Barefoot and in the Kitchen

A Reclamation of Holiness (In an Unlikely Way).

***TW/Disclaimer: I’m sure there are plenty of 40-somethings who grew up in the evangelical churches of the 80s/90s who do not carry body-related trauma that turned into disordered eating or eating disorders (though I haven’t met many). And. I do not place sole responsibility on the church or its messaging for my own. What happened to me was a perfect storm of who I am as a person and my circumstances/ place in the world at a formative time. This does not legitimize the harmful nature of the messaging and my belief in the desperate need for the narrative to be rewritten, but simply to provide context.

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I have loved to cook for closing in on twenty years, but it hasn’t always been that way. My sister-in-law had to sit directly behind me at my bridal shower and whisper the names of kitchen gadgets so I could thank guests appropriately.

“Thank you for the….”

(WHISPER) “Garlic press…”

“Thank you for the garlic press! I’ll use it all the time.”

I used it one time, dear reader. One time.

While I didn’t cook until later on in life, the preparing and planning for food was secretly fascinating to me. Cooking shows were just gaining traction in the late 80’s and early 90’s and after school my time was split between Oprah and Yan Can Cook. I will never forget the episode where he made a swan out of an apple. Many a Pink Lady was sacrificed at my Mom’s yellow countertop before she got home from work, my little fingers trying to manipulate our dull paring knife.

I knew early on, however, that it was a slippery slope to love cooking. Loving to cook naturally translates to loving to eat, and loving to eat generally means existing in a larger body.

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And in the world of Slimfast and Snackwells and Baptist Peter Pan collars and leather Bible covers, friend, a larger body was not an option.

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It would have been enough to contend with the heroine chic of the day. Seventeen magazine was cover to cover with jutting hip bones and gaunt expressions. But add the extra layer of a religious system whose messaging was that sacrifice was holy, abstinence of all kinds was honorable to God, hunger was admirable and bodies were evil? I was screwed from the start.

I was taught there was abundance in Christ- at this point in my life, I can neither confirm nor deny that. What I do know is that the underlying message I internalized was that:

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“Abundance” found anywhere else but inside of the parameters of my faith isn’t holy.

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That included abundance in money or happiness or opportunities- or food.

Especially food. (Daniel Fast, anyone?)

And I longed to be holy more than I longed to be anything else.

(We’ll talk about money, happiness, and opportunities at another time, don’t worry.)

I learned to befriend hunger as the encouraging companion on my own Pilgrim’s Progress. Though no one told me directly that skinny was Godly- it was silently confirmed every time I chose to forgo seconds or ice cream. It led to skipping whole meals, eventually. Sometimes for days at a time ( until the kindest janitor who ever lived tattled to my mother that I was throwing my lunch out every day, thus, I choked down half a sandwich and an Ecto cooler to prove I was compliant because, well, compliance, apparently, was also holy. )

High School was much of the same. In college, I gained the “freshman 15” and nearly had a nervous breakdown. In my sophomore year after a series of losses and trauma too big to name even today, my heart so broken I wasn’t sure I had one left- I knew I could at least be thankful that I lost all the weight. I could hardly pick my head up off the pillow when my Mom drove an hour out to see how bad off I was. I don’t even remember how she got me in her car. I was too sick to argue, I imagine. I never returned- my doctor threatening that I either unenroll, rest, heal and eat at home or she’d send me to the hospital where I wouldn’t have a choice.

I weighed 118 pounds when I walked down the aisle, medicated for ulcers I couldn’t heal because I lived on coffee, anxiety, grapfruit, and an occasional cigarette to curb the desire to put food in my face.

I “bounced back” after my first pregnancy like a pro and lost all the baby weight plus 15 lbs…and almost ended up in the hospital for sleep deprivation and malnourishment. The baby was “sensitive to dairy” or was it also gluten? Or meat? We just didn’t know. I just knew she wasn’t sleeping and that I believed it was somehow my fault. So my conditioning (and my OCD) allowed me to eat an egg, half an avocado, and an apple for the day, terrified something I would ingest would kill her. It almost killed me instead.

I just wanted to be a good girl.

A good wife.

A good mother.

I just wanted to be holy.

One of the only ways I knew-one of the few ways I could control-one of the only ways that was encouraged- was to starve myself.

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My kitchen is one of the holiest spaces I know now. The gentle morning light on my butcher block countertops first thing in the morning fill me in ways I never knew they could. I spread meal plans out all over my table, flour still sprinkling the corners from the day before. I know every farm in a 50-mile radius, and the farmer’s by name. I make the birthday cake now- the same one, every year. The one you have to melt dark chocolate in perfectly brewed espresso and stir the buttermilk in slow. I actually eat it.

I pour cream in my coffee and watch it dance.

I didn’t intend to heal in this way. I didn’t set out to find the cure to leveraging hunger for holiness in locally grown garlic scapes. I didn’t expect my calorie counting to melt at the chance of knowing the local cheesemonger by name or learn French so I could hear him describe the process of making Comte in his native tongue. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a time when I would have eaten french fries and ice cream by the side of the pool with my daughter, on the same day. Like I did today.

Sometimes, we don’t get to choose the things that save us- we are just thankful when they do.

When I roast a chicken with preserved lemons, sumac, shallots and white wine or bake double chocolate muffins for a neighbor down the street I am slowly undoing the decades of damage perpetuated by a religious system held together by strands of control and fear.

I am standing defiant and immodest in the body I am in right now and calling it worthy of being fed.

I am grasping righteousness without waiting for someone else to dole it out to me in controlled portions.

I still want to be holy.

I have just claimed it for myself- barefoot in the kitchen.