Breaking Bread

I don't know whether you need an introduction to my blog, but I do. It's a sort of compass and orientation for me, and just a how-d'ya-do to you.

I've tried writing a blog before with mixed results. Do you remember Myspace? Well, my blog on Myspace was pretty popular in college because I was funny and had lots of free time because I wasn't married with kids. I also had lots of stupid crazy dating experiences, which is always good for blogging. Then I got a job and got busy and started writing journalism and pr stuff because I got paid doing that and the blog went away. I think Myspace went away, too.

Then a few years later I got married and starting blogging again about my husband and I working on our house and again, I actually had lots of free time because I was only teaching part-time and I didn't have kids.

Then I got a full-time job in journalism and had no time, so I didn't blog.

Then I had kids and I had no time, so I decided to start blogging again.

I don't know about you, but if you're a writer--someone who loves words, needs words, and thinks best when processing ideas through writing or typing--you need to write. You feel kind of shriveled and half-human when you don't. You think poorly, you get disoriented easily, and life doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When you don't write, you kind of make do and move along and then one day you start writing again and feel like you're waking up from a sleep or rising from the dead and you think, "Why haven't I been writing?"

That's where I find myself.

We'll get into this in forthcoming blogs, but if you're a parent you know that children are the most wonderful and taxing thing to ever happen to you. You are awash in beauty and joy while being beaten by the waves of laundry, dishes, and sleepless nights. Life is richer and deeper than you ever knew it could be, you just wish you weren't so exhausted so you could it enjoy it more. The early years don't exactly leave a whole lot of room for more than survival. My kids are 1 and 3. So we're just mostly surviving most days.

Then one day I picked my head up off of drool-soaked pillow (because I was napping) and I started looking around for some beauty, some goodness, some truth, that was slightly outside the laundry basket. I somehow bumped into Shauna Niequists' wonderful cookbook/food memoir/devotion/love letter to community life Bread and Wine and my foggy babyfood mush brain kind of caught fire. I loved her writing. LOVED. IT. It's a book with the kind of words I wanted to write. Words about experiencing God in the dailyness. Words about food--GOOD food--making it, and being okay when it was time for takeout. Words about friendship and community and how tough it is, but how good. Words about tasting and seeing life. Oh, I wanted those words.

I devoured them. Stuffed myself. And while cramming them in, I wanted to write some of my own.

So I did, I started making her recipes and writing about how it went and then writing about the memories and experiences it brought up for me. If you've seen the film Julie and Julia you can judge me here as a total ripoff. Yes, I'm cooking through someone else's hard work and adding my own impoverished thoughts to it. Sure. That's fine to think that. It's what I think. But you know what? It got me writing again. It started filling up my spiritual and emotional stomach again. I started feeling GOOD again. Creative. Awake. Alert. and Hungry. Even when there's "no time".

Sidenote: It's amazing how doing what you love creates time, space, and energy when you think there isn't any.

So. Here's what I'm doing. Yep, I'm cooking through Bread and Wine, but I'm also writing about other foods and recipes I find along the way. I'm talking about how it nourishes me, nourishes my family. I'm talking about other books, art, and truths that feed me and feed my family.

If you want to pull up a seat to this table I'm preparing, I'd love to have you. Blogs are pretty self-centered, but maybe this can be like a dinner party of some sort--dinner's at my place, I'll host, but I won't do all of the talking. It's better when everyone talks. So, you ready? Dinner's at 6.

Dinner conversation: What book(s) are you reading at the moment? What do you love about it?