Birthday Food

True confession: I turned thirty-five last week. It's a mixed bag--this "becoming mature." I love the perspective and experience that adding each year to a life brings, but I don't really care for the idea that I'm half-way to seventy (thanks so much to those of you who pointed it out!).

"What do you want for your birthday?" my mom asked me over the phone a couple of weeks ago.

"Uh, I don't know. I never know what to say. A new duvet cover?" I've had the same quilt since high school on my bed; it felt like the right thing to ask for. A grown up bedroom--how nice. I had seen one I liked online.

"That's it?"

"I guess so. I mean I really would like to redo our room. So that would be the perfect start. Other than three chickens, two bunnies, and a dog, I don't really have any other ideas right now. But I'll let you know if I think of something," was my lame reply. (We've been on the hunt for the perfect family pet these last weeks and those were some of our candidates.)

The truth is, I could think of a lot of things. But Things, though they make marvelous distractions, don't tend to fill the spaces of my grown-up wish list. "What do you want?" It's complicated. What do I really want?

Well, I want to know that my kids are going to be OK. I want to know they will have rich, full, joyful lives. I want to live in the details of life and find the theme of my soul's greatest longings--that I am loved, that I matter, that I have something to offer--something that lets others know they are loved, they matter, too. I want there to be less suffering in this world. I want to see pictures of children on the news who have food, who are safe, who are well-loved and well-educated, and free. I want to find God in every circumstance, in every moment of every day.

Can I ask for that? It's a little too much, isn't it?

Yesterday, Mark gave me my birthday present: an afternoon of exploring the area in and around Woodstock, CT with two of our close friends. We drove the tree-lined, antique home peppered roads of Woodstock and soaked up the scenery of a late summer afternoon. We stopped at a winery and tasted the fruits. We drove to a state park, slid kayaks into a glass-smooth lake and paddled. We floated on tubes and ate chocolates full of caramel goo. We drew our plastic vessels to the edge of a tiny island, put camp chairs in the shallows and ate sandwiches as the sun sank lower in the sky. We laughed and watched herons hunt and paddled helter-skelter bumping our kayaks together just for the fun of it. We drove through dusk to a small cafe, drank coffee and ate cake and listened to the mellow sounds of folk music from just the other side of the wall. It was good. Creation good.

And in the world, horrible horrible things were still happening. And in our lives we still bore burdens. Sometimes what we long for most is to know that though the world is broken, peace can be found in it. When our lives feel messy, when a mama lives a week with her littles that is hard, when money is scarce, when war is waged, when children the world over hunger and thirst, we crave pockets of sacred space that remind us that God is present in all of it. That he truly is Emmanuel, God with us.

God with us. I don't know how to convince anyone of this one small detail that changes everything. It makes me a terrible evangelist. A fact that bothers me most when it comes to helping my children see that grace is the only thing right and good in the world. Grace.

I think what I wanted most for my birthday was to do the things that make me feel most alive, most myself, most at home in a life that can befuddle me, run me down, and wear me out. The perfect gift in any day is to steal that moment where you remember that all is grace and you cast your line out onto the stormy seas and catch peace, hope, joy, love. That moment where you heave in your nets and find abundance, and returning to shore and the warmth of your own hearth, you eat the bread and the wine that are yours for the taking anytime, anywhere. And they fill.

The Table, the Water, the Hearth--these are the places I find food that feeds the soul. Simple and elemental, they bind me to my Home in God. A meal prepared or one shared, a trip across a lake, a walk on the coast, the return home, the embrace of my children, my hand resting in Mark's, a space (with a fluffy duvet to crawl under) to call my own. It's that simple and that rich.

I realize that these are not gifts everyone in this wide world enjoys. They are, in fact, incredible luxuries. Extravagances the likes of which I do not deserve. But it sometimes takes a pause and a reset to remember that. To wake up again to the fact that we're just passing through here. And whatever we've given, sacrificed, labored over, or lost--whatever hole or longing or grief that has left in our lives is only filled by the Son the Father gave away.

Remembering that--that's real food. As we launch into our first week of school with a nearly seven year old who struggles to remain calm, and a husband who labors over plans for the coming year, and a four-year-old who anticipates her very own first school experience, and a two year old who struggles and struggles to utter words that are clear, I'll be remembering, striving to wake up to those moments of grace that remind me how vast and how wide and how deep is the Love that lives over us.

Praying the same for you. Peace.