Words By Cassandra Wolfe
Picture this: you’re in the kitchen at 9:47 AM on a sunny Saturday morning. Your husband is sleeping soundly upstairs. Your two little ones are watching cartoons peacefully in their PJs. You are flipping perfectly circular, doughy pancakes from a frying pan to a plated stack. The table is already set with maple syrup, berry compote, sliced bananas, and your favourite dishes. You’re sipping coffee from a handmade mug, joyful about spending a slow morning with your people.
Now, picture this: you ensure each pancake is made using the best recipe. It is a beautiful creation, perfected by mixing and whisking to ultimate fluffiness. While these ultra delicious pancakes are being made, you are creating a separate batter for yourself. Compared to the batch before, this batter is bland. It has been created without sugar. Regular flour has been replaced with coconut. As you work, all ingredients are meticulously measured so you can count their nutritional values as you work.
This forementioned practice was far from unfamiliar to me. Using my (very legitimate) dairy allergy as an excuse, I allowed the eating disorder to enslave and control my every move. While the disorder kept me in its vise, I dreamed of a call to hospitality.
I have always seen myself as a homemaker. When younger, I dreamed of a life of serving meals to my family, hosting loved ones and strangers in the environment that I had cultivated as home. While in the grasp of the eating disorder, I assumed that in the future I would eat “normally,” I assumed that, if I became a wife one day, I would obviously not still be obsessing over my food.
This verse in Mark 14 it reminds me of Jesus’ attitude towards food and people, “Our teacher wants to know if you have a room where he can eat the Passover meal with his disciples. The owner will take you upstairs and show you a large room furnished and ready for you to use. Prepare the meal there.” Mark 14:14-15
From this scripture, I gather it was important to Jesus that the Last Supper was eaten in a spacious place, with His disciples. The bread and wine were clearly not the object of the Son of God’s focus. His disciples were.
I was. You were.
My eating disorder behaviours included hiding food, fixating on what I would eat, when I would eat and binging in secret. While I believed the truth about food to be that of the mindset of my Heavenly Father– that food was a gift purposed for fuel and communion with others– the disordered thoughts caused me to view food as either my enemy or my best friend. Either way, food was always the focal point.
I had the opportunity to write for Love Is Moving last year about just how God set me free from these food rules. And today, as I sit here writing with my fiance next to me on the couch. That dream of peaceful pancakes is one I can envision with confidence.
I want nothing less than the mind of Jesus Christ in all things, including my attitude toward food. When we partake in meals, it is a practice we share in with our Lord and Saviour. Jesus always worked to empower others with God’s light. In light of this, focus I want to think of my family, and of all those I am serving, above myself, and take the true road of hospitality. I want to make one batch of delicious, syrupy pancakes in peace. Not my own peace but Christ’s. As His is the only kind to surpass understanding.
