Making my way through the quiet house at dawn, I paused at each clock to turn its hands back one hour while my leftover coffee from yesterday reheated in the microwave. I relish this day in the fall when we are gifted one extra hour of the day. Though I inevitably boast the night before about how I will use it to linger in bed, I usually find myself eager to emerge and spend that hour on something I would declare too time-consuming in a normal day. This morning, I decided to make bread.
With my cup of day-old coffee steaming next to me, I pulled out my mixer and my utensils and began combining ingredients for French loaves to take to a potluck meal after church. As I measured flour, combined yeast, and kneaded dough, I found myself praying for those I love. I noticed a smile that had inched across my lips as I remembered my sweet grandmother’s voice over the phone yesterday as she said with relief, “You sound like you’re doing better. I don’t know how to describe it, really, but I hear it in your voice.” “Yeah, Grandma,” I said as I shopped the dairy section of the grocery store, “I hear it too.”
I’m settling into the rhythms of a new church after five months of trying different congregations and denominations. At first, the small Episcopalian church felt foreign to me in practice. Though the ins and outs of the rituals and traditions felt unknown, something deep within me felt at home for the first time in years.
After two weeks of attendance, I stayed after church for the potluck and sat at a table with the priest. She told me and my friends that after coming for a few weeks, guests are considered insiders and will be asked to help. “Will you read if we put you on the scripture rotation?” she asked me. Tears welled in my eyes. “I’d love to.”
For ten years, I tried to bake, cook, host, serve, entertain, and impress my church community. I so desperately wanted to be an insider, and once I felt I had earned that status, I desperately worked to maintain it. I panicked when my floors weren’t clean enough and when I brought a side-dish that didn’t live up to the other contributions. Quite honestly, this cycle was exhausting, and I spent many nights crying into a glass of wine. I loved the people, but the table had become a place for insecurities and fears of abandonment.
Leaving the community of believers I had worked so hard to integrate myself with left me even more weary, as the thought of repeating the process in a new congregation felt too daunting. Yet, here I was, around a plastic folding table filled with chili bowls and desserts. I had contributed nothing tangible, yet with the most sincerity and love, I heard, “You’re in.”
This morning, my yeast decided not to work (probably because I killed it). My bread didn’t rise, and it baked unevenly. Before, I would have panicked, thrown it out, and grabbed something store-bought with a racing heart of stress. Today, I laugh at the cracker-like loaves of dense bread, reheat my coffee one more time, and sit down to reflect. I’ll bring these three loaves to the table, as a symbol of how we all come to The Table: less polished and perfected than we’d like to admit. And these three loaves will be accepted by loving hands and hungry bellies, just as I have been so graciously welcomed by ravenous love from The Father. And it’s these moments, slow and steady, that are changing me. It’s this acceptance that my grandma hears in my voice. It’s this acceptance that frees captives and restores joy to those who have been mourning.
this wordy world 