What wondrous love is this, oh, my soul, oh, my soul
What wondrous love is this, oh, my soul
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul
Happy Easter!!! On this day of resurrection, fasting ends. Okay, some people say it ends earlier in Holy Week, but we surely did not need groceries before today.
So, at the tail end, here's a picture of The List:
43 different items left, down from 70-something. Still looks huge, no?
And here's the state of our cupboard:
We can see the back of it. And move things around easily. This is progress.
Definitely emptier than the onset! And yet, not as bare-bones as one might think after 40 days of trying to deplete it. I still am convinced that our kitchen's food supply does NOT vary greatly from the majority of middle-class Americans, so I don't think we can only point the blame on Chris & Jenna's unique splurging lives and dismiss us as hoarders.
Since the last update, here are things I've observed in a fast of eating what we have instead of constantly accumulating more (with the only additions of milk and fresh produce):
Planning ahead is key, especially with the life we lead. We hit a Wednesday night where we were leading worship for a college group and had to be there by 6:15-ish. Chris gets home at 5:30, and I had an appointment or work stuff or something that prevented me from getting home early. So we had a 45 minute window in which to load up our gear, print the set list and a few chord charts, and eat. We had food to spare in the The Cupboard, but no time to prepare it. So Subway got our dollar. Had we been on it the day before, we wouldn't have had to indulge in convenient but pricier fast food.
We don't miss much. It's so exciting to have a fridge full of healthy greens and blackberries ($1.29 at Aldi. Can't get over it.) that it's hard to feel lacking. I will admit a few things I'm looking forward to come Monday: coffee creamer (been doing skim milk - just not the same, but I have lived), yogurt (have found a lot of yummy looking smoothie recipes that are begging for it), and maple syrup (we were out for months before Lent started, but now that we're actually using the pancake mix and searching out more consistent breakfast recipes, I am missing it. Though this morning I discovered the joy of peach butter on pancakes. I have no regrets.). Chris has been nursing the last of the peanut butter for weeks, and I'm sure he can't wait for a fresh jar (any normal human would have consumed or tossed the half ounce that's left, but not this man). Almond milk will be a welcome friend, too, and I bet Chris will be happy to replenish our chicken supply. But really, that's about it.
We have had things for almost 2 years that we did not know existed and would have never eaten. We had - count them - THREE packs of hot dogs in the freezer. One of them was open. Would we have ever made them? Probably not. (I'm not saying they were 2 years old - the ones we made tasted fine - don't judge.) They became a joke item on my part, offering them to Chris as a dinner option, knowing he'd never want them. How appalling. We have also had a shake-and-pour Bisquick pancake mix for forEVER. Maundy Thursday morning, it finally saw the light of day. Why did we have this?!
In related news, I just saw something about making sure to discard any cake or pancake mixes that are past the expiration date b/c the yeast can grow spores, turn to toxic mold, and kill you dead. ...We're still alive. Hmm.
Muffin pans are breakfast-to-go's best friend. Did you know that old fashioned oatmeal can be used for more than a yearly batch of oatmeal scotchies?! Weird, right?? ...nope, just me? Ahem... I found this recipe for Baked Honey Oatmeal made in a muffin pan so that your servings are ready-to-go, and with it and some variations, we have had delicious HEALTHY breakfast every morning that we can grab, microwave for a minute, and eat in the car on the way to work. (If you look up "morning people" in the dictionary/thesaurus, we will be listed under Antonyms. "Creating" breakfast before 8 am is not humanly possible in our home.) I'd like to thank our stoneware muffin pans - just spray with cooking spray, and no paper liner needed.
I want to eat healthier. Only being allowed to buy fresh food makes me feel a lot better. I'm not sure exactly what we were buying before that distracted us from this... which is likely the problem. When there's too much junk in your life, you don't really know what any of it is, and yet you can't see the better things you're missing out on.
Traveling on this fast is harder. We had no restrictions on eating out. We had to go away for 2 weekends this month. Normally, I get us a big thing of trail mix, some beef jerky, and some cheese crackers and/or dried fruit for travel munchies - clearly within the milk/produce boundaries, though perhaps dried fruit could have been swung. We could have stocked up on non-refrigerated fruit for snacks for this trip, like apples and bananas... But, we didn't. So, we wound up spending much more on food on the road, and a lot of it was not very good for us. Note to self: again, plan ahead, and think outside the box of routine.
There is always more than meets the eye. Especially toward the end, I saw a lot of ingredients that didn't really fit together and was prepared to just eat pasta with olive oil and veggies for days. Yet, Chris saw elk chili. (And it was scrumptious.) Typical of the "there's nothing to eat!" plague of the household with full cabinets, there was always something more available if we thought about it hard and got creative enough.
We have thoughtful, sweet friends. Kira kept us (me) functioning with the gift of a can of unground coffee she wasn't using. We don't have a coffee grinder... but a few weeks ago we had the light-dawning realization that a Magic Bullet could probably grind coffee just fine for two people who love it but are not coffee snobs by any stretch of the imagination. (I have gone a step up that ladder by becoming obsessed with Furnace Hills Coffee, which is from a local roastery and may be a few bucks more, but employs special needs folks, uses fair trade coffee, and supports orphanages in Ukraine and development in Asia - um, YES.) Jenn read my whining post about the Williams Sonoma hot chocolate and brought us fancy Twinings Drinking Chocolate - virtually the same thing - that she'd had and wasn't using. Did we need these things? No, but these women saw a need and wanted to fill it - fabulously, with things they already owned and acknowledged that they didn't need to keep, instead of buying us something. (Coincidentally, have I touched the hot chocolate yet? I'll let you take a wild guess...)
Gluttony is real. We don't talk about it much in America. We talk about obesity, we talk about health, we talk about food labels and companies and recipes and trends... but I think I'm realizing how deep gluttony has gripped our country (which is why we don't talk about it). The urge to collect and consume constricts our hearts and blinds us to what we're really doing and to the needs of the people not only across oceans, but down the street. I heard a group of high schoolers talking about Catholicism and the 7 deadly sins, and gluttony was one of the last they remembered as they tried to list them. I don't know about you, but when I think of it I get a cartoon image of an overweight person sloppily gathering food in his arms and shoving things in his mouth (before you think I'm a jerk, I think it's because of this cartoon series). I don't think gluttony is usually this obvious. Really, this is the sneaky genius of most sin - we picture an exaggerated worse-case scenario of it, separate our own actions from that image, conclude "I don't struggle with that," and carry on. I think gluttony has joined hands with greed and stealthily tiptoed into my home and my heart with the goal of setting up shop for a good long time. As their cover becomes more and more exposed, they revolt (see my previous mourning sessions/temper tantrums over hot chocolate and maple cream - ugh.) and kick and scream against the truth that I. want. for. nothing.
There are people in this town and little ones near and far who are starving today. And this grips my heart and pulls my gut to help, yet is also met with almost immediate hopelessness of 'not really making a difference.' We all know that people are starving, and many of us are willing to occasionally donate to organizations who will do something about it. But we don't often connect the actual contents of our own cupboards to their need. The old "There are kids starving in Africa, finish your plate!" gets met with "Are you going to mail them my uneaten Brussels sprouts?!" What does THIS have to do with THEM?? What we physically have seems to be disconnected from others' needs, because it is ours and in our house.
But really, in a way, we can send those unwanted sprouts to Africa.
We could keep close watch on what we spend on groceries. We could give up items from our carts that are impulses or more than we need while we're at the store, total what we would have spent, and give that money to those who have none, therefore literally giving to them what would have been our excess.
We could keep track of how much we waste and then a) alter how much we buy and b) commit to giving the equivalent of our waste to those in need - if we're willing to spend it on filling a trash can, we should be willing to spend it on aching bellies that could be satisfied.
We could meal-plan to determine what we'll actually use in our cupboards for a week/month/fortnight and then raid our cupboards for (quality, non-expired) items that don't fit the list and take them to a local food bank, shelter, or other organization in need ('in need' being the key part - if they already have 84 cans of peas but no green beans, then giving them my nine additional cans of peas is not truly helpful).
We could.
If only we would.
Thinking and living like this requires much more intentional thought and action than what our culture tells us we should have to bear. Much more than my instincts give me. But on this day, we read that Jesus defeated death. He showed that where something is dead, it can live again. Where selfishness abounds, there can be rebirth. Where hopelessness prevails, there is yet hope. Where blindness drives our days, scales can fall from our eyes to let us see the glory that comes when we loosen our grip on our stuff and use it to provide for our neighbors, brothers, and sisters.
From this point on, our fast is over. Thus, the danger of returning to our old habits and patterns. Neither of us want this. We will begin buying other food items again, but ingredients that will help us make meals out of what we already own, rather than replacing them and shoving them back to the deep recesses of The Cupboard to rot and decay. We will try to shop focused on what we truly need, rather than what we could have. Because:
Just because we CAN have it doesn't mean that we SHOULD.
(the antithesis of the American dream, folks..... also restated liberally from Jen Hatmaker in her book, 7.)
This, much more than mindless consuming, will God-willing show us glimpses of what the Kingdom is supposed to be like.
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on, I'll sing on
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing His love for me
And through eternity I'll sing on, I'll sing on
And through eternity I'll sing on
