Travel

Much of my life has been spent in bondage to food. From the earliest memories that I have of myself, I felt that food was my enemy. I was overweight and larger than the other children in my class from kindergarten, I felt ostracized and lonely, always seeking acceptance of others and trying to mold myself into the person someone else wanted me to be.

I remember trying to be like others at an early age. I mastered the art of mimicking others actions, speech patterns and movements. I always made friends easily but was no ones “best friend”. I was on the outskirts of so many social circles and yet was not in the inner circle of anyone. This led to my constant desire to be acknowledged.
There was a constant emptiness that I felt from the rejection of others that fueled my desire for food. I ate to fill my hunger for acceptance, I ate to fill the emptiness that I felt inside. I ate to stuff down the fearfulness of failure that I felt was looming everywhere.
Patterns of addictive behavior to food surfaced in other areas of my life. Co-dependency to others, substance abuse, sexual abuse and seeking affirmation of others in a sexual way only left me with more hopelessness.
After I was raped at gunpoint I felt very out of control of anything happening in my life. I experienced the complete violation fo trust of a stranger, and at the same time, when I needed a friend the most, my best friend’s partner delivered an ultimatum to either chose a friendship with me or the relationship my friend was in. My friend chose the relationship. So a complete stranger and my closest friend both violated my trust and I was more alone than I had ever been in my life.
A friend of mine who played the organ invited me to sing with him at a small Lutheran church that sat on a hill in the countryside. I began attending every week and singing yet felt nothing spiritually. I sang in their itty bitty choir. I began to develop oddly authentic relationships with older, Norwegian, Lutheran women. I reeked of cigarettes on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. I partied constantly- and I am sure that this was completely obvious to the ladies at Trondjeim. And yet, they appreciated what I could bring to the table. I had a gift of music- they put it to work, even though I was not at a place spiritually to recognize it’s power.
I was witness to the summer growing season outside the windows of the tiny , pristine windows of the church. In the spring the earth was tilled, the smell of manure fertilizer filled my lungs as I arrived early on Sunday mornings to rehearse the Easter cantata. No one ever complained about the small size of the choir, or the inability of many to read music or carry a tune. If you were in the choir, you were a minister of the church, it was your job. My friend, the organist made beautiful music on the tiny organ and filled the oak lined and vaulted ceiling with as much volume as it could contain.
Meanwhile, outside the tiny pristine windows- the grain began to grow, and in the depths of my troubled and dark heart there was a tiny sprout of hope.
A Minnesota spring is beautiful and chilly, and yet the sun warms the ground and the rains feed the growing shoots of grain. Minnesota women warmed my heart and spinkled the parched and cracked soil of my heart with genuine love. We sang a Lutheran hymn during communion nearly every Sunday:

“As the grains of wheat once scattered on the hill were gathered into one to become our bread.So may all your people, from all the ends of earth, be gathered into one in you”.

I didn’t really hear the words, the ritualness of the hymn was familiar each Sunday- and yet I did not connect myself to them.
Late that spring, three of the women at Trondjeim lost their father. They asked my friend and I to sing. I felt unworthy, but honored. We sang acapella “Precious Lord, Take my Hand” and “Vouchsafe, Oh Lord”. I can still hear my friend’s baritone voice singing as his hands and feet played the organ in time to our voices.
“Vouchsafe, O Lord:
To keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us:
As our trust is in thee.”

I watched the tears fall in that room and looked out the window to see the height of the wheat- beginning to waver in the wind.
Throughout that summer my tiny bit of faith began to grow and as the summer went on and each Sunday brought new height to the grain outside the church windows while God’s hope and love grew in the field of my heart.
At the end of the summer, the women of Trondjeim gave us a potluck, complete with every type of hotdish immaginable. They were celebrating the end of the season of our involvement at Trondjeim- both my friend and I had graduated the previous spring and we were both moving to places far away from the tiny farming community.
The families of the little lutheran church gathered in the tiny, great room and blessed out food through the singing of yet another Lutheran hymn;

Come to the Table
Come to the table of mercy
Prepared with the wine and the bread
All who are hungry and thirsty
Come and your souls will be fed

Chorus:

Come at the Lord’s invitation
Receive from His nail scarred hand
Eat of the bread of salvation
Drink of the Blood of the Lamb

I realized at that moment as we sat down and broke bread together, that I had always been trying to fill myself with love, that food addiction was just a symptom of the greatest problem- a heart that craved a relationship with the Savior. My soul had been fed, by the relationships of middle aged Lutheran women. As I finally approached the table with a heart ready for salvation- it was time to leave.
My soul was harvested for the Lord, I didn’t realize the magnitude of the moment but it was a turning point for me to begin my journey welcoming others to the table.
Will you come to the table?