed like a light switch went off. I began to try anything and everything, and surprisingly I liked it all. I realized I loved food! Trevor and I have a great relationship with food in that he gets me to try lots of different foods that I never would think of trying and I get him to try mostly different kinds of vegetables.Trevor travels often with his job and I tagged along the first few years of our marriage, and so we tried and tasted a lot of new foods together. Before we got married, I didn't cook often, and as I began to work in the kitchen I discovered so many new foods and dishes that are now our absolute favorites. I loved having family and friends over to our tiny apartment for dinner and cookouts in the back yard - cooking for two being difficult was always an excuse to have people over.I grew into an amazing relationship with food! Loving to taste, cook, and have people over. And then when Jasper arrived, food became only necessary. My focus was primarily on my newborn baby, keeping him fed and happy, and eating only to eat and to be able to feed my baby. I expected it to be difficult the first few weeks to cook, but I did not forsee that cooking would be on the very bottom of my list of importance. Lucky for me, my church family has an amazing meal ministry where they provide meals to families with newborns three days a week for six weeks!! Amazing! I began learning the graciousness of accepting help truly for the first time.But that lesson came and went just as quickly. I slowly got back in the swing of things, and by summer we were inviting family over for cook outs in the backyard while feeding Jasper his baby cereal on the patio. Life felt right again, but little did I know I wasn't done learning my lessons with food.When Jasper was only nine months old my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Our world crumbled. It was the day after Thanksgiving when we were led into a small waiting room with a "Private Meeting" sign on the door and my mom uttered the word cancer to us, and as word spread through our small town food began piling my family's kitchen countertops. Mostly desserts at first, while everyone was celebrating the holiday season with cookies, pies, and candies, we were huddling in as a family creating a game plan that we had hoped would help us win the fight.Niequist says in Bread and Wine, "As with anything devastating and medical, for a little while the word stops, but inevitably it must start again," and that is what happened for us after the new year. Mom began chemo treatments and we were forced into creating a new normal. When many families in this situation would begin to feel forgotten, we were being amazed by the community that surrounded us. Our church family and friends throughout our small town began a scheduled meal calendar for our family. Again, food was the last thing on my mind as it was for the rest of my family. We were too busy getting through each day with work, trips to chemo and doctor's appointments, filling medications, helping my mom, and running my four brothers around that are still at home, along with the daily unexpected trials that come with cancer.Just when I had thought I learned my quick tutorial on accepting help, I was being taught the lesson over again the long hard way. "I've long wanted to be better at accepting help, better at admitting weakness, better at trusting that people love me not for what I can do but just because they do. It would have been lovely to learn those things on my own terms, when I wanted to, the way I wanted to. But we never grow until the pain level gets high enough." The longer into the fight we got the weaker we all became, and the more I realized I was not only once again learning how to accept help, but I was learning that I NEEDED the help. Some days seeing someone walk up with trays of food in their hands took the weight of the day off our shoulders for a minute; I can only compare it to a huge exhale breath of relief. Our meal was taken care of, one less thing to worry about.Those few golden minutes of the day where my four brothers came bounding in the kitchen to see what feast was brought to us that night, while Jasper was yelling, "Food! Food!" and Dad, Trevor and I were pulling out plates and silverware were precious. And then, especially the days when my mom felt well enough to come to the table to eat, the time around the table, even if it only lasted 3 minutes, are moments I will never forget. Moments created all because neighbors, friends, and people we had never even met took the time to meal plan, grocery shop, cook, and pile it all in their cars driving slowly across town to feed us. "It's so easy to decide that because you can't do something extraordinary, you can't do anything at all." Never underestimate the power of bringing food.My family was brought meals three days a week for a year and two months. Each person bringing dinner may have not thought they were doing something extraordinary, but I sure think it turned into something quite unbelievable!Ever since my mom passed away, we are all slowly learning to cook again - some of us learning to cook for the very first time. I didn't realize how long I had been out of the kitchen until I had an entire week of meals to make suddenly. I am relearning the act of inviting people into my home by way of food and what healing that can bring to me in this time of my life. And I am learning the art of bringing people food. Since January, we began family meal night at my Dad's every Wednesday night where I cook for them, and we all gather around the table. Not only does it help calm my crazy motherly instinct of knowing my four baby brothers eat one healthy meal a week, but I also didn't want to lose that time around the table that has become so important to us. As hard as it is some weeks to fit in the meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and trekking the meal over to my Dad's house, the time around the table is always worth it.You don't always know what's going to come of it, but you put the time in anyway, and then, after a long, long time, you realize with great clarity why you put the time in: for this night, for these hours around the table, for the complexity and richness of flavors that are so lovely and unexpected you're still thinking about them the next day.Last week, for family meal night, I made Shauna Niequist's Annette's Enchiladas taken from Bread and Wine. It was delicious!! The book is not only filled with wonderful words about life and community, but it is also filled with wonderful recipes.You may not always know what to do for someone when they are going through a rough or even tragic time, but don't underestimate the power of feeding. "There are things I can't change. Not one of them. Can't fix, can't heal, can't put the broken pieces back together. But what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for." Thank you to each and every one of you that helped walk us through the fear and the mess simply by making our dinner. You will never know the healing that you brought to us.Make sure to preorder a copy of Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist. I promise you will be inspired by the ways food can bring life and community into your home.