She knew God only as her church relayed, from well-intended lessons in a Sunday School courtyard, shallow in depth but rich in doctrine too complex for her to absorb.
And yet she knew Him, praying to Him in earnest, every day and most especially in the nights, under the covers, full of hope. She prayed for a most big thing, and let all the little things go unmentioned. If only the big thing came to pass, all the little things would fall into place.
Sadly, the big thing never came to be. She prayed and prayed many years, coming to a conclusion: the world was just so big, with so many prayers being said all at once, by people more appealing than she, to a God who loved some more than others, no matter what any Sunday School teacher said, ever.
Rejection taken. Comfort sought--where else to go but the kitchen? Not so much to eat the food there--although her mother's cooking was lovely, indeed--but for the distraction. The distraction of her own food creations, the appreciation for the creation by the consumers of her "art", the pleasures served to all.
Without a backward glance, the comfort of the kitchen assumed her loftiest goals. What could be better, really? You feed the people you love with the finesse of a "craft", she thought. They love you for it. They give you strokes for it. It tastes good. It feels good. It nourishes body and spirit and it is not the worst thing in the world to be remembered for.
And so she cooked for the "home folks" first, her mother and father and siblings. Then for the man she married, the two of them alone in a sweet little apartment, and eventually the children they raised together in a sweet, bigger home. She cooked for the neighbors and for friends, and she sought lonely people too, who had no urges to cook big meals for themselves but whose eyes lit up one hundred watts when she came bearing a plate.
Eventually she even cooked for the masses, if the subdued masses she could tend to with the loving attention-to-detail that mattered all her life. She made a small business of it, but carried it out as if it were for the family she loved the most. Because she so loved doing what she did, it had to be done in the same earnestness, whoever she did it for.
And so the girl didn't learn much more than to cook well, and she never really cared. It and its reverberations fulfilled her. No good person ever pointed out to her the drabness of her life, and no good person ever purported that her life should represent further fruition in more significant ways.
But for all the self-assuredness her joy in the kitchen brought, it elicited little for confidence in love from her God. In this she still felt small, a meek, insignificant being. From this, she derived He might still love her later, with the intensity of eternal love, where and how it counted the most. For this end, it was well and good to be insignificant now. It was well and good to believe and trust, and not to dwell on any one thing lacking in the here and now.
A life in the kitchen, thought Darlene, also exemplified her acquiescence to isolation. It quenched a thirst to be away from the world-at-large, in its simple satisfactions with her small hub of humanity. It separated her from serving in worldly capacity, but she never struggled with the humility of loving God and accepting His will for her life. He caused her to love her life, and even to believe fully that other women who lived very worldly lives also loved theirs.
Ah, but from the beginning of time, the world comes to all doorsteps, in one way or another. Stuff happens, and the distraction of a comforting kitchen at times played second fiddle to other facets of Darlene's reality. A loved child's circumstances and other adversities with the home and family made assembling a grilled cheese sandwich almost too much to contemplate. For these times, she asked, "Okay, so what now, dear God? I wasn't made for this stuff, this facing-down-the-world stuff. I always just wanted to stay in the kitchen."
At that, she felt God nod His head and say, "Yes, I made you for the kitchen. It's good if you always found the kitchen a comforting place to be. Now you just have to figure whether you can retreat to the kitchen and call these matters good, or if you need to get out of the kitchen so that you can get back to it in peace."
In peace? Darlene wondered. Does peace mean retreat? In a sense, she had prided her life on the humility of retreat. If she had confidence in her life, it was in knowing her place for the here and now, in her patience and willingness to await the greater glory of God later, eternally. How would she figure NOW that her responses should be anything BUT peaceful and retreating?
And so, she stepped back from her woes, much as the little girl did long before. She ventured to settle back into her routines, only to list as a sea vessel lists in waters overwhelming. She grappled to right herself, stunned by the need to leave the kitchen, to not retreat and sink.
The causes that took her from the kitchen had nothing to do with the kitchen. Swept out of her comfort zone, she buoyed herself in treacherous, unfamiliar waters, a being hardly knowing how to swim. Each time, she likened the wildly floundering chaos to a childhood experience of nearly drowning with her older sister, Cindy. The two, on a family day at the beach, innocently waded into erratic waters, carried unto thrashing panic, saved by two strangers, unafraid and appointed by God.
Motherhood and more brought the world knocking at her door, bringing its maelstrom of discomfort to her. But these things brought more too, love unlike any she'd known before, a sense of un-self, and longing for justice beyond her inner borders. She found her outside-the-kitchen calling.
How now, Lord, do I answer this calling? She appealed to Him as when a child, with a new, and almost-young, extended self. How do I still these quaking knees, slow my racing heart, calm the churning flutter of my insides? I was not cut of cloth for this, she thought, but you have woven these threads, these people into my life, and I need to cloak them in the love You made me capable of.
Somehow, she muddled through, one angst at a time. Along her way, she said, I do thank God for one angst at a time the magnitude of which is bearable, for I know of people broken by many angsts all at once, who do not bear up at all or who in their tumult put me to shame with their faithfulness in His intent.
I can get through one tumult at a time, she said, and she did. The Lord saw her progress, and bore her up. He began to show her His sense of humor. He placed a donut shop in her way, one she least expected, on a "lost" path, a dreamed-of donut shop she'd given up hope of ever seeing, for a reward of "following through" in crisis. He placed a man ahead of her in line at a counter, whose telling of his story provided her a "light bulb moment"--the insight she needed for an adversity she was contemplating solution to. Her Lord God gave her signs and words everywhere, too many to count, too many to talk about.
But talk about them she would, for this was a part of His plan. It is really true, she finally absorbed, that God is here for me, for everyone who turns to Him and who believes, in the good times and the bad. We will have courage to share His words and to meet our ends, because we turn to Him in need. We will open up His Book, searching, and each time, the page we land on will say something just for us and our moment.
With each happy day and each unhappy day, His grace seeped deeper into her being. He did not chastise her for the years she retreated, the years she acceded to others who maintained and sustained their faith as children, who never weakened and only added layers to their foundation.
She loved a time especially, when, opening His Book to "land" on a page she needed, came to the stories of the disciples who followed and faltered, followed and faltered in their faith toward the Son of God. A miracle a moment, they seemed to need. Jesus said as much, asking in essence and in exasperation: What is wrong with you people? How many times do you need proof of what I can do??
These were the days of healing and miracles, of feeding multitudes with five loaves of bread and two fish, of calming an oceanic storm to soothe panicking men. On and on Lord Jesus performed convincing feats, and on and on the impressions proved fleeting.
Darlene read this last, in her own moments of backtracking in faith and trust, over her trial of the time. These words indeed were meant for me to land upon this day, she thought. To think, His words have always been here, and instead, for so many years I read cookbooks.
Cookbooks in retreat, but going forward, not so much....
"Footnote" to this entry...the very day following Darlene's "landing" on Jesus's chastisement to His disciples for their lack of more sustained faith, she was driving a country road home from town, listening to a CD. Almost home, it hardly seemed worth changing out its "wearing thin" songs, so she just flicked it over to the radio. The song playing? Just enough time before pulling into the driveway,
