Hungry

Here is an excerpt from Shauna Niequist's book, Bread and Wine, an amazing read. I borrowed it from a friend and was immediately addicted; she writes directly to me, or at least it feels that way. This part of the book is from her chapter entitled "Hungry." It resonated with me, and, if this topic is something that you've had in your life, I hope it touches you too. 

Lynne Rossetto Kasper, the host of The Splendid Table, says there are two kinds of people in the world: people who wake up thinking about what to have for supper and people who don't. I am in the first camp, certainly. But it took me about twenty years to say that out loud. 

I've always been hungry. Always. I remember being hungry as a small child, as an adolescent girl, as an adult, and just after I locate those feelings and memories of hunger, in my peripheral vision another thing buzzes up, like a flash of heat or pain: shame. Hunger, then shame. Hunger, then shame. Always hungry, always ashamed.

I have always been on the round side of average, sometimes the very round side and sometimes just a little round. I was a round-faced, chubby baby, a little girl with soft, puffy cheeks, a teenager who longed to be skinny and never was, who routinely threw all her pants on the floor and glared at them like enemies. A woman who still longs to be skinny and never is, and who still, from time to time, throws all her pants on the floor and glares at them like enemies. After all these years, the heaviest thing isn't the number on the scale but the weight of the shame I've carried all these years - too big, too big, too big. 

I've always wanted to be thinner, and I've always loved to eat, and I felt betrayed by my appetites. Why couldn't I be one of those people who forgets to eat? Or who can't eat a bite when she's stressed or sad? When I'm stressed or sad, I eat like a truffle pig, hoping that great mouthfuls of food will make me feel tethered to something, grounded, safe. And I eat when I'm happy too - when the table is full of people I love, when we're celebrating.

My appetite is strong, powerful, precise, but for years and years, I tried to pretend I couldn't hear it screaming in my ears. It wasn't ladylike. It wasn't proper. So I pretended I wasn't hungry, pretended I'd already eaten, murmured something about not caring one way or the other, because I was afraid that my appetites would get the best of me, that they would expose my wild and powerful hunger. 

….

Part of being a Christian means practicing grace in all sorts of big and small daily ways, and my body gives me the opportunity to demonstrate grace, or to make peace with imperfection every time I see myself in the mirror. On my best days, I practice grace and patience with myself, knowing that I can't extend grace and patience if I haven't tasted it. 

I used to think the goal was to get over things - to deal with them once and for all, to snap an issue closed like slamming a locker door, washing my hands of it forever and always. What I know now after all these years is that there are some things you don't get over, some things you just make friends with at a certain point, because they've been following you around like a stray dog for years. That's how this is for me. I've been catastrophizing about my weight since I was six. I've lost the pounds and gained them, made and abandoned plans and promises, cried tears of frustration, pinched the backs of my upper arms with a hatred that scares me. 

And through all that, I've made friends and fallen in love, gotten married and become a mother. I've written and traveled and stayed up late with people I love. I've walked on the beach and on glittering city city streets. I've kissed my baby's cheeks and danced with my husband and laughed till I cried with my best friends, and through all that it didn't really matter that I was heavier than I wanted to be.

The extra pounds didn't matter, as I look back, but the shame that came with those extra pounds was like an infectious disease. That's what I remember. And so these days, my mind and heart are focused less on the pounds and more on what it means to live without shame, to exchange that heavy and corrosive self-loathing for courage and freedom and gratitude. Some days I do just that, and some days I don't, and that seems to be just exactly how life is. 

Back to Lynne Rossetto Kasper. I wake up in the morning and I think about dinner. I think about the food and th epeople and the things we might discover about life and about each other. I think about the sizzle of oil in a pan and the smell of rosemary released with a knife cut. And it could be that that's how God made me the moment I was born, and it could be that that's how God made me along the way as I've given up years of secrecy and denial and embarrassment. It doesn't matter at this point. What matters is that one of the ways we grow up is by declaring what we love.

I love the table. I love food and what it means and what it does and how it feels in my hands. And that might be healthy, and it might be a reaction to a world that would love me more if I starved myself, and it's probably always going to be a mix of the two. In any case, it's morning and I'm hungry. Which is not the same as weak or addicted or shameful. I'm hungry. And I'm thinking about dinner, not just tonight, but the next night and the next. There are two kinds of people, and I'm tired of pretending I'm the other. 

The Fountain

I have hardly read such a beautiful thing in my life. From Sunday morning:


If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge.

In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from the fountain, and from no other.

- John Calvin

Watch Your Language

I love words. As a first grade teacher, I'm even getting into the nitty gritty of the letters and sounds. And I love those too. At least sometimes, these words express our language. Language is a funny thing to nail down, slippery and sharp at the same time. I've been collecting quotes about language: what it is and what it isn't. These make me think about the words I choose, and what words mean to different people. Nice things to ponder on a Sunday night. 

It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case, always the wrong size to fit the template called language. | Jeanette Winterson

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures. | Vincent van Gogh

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. | George Eliot

The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God. | Charles Stanley

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. | John Donne. 

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. | Noam Chomsky

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies. | Theodor Adorno

A riot is the language of the unheard. | Martin Luther King, Jr.

The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing. | Roger Babson

Of all of oru inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language. | Walt Disney 

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. | Franklin P. Jones

But I like Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry. | Chinua Achebe

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. | Toni Morrison 

Good ol' Lew.

In my opinion, one of the most quotable people on this planet was C.S. Lewis. He finds the right nuance to say things in a simple and profound way such that it tells the truth. I hope that I can be a truth-teller like him as I grow up. I suppose I'm thinking a lot about being real and being fake these days (here are my thoughts on how to fake it 'til you make it, and here are my two cents on being real when you're struggling) and so this particular quote caught my eye.

It's resonated with me because lately I've had some issues genuinely feeling like I love some people. It's usually very, very easy for me to gush happiness towards my friends, family, students, coworkers, and even strangers. I love people in general and interacting with them is usually fun for me. But for some reason, with the end-of-the-year-I'm-going-to-lose-my-mind pressure going on, it's not a natural feeling for me to be kind, patient, and sweet to everyone. I hate it. But it's just not there sometimes. And here, of course, is where good ol' Lew chimes in. He says:

On the human level, you know, there are two kinds of pretending. There is a bad kind, where pretense is there instead of the real thing: as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you. But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing. When you're not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendlier manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. 

Brilliant.

This so strikes me because last week, during my (too short) of a prep period that was occupied by a million things, I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. Since a lot of kids' parents call me with a lot of changing phone numbers, I picked up. It turned out to just be a simple mistake of a wrong number. My impulse was to talk over the lady and blurt out SORRYWRONGNUMBER and immediately hang up. But I felt like, in front of all the other 2nd grade teachers in the teachers lounge who were also prepping, I should try to pretend to be a kind and helpful adult. I followed C.S.'s advice and just chose the kindness route in spite of my instinct otherwise. And, of course, it paid off as always. I had a nice little two minute conversation with the lady on the other end, actually smiled afterward, and had one of the other teachers say, "Woah, that was really nice of you." I felt good. The prep period wasn't so negative and busy and annoying and hurried anymore.

Now this is a dumb example. And I'm not writing it down because I'm trying to brag about the fact that I wasn't completely rude to a stranger for two minutes. That's no accomplishment at all. It was, however, a lesson in obedience.

If my heart doesn't feel like being a loving, kind person, that's no excuse. My job (if you're someone with beliefs and convictions in this department you can relate) is to obey with my actions, and my heart will follow. People are entitled to my kindness whether I feel like it or not; I'm not allowed to just follow my own changing, human moods as I leave a trail of negativity in my wake. It's not faking kindness, it's being kind in spite of yourself. I think that's almost more genuine and real anyway. When you're not really feeling like it, you follow through anyway. I think a lot of being good to people has to do with that kind of love. That's when you really know. Because there are people who do this. There was one person in particular who laid everything down for me when he didn't really feel like doing it either. But he did it anyway. Because he loved me.

These are wonderful things to think about on a Monday after school. As I think about my kids. As I think about my family. As I think about my friends. Keep it up, C.S., because I'll keep reading.