Jesus with a Pot Pie
Several years ago my daughter had a significant injury that required a hospital stay, then a long recovery at home. We were homebound.
The word “homebound” reminds me of the years when I was growing up in rural Tennessee. My mom and her good friend, Debbie, taught my middle school girl’s group on Wednesday night, GA’s for my Baptist friends. They instilled a sense of service in the group by having us all make crafts and snacks to deliver to the “homebound.” They were almost always elderly people who would lie in bed as we gathered around them and sang songs about Jesus, offering up cotton-ball Easter bunnies to clutter the bedside table further and ease their worldly pain. Making crafts and singing songs would have been fine, but their homes were usually shockingly dirty, crowded with a confusing assortment of unnecessary objects, and smelled like cats. If I could rewind and return to those times, I would insist we get them some mental health help to address the obvious hoarding situation. Back then, you just made them cookies.
I vividly remember one lady who had what must have been more than a hundred cats. They lounged on every spare surface that wasn’t already occupied by empty cat food cans, the lids still half-attached. I wondered how they ate it without cutting their tongues - a forever mystery. The rancid odor of the place follows me to this day.
As an unmedicated person with a cat dander allergy, I hated visiting that house. I’m fully medicated and regularly injected to stave off allergies these days, and I still wouldn’t go in there for ten trillion dollars. But it was a suck-it-up-for-Jesus culture in our Girls in Action club, so I tried not to breathe as I suffered through another chorus of “I’ve Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down In My Heart”. I did not have the joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
Today, I’m taking a variety of random foods kids will eat to a lady in my Bible study who is going through a traumatic custody battle. I don’t feel like making food or driving across town, but I’ll do it because God asks us to “Be happy with those who are happy and weep with those who weep.” Romans 12:15 (NLT) Practicing that kind of service doesn’t always sound appealing, but obedience as a Christian mostly has very little to do with how you feel. I also now realize that joy is a gift that is down in my heart that I can take with me into every situation—if I decide to.
When my daughter and I were isolated at home for a few months, we were the beneficiaries of visits from friends and copious amounts of meal-train pasta dishes. The visits from friends, especially Eden’s classmates, were like bursts of light into her bleak day. I can’t overstate the positive impact it had on her spirits. It was as if, during their brief stay, she transformed back into the happy, playful child she had been before her accident.
The meal train from my church friends was interesting. Some people would come and stay, not only bringing dinner but also much-needed company and encouragement. I like to be around people, and being so isolated for days on end was highly challenging. These visits were a source of comfort, strength, and diversion from the emotional and physical pain. Other people met me at the door with a stack of tin foil food containers and tossed their condolences at us as they walked backward to their cars. We might have spent the entire day looking forward to the respite of a social visit. It was so crushing.
I realized that the delivery of food is very helpful when you’re incapacitated or mentally exhausted from trauma. It’s helpful. But pasta without the person is not the same.
We don’t realize how important we are. Being in the same room to encourage and pray for someone who is hurting and lonely is invaluable. Don’t underestimate your power in someone’s life. We need each other. We are created to be in relationship with people who will laugh with us when we laugh and cry with us when we cry. There’s a reason the very one who created us instructs us to do so. He knows how we’re wired.
In our rapid-paced life, the meal train has evolved into the convenience sending e-gift cards for food delivery services. This can be helpful, physically and financially, but it lacks the human touch. Don’t doubt the value that you as a living breathing human posess in the face of heartache. When we show up and take as much slow time as that person needs from us, we are sharing the burden and and shining the light of God in their darkness. You are the stand-in for Jesus, Jesus with a pot pie.