What It Feels Like To Be Fed

Guest Post by Lauren Cibene

I was first connected to Lauren Cibene through the beautiful work of Kendall Lamb. “The truth hurts” has always been one of my least favorite phrases. It’s been an unconscious goal of mine to seek out writers who tell the truth in a way that is beautiful and unifying, as though we’re sitting around the kitchen table; not leaving out the pain OR the goodness that comes when we share our truths together.

While the internet is rife with divisive rhetoric- there are writers (soon-to-be published ones, in fact!) committed to the kind of truth that brings a collective sense of returning home to ourselves, again and again. Lauren is one of them.

Lauren tackles here what have been the resounding questions at Eat My Words for a decade: how can we take with us what is true and beautiful about having grown up in a system that believed it cornered the market on who God is, and eat our words about the rest? How can we return home to ourselves, and help others do the same?

This guest post is an honor to have live here on my tiny corner of the internet.

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It was the kind of hot that turned your skin sticky as soon as you stepped outside. Typical for Georgia in July. I was a high school senior at camp. Not the kind of camp you’re envisioning, though.

The humidity threatened rain and beaded up on the pimply faces of my fellow campers as we boarded second-hand school buses. It was “Witness Wednesday,” the only excursion day that punctuated our classroom-based camp schedule packed with lectures, apologetics training, small group breakouts, worship, and (on Friday) an ultimate frisbee championship. 

This was the day we took what we were learning and used it out in “the real world.” So we loaded up and prepared ourselves to initiate conversations with unsuspecting strangers.

We practiced on each other while bumping along toward downtown Rome. One student pretended to be a militant atheist. One, a Muslim. One, a generic nonbeliever. These theatrics almost always devolved into verbal hostility. We so wanted to be tested, and to rise to the occasion. 

We weren’t quite 10 years away from Columbine, and all the backward fetishizing of martyrdom was still around. Maybe we campers didn’t want to die necessarily. But we did want a reason to nod knowingly when parents and pastors told us that college professors would tell us that God is dead. 

Oh, we know. We’ve encountered such people already. On Witness Wednesday.

And we wanted to know the perfect thing to say to make nonbelievers’ arguments crumble. This was the best-case scenario–better than a conversion, even. Leave them speechless, dazzled and thoroughly convinced now that they are wrong and you are right.

Most of our lecturers and camp councilors encouraged this white-hot drive. They certainly didn’t discourage it. They armed us with four questions that we were supposed to use, regardless of who we spoke to or what they believed*: 

“What happens when you die?” 

Hell of an opener. 

If the person we were speaking to gave us an answer that didn’t match our beliefs, we’d ask, “How do you know?” 

We were also supposed to drill into their vocabulary with a “What do you mean by _______?” What do you mean by purgatory? What do you mean by karma? 

All capped off by a truly callous: “What if you’re wrong?” At this point, we’d seize on any emotional vulnerability and try to convert them. 

“You are the salt of the earth,” our leaders would tell us as we disembarked, and our sweaty upper lips seemed to confirm this. 

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16 years sit between the me that existed on Witness Wednesday (green and eager and earnest) and the me that exists now. I think back to those questions I was trained to ask, and how triggered I would be if I were asked those same questions by a thin-limbed sophomore with something to prove. 

I have grace for the person I was. That little evangelist didn’t know how it felt not to be tethered to big-talking beliefs. She’d never known doubt. Never felt unsure. She had never laid in bed at 3 am and felt unspeakable loneliness and emptiness and what-does-it-matter-ness. 

So, how could she have any empathy or understanding for people experiencing that? 

If those campers and those methods were “the salt of the earth,” then they were salty like sodium-soaked processed food: engineered to be a fast-hitting, short-term solution. But you don’t solve long-term hunger with fast, generic snacks. 

We left people, dehydrated and starving, in our wake.  

And it wasn’t just the people on the receiving end of this little interrogation being malnourished. It was us, too. 

On the last day of camp, I would burn through my babysitting cash to stock up on every extracurricular book from the camp shop (all written by our lecturers). I’d ride that post-camp high devouring those books. Sucking the tips of my fingers for more. 

If I can just preserve this feeling, this certainty, this dedication I feel… 

So, I packed my faith in salt, insulating it against the decay of secularism or doubt. I didn’t realize it, but I wasn’t preserving it. I was mummifying it. 

And the absence of decay is not the same as the presence of life. 

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I don’t know if this type of street evangelism is right or wrong. Some celebrity once said that if the story of Jesus is true, every Christian should devote every minute to this type of balls-to-the-wall evangelism because that is the only appropriate response. I guess I can understand that line of thinking.

On the other hand, if I were to advocate for any type of spiritual evangelism (and at this point, I’m not even sure that I would), I think it would more resemble the work of a midwife and less the work of a lawyer or a salesman. 

No more debating or strategizing or memorizing. More listening. More empathy. 

Less angling to make a quick sale, pray the magic words, and move on to the next unsuspecting stranger. More patience to sit in the long hours of struggle as a new life begins. And an ease in the knowledge that no two stories are ever going to be the same. 

What kind of midwife would ever expect two births to go exactly the same way? The evolution of the human soul is no different, and I want to create space for you to arrive exactly when and where and as you need to.

Or, to continue the processed food analogy: walking with someone through their own spiritual transformation shouldn’t look fabricated, processed, and formulaic. 

It should look like making them a home-cooked meal. Here… 

Come into my kitchen, I’ll show you. 

(Alexa, play Leon Bridges on Spotify.)

Okay, tell me what you’ve tried already. What feeds you? What leaves you feeling empty? What tastes like home? What are you allergic to? 

I don’t make the same dish for everyone. I want to make something that’s right for you. It’s going to take a while, but that’s okay. Can I get you some tea? Coffee? Something stronger? 

While the bread rises and the veggies roast and bone broth simmers, talk to me. I don’t have all the answers. But I will listen, and, honestly, isn’t that better than someone who tries to fix everything? 

Tell me when it all went wrong. What can’t you seem to forgive? What is that you need? When did you first encounter unwarranted love? 

These are better questions, and I have a feeling they’ll take us right up to dinner time. 

Everything on your plate has a little salt in it. But if you would like more, please add more! Trust your own taste. You know what you need. 

I want what I serve the world to nourish and comfort and feed deeply. I want the world to come back for seconds. To sit on my porch afterwards with decaf and pound cake. 

To remember what it feels like to be fed. 

* The fact alone that we were taught a sequence of questions that in no way made space or consideration for people’s answers further shows how misguided this training was. 

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Lauren has just announced that her book will be published by Lake Drive Books. Her Substack is a wealth of truth and beauty and is worth its weight in gold. I’d suggest you subscribe to stay in the know about the exact moment you can get her book in your hands.