hungry.

I like to eat.  I don't know many people that don't.  In fact, eating is one of my favorite things to do with the people in my world.  {not sure if this is good or bad}.
Bread is one of my favorites - especially this new recipe my mom showed me via my cousin Brooke.  Delicious & perfect doesn't describe it well enough.
I also like pasta, all sorts of vegetables, oranges, apples with peanut butter, tacos from the taco wagon, Lester's Fries from Hamley's, pastries, string cheese, applesauce, and chinese take-out.  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but you get the picture.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Here's the thing.  Sometimes I'm not hungry for the right things ... and when I'm hungry, I usually don't wait, I just eat. This week {April 2013} I read an interesting post from Shauna Niequist.  It was about {the table}.  And as soon as I read it, something changed in my thoughts and feelings about food & about being hungry.

Our life is very unpredictable.  Very seldom can I tell you what time we're going to eat, or who might be there to join us. My friend Darcy has this lifestyle down to a science, and to be completely honest, it's not for the faint at heart at all.  I learn from her daily. You see, cows don't call you before they go into labor.  Horses don't remind you that a gate was open until you see them running down the road. Water troughs don't run dry at the same time every day.  And tractors don't always start on the first try.  As beautiful as this life is, it is not a life that's ever on schedule.

Believe me, I've drooled over the thought of eating dinner at 6:30 every night, with a set number of plates on the table, and an easy clean-up routine afterward.  But the reality is, dinner is at dark and at least once a week, it includes more people than I planned on. {I'm praising God right now that my shelves are filled with lots of canned goods and that I have two tables.}

Here's the thing that happened as I read about the importance of meal time in the post... I realized that I need to be starving for the opportunity to share my life, my home, my food, and my tables with others.  Not just hungry, but starving.  Not worrying about the piles of paper on the side bar, not caring if the table cloth is stained or if the chairs match, and not fretting over what is being served.  Just opening my door, kicking the mucky boots out of the way, and saying {welcome}!!

This view is worth sharing.  It is.  And the people that need to share it with us most don't care what time we eat. They want to laugh about the stories we've lived together, and the ones that are yet to come.  People want our time more than anything.  They want to be in our life - not just through the computer, but in real life.

The night before I read this, our tables had been filled.  There was laughter, there were stories, there was delicious food, and there was a picture passed around from 5 years earlier - all of us {minus Josie} looking happy, blessed, and a little younger.  We had just shared a meal together and somehow managed to take a picture with a tripod or something and it was the perfect reminder of what life is supposed to be.  Shared.

We are loved.  Our friends have made meals for us this past week - just because they wanted to make our load lighter.  I get teary just thinking about how loved we are. Ian is on the mend, and my parents have been here with us too.  Our table has been filled every night.  Filled with food, with love, with stories & laughter, and with a chance to stop the busyness. That's what the table was created for - to gather us together.

Shauna wrote it so very well -

The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel. If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health. Come to the table.

Cows don't eat alone.  They eat together.  Their kids run and play and they eat.  They probably swap birthing stories, memories from previous winters, and even mishaps they've watched us have.  I bet they laugh in their own kind of way, and if they could pass a picture around the table, it would be a picture like this.  A picture of them, all together, enjoying a life well lived with a view that's worth sharing.  I want a table like theirs.

I'm hungry for more than a set meal time and hot food.  I want to share my life with others - despite the busyness.  I want stories to be told and memories to be gathered. In fact, I'm tempted to set my table with a stack of extra plates - just because I never know who's going to show up ... and I never know who God wants at the table, but I do know that our table is supposed to be shared.  This week was living proof of that!

Who wants to come for dinner?  You're invited - and all I can promise is that you'll leave full.  Full of just what you needed because God's good like that.