You Are Not My Work of Art

by Amanda

I do not need a photo to remember
You standing with the red apron on,
Palette on your thumb like Papa showed you,
Wind chimes serenading as you work.

I cannot hear the brush strokes but the colors
Appear and I can see your heartbeat send
Careful lines across the page until the sea
Becomes a scene knit inside you long ago.

I am not the judge nor should I be
Of your words or your heart or your hands.
I shake free my neck from Control’s tight grip
Long enough to see you mix the green and blue.

I am not the lead in your story.
I am not the keeper of your keys.
I am not the one who writes your freedom song,
Nor the one who curls each wisp of your hair.

I am not your God or your maker, little girl.
Your truest form was never in my hands.
But I will sing loud joy for the honor
Of standing so near to a masterpiece.

May 10, 2013 in Family with 8 Comments

Something God Alone Can See

by Katherine Willis Pershey

My former church, Easter 2010. Image altered to preserve the privacy of the members.

This is a Deeper Family, not a Deeper Church. I’m charged to write about family, not the work I do as a congregational pastor.

But sometimes the church is a family.

Sometimes it’s a family in all the wrong ways, replete with dysfunction. Sometimes there are controlling personalities and melodramatic martyrs and generational warfare.

And sometimes there is tenderness and mutual care and the simple joy of shared meals – bread and wine in the sanctuary, potlucks in the fellowship hall.

Sometimes they really do know we are Christians by our love.

I was twenty-four and more than a little scared when I began serving as the solo pastor of a congregation near the beach in Los Angeles County. Despite my self-doubts and anxieties, despite my youth and inexperience, they called me prayerfully and embraced me enthusiastically as their pastor. The church was small enough that everybody knew everybody else, small enough that it took me just two weeks to learn everyone’s names. It hadn’t always been so small; the dreaded “mainline decline” was taking its toll.

But it was a faithful church.

Every single Sunday before worship a small core of volunteers cooked up a full hot breakfast for the homeless community that populated the beach cities. It dawned on me at one point that between the thriving Korean congregation that rented out half the property and all the folks who came for pancakes and eggs, there were at least as many people there on any given Sunday morning as there were in the church’s mid-century heyday.

We even had our own missionary. His name was Dean, and he was seventy-eight years old when his twenty-five-year-old pastor led the congregation in commissioning him to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he worked for two years to establish a public relations office at the Université Protestante du Congo. He had served in the Belgian Congo in the 1960s and had always longed to return.

I am not their pastor anymore. I left nearly three years ago, prayerfully called to serve another congregation. I love where I am, happily ensconced in my native Midwest, and I love my new church. But I have continued to be deeply grieved by my role as a former pastor. In my tradition, pastors have a responsibility to truly leave when we leave. We aren’t to meddle in the goings-on of the congregation, aren’t to pop back in for big funerals, aren’t to offer pastoral care on the sly. Though I do subscribe to the minority philosophy that it is okay to maintain friendships with former parishioners, we’re supposed to cut any official ties.

I was part of the family. And now I’m not.

But I still love them. And that is why I burst into tears last week when I learned through a mass email that Dean had died unexpectedly. I suppose you can only sort of claim a death is unexpected when the person is well into their eighties and not in entirely good health. But still: he had planted his garden this spring and expected to be around for the harvest.

Dean was the patriarch of a large and loving family, many of whom were active members of the church. My husband and I were frequent guests at their Friday night family dinners. I never knew my grandfathers, and even though my primary responsibility to Dean was to be his pastors, I loved him like a grandfather. I grieve him like a granddaughter – albeit one who did a rotten job of keeping in touch, in part because I couldn’t discern how much I should.

And now, I am trying to figure out how to love and grieve the congregation itself. They are, according to their church newsletter, preparing to close their doors.

I will be the former pastor of a former church. What felt akin to an amicable divorce is increasingly feeling like a death.

It is a damn good thing I believe in life everlasting.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
-Natalie Sleeth

May 9, 2013 in Family with 8 Comments

Let’s Talk About (The Way We Talk About) SEX.

by Luke

Since we’re talking about sex (and the way we talk about sex) I thought it would be pretty silly to NOT include my incredible wife Jill in the conversation (for what should probably be obvious reasons). When I first started here at A Deeper Family, a fellow storyteller warned me that two of the hot-button issues were discipline and sex. Naturally, the two times we’ve worked together on projects we’ve covered…you guessed it…discipline and now sex. We’re edgy and cantankerous like that. It’s just how we roll. You can catch her writing here by the way, and I would highly recommend you do and no, I’m not biased at all.

We recently came to a conclusion: there was something very wrong with the way we were talking (or more appropriately, not talking) about sex with our kids.

I (Luke) was 12 (strike one) when my mom (strike two) first told me about sex using a cartoon book (strike three). I had learned more about sex from discarded magazines and those analog cable channels that we watched between the squiggly lines than I learned in that conversation, but God bless her, she soldiered through the awkwardness and marched on. But that embarrassment we both felt said something in itself: that sex was shameful, dirty, and not something we really talk about.

I (Jill) was 6 when a neighbor girl told me that sex was when someone “kisses you all over every part of your body and you make a baby.” As we walked down the street pulling the wagon with our dolls in it, trying to imagine how the baby gets from the inside to the outside of the mommy, I couldn’t wait to get home to ask my mom if it was true. My mom, however, was not nearly as interested as I was in having the conversation. “You’re not old enough to know about that,” she said. So from that moment, sex was a secret, something to be hidden, maybe even something to be feared.

And our experiences, we’ve found, are not unique. I mean, let’s be honest, positivity and openness about sex aren’t exactly common in the US period, and in the church?

Forget about it.

A lot (and I mean a lot) of us grew up with some pretty distorted and destructive views of sexuality, and like most parents, we’re just hoping that we can provide our kids something better than what we had.

So, now we have two boys (granted, they’re only not quite 4 and not quite 2) and we’re already wondering how and when we’re going to have to start talking about these sorts of things.

Are we jumping the gun here?

—–

The eldest, paragon of self-confidence that he is, likes to be naked.

Like, a lot.

He’s quite the free spirit.

Now, we could shame him into keeping his clothes on all the time and have him halfway to a body image complex by the time he starts kindergarten, but the reality is, he’s just a kid and being naked really isn’t that big of a deal. The problem, however, is that a good number of his little friends are girls, so playdates with dress-up time and the inevitable wardrobe changes that come along with it, can turn into an impromptu anatomy lesson. Turns out, not everybody is as comfortable with our son being naked as we are.

So we have the conversation:

“E, you can’t get naked in front of your friends.”

“Why?”

“Uh…because we just get dressed by ourselves.”

“But you and daddy get dressed with each other.”

[crap]

“Well that’s different, mommy and daddy are married.”

He looks up and to the left for a minute, meaning he’s accessing his (expansive) imagination, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s imagining. Is he thinking about how awesome it will be to have somebody he can just hang out naked with, or is he thinking about that cotton candy flavored popsicle in the fridge. Smart money says it’s the latter, but that doesn’t stop us from wondering how the groundwork that we’re laying now, as he’s navigating the waters of pre-schooler social dynamics, might translate to a healthy view of bodies, sex, masculinity, etc as he grows older.

Will bodies be secrets to be kept? Sex something to be feared? Masculinity something to be used as a weapon?

Or are we just paranoid? Is it just way too early to be asking these questions?

Here’s the conclusion we came to the other night in the kitchen while rehashing a spate of tragic stories about unhealthy views of sexuality culminating in Elizabeth Smart’s tragic commentary on purity culture, and how it affected her self-image during her ordeal:

Sex does not exist in a vacuum, and our voices are just two of many talking to them about it.

The lessons that distorted Elizabeth Smart’s view of sexuality and its relationship to her identity started at a very young age, when she began to internalize the shaming mechanisms inherent in purity culture. When a seemingly normal 13 year old kid in Iowa attempts to rape his mother and ends up murdering her because she took away his video game, it’s probably not an unfair assumption that there are some unhealthy and distorted views of sex and power in play.

Our kids are going to learn about sex. That much is certain. They are going to learn about it from a number of different sources with competing value systems. But which voices will they listen to the most? Which narrative about sex will they internalize, the one where sex is about power or image? Or will it be the one where sex is about love and beauty and connection? When the time comes that they are confronted with a view of sex and sexuality that runs counter to the values we’ve tried to pass on to them, will we have given them the tools to be able to set it aside? Will our voices be loudest?

Will our voices even be counted amongst those that they’re even willing to listen to?

The questions we’re grappling with, as our little exhibitionist becomes more aware of his body, are

How do we lay the groundwork now for the development of a healthy sexual identity and sexual ethics later? and
How do we create an environment where they know it is safe to come and ask us questions?

I mean sure, we’re not necessarily having a discussion about the mechanics of it all, but we can try to teach them about important concepts like respecting other peoples’ bodies, consent, self-respect, communication, gentleness, respect, and self-control, all of which inform a healthy sexual identity. We try to model what a loving relationship looks like and don’t really hide our affection for each other, and always strive to be affectionate to them in ways that make them feel both loved and safe (so when we ask E for a kiss and he says no, crushing as it is, we respect his feelings).

We also try to be pretty open about answering questions they might have. Sometimes that means we have to have the same conversation about boobies more than we’d like and in venues where we’d rather not be having the conversation (like the grocery store, or the church nursery drop-off line), but in the end, I suppose we’re hoping that if we power through the artificial awkwardness now, it’ll be easier to talk about this stuff later on after they’ve stop believing we’re the coolest thing since popsicles on a hot summer day.

So we’re stumbling along trying to figure this thing out as we go, but what we’re REALLY wondering is what about all of YOU? For those of you with younger kids, are you even addressing these sorts of things yet? If so, what are you doing? What works for your family and what doesn’t? Those of you with older kids, what worked and what didn’t? Can you see how the things you taught them when they were little translated to their tween-teen-twenty something views? What about those of you without kids or who aren’t married? How did what you were taught as a child inform the view of sexuality that you hold now? What did your parents/guardians/influencers do well and what could they have done differently?

It can be awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing, etc, we get it. But alas, you can always just comment pseudonymously! We won’t be upset if a dozen John and Jane Smith’s weigh in, we promise. But in any case, let’s try to push past the taboos about sex that we (especially we in the church) carry around, even if just for a day in this little corner of the internet, and have an honest conversation about the way we talk about sex in our families.

[photo source]

May 8, 2013 in Family with 17 Comments

The Plague

by Alise

I’ll never forget the time that my daughter got lice.

I’m pretty sure no one ever forgets something like that. It tends to be fairly traumatic for the whole family. For the other children in the family who are worried that they might also be banned from school. For the parents who feel like they must have been negligent in some way. And, of course, for the child who is forced to suffer under the chemicals and combs and the stigma of being the kid who has lice.

My daughter has the most beautiful hair in our family. She got the best of both of her parents with my thickness and her dad’s softness. We always like to compare it to the hair in shampoo commercials – it’s just that gorgeous. This was no exception when she was much younger.

At that time, her hair was long, hanging into the middle of her back. She had no interest in cutting it, so we dumped a bottle of olive oil on her head and put her to sleep in a shower cap, with her pillow wrapped in plastic, her stuffed animals sequestered to another room. And the next day, we spent hours and hours and hours sitting in our kitchen, combing out the suffocated bugs and what felt like 537,942 nits.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do this, but let me tell you, it is the most tedious, disgusting things I’ve ever had to do as a parent. I’ve dealt with exploding diapers, projectile vomit, and bloody, gashed up knees, but nothing could have prepared me for dealing with a squirmy elementary school child with a head full of lice.

So to pass the time (and to help her keep her head down while I was working on different parts of her hair), I asked her to read to me. She was just starting the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, so she read the first several books aloud. We laughed at the brilliant wit of the narrator, shuddered at the horrors that the Baudelaire children had to endure, and worked on improving our vocabulary. And bit by bit, chapter by chapter, we removed the pest.

This was not a positive experience. Plague might be a little bit melodramatic, but in the moment, it felt completely accurate. However, we talk about those couple of days regularly. We talk about how shiny her hair was after soaking in olive oil for days. We laugh about how we found a flea comb for cats to be more effective at removing the nits than the official combs for humans. We remember her animated reading of Count Olaf’s marriage to Violet. We remember that even though we were going through something unpleasant, we were able to go through it together.

And together is a good way to get through a plague.

By Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

May 7, 2013 in Family with 4 Comments

Surviving the Divorce Factory

by Ed

My friend calls the local university near us a divorce factory. I wouldn’t have used that exact phrase since I know several happily married people there, but since we started my wife Julie’s journey through graduate school, we’ve seen plenty of failed marriages. It’s something we’ve talked about a lot.

I grew up with divorced parents, so it doesn’t take a lot for me to talk about divorce. We’ve been vigilant, carefully watching the ebbs and flows of our relationship as my wife perseveres through the demanding hours of her PhD work.

I’m not a marriage expert, but I think I can spot the contempt and lack of communication that marks a failing marriage.

The past nine months have been especially demanding. A few days after the birth of our first child last July, I landed two book deals that were due within two weeks of each other, while she started reading for her PhD exams.

The month of April looked like this for us:

April 4-6: Julie had her written exam.
April 15: I had to submit a book manuscript.
April 17: Julie had her oral exam.
May 1: I had to submit another book manuscript.

Over coffee with my friend Matthew last year, I asked how he and his wife manage to work while raising two kids. He gave me the best advice for any marriage, but especially for a marriage like ours that goes through particularly busy seasons: set a schedule.

April brought the perfect storm for us in many ways, and around Christmas time we made some badly needed changes to our schedule to help us survive the coming months. I started waking up early to write, while we cut just about every commitment from our schedule that wasn’t family or work. We stopped by church and small group when our son’s nap and bed time permitted.

Something had to give during her journey through graduate school, and we made sure that it wouldn’t be our marriage.

We would never want to live like this for an extended period of time. We spent time together but it never felt like enough. By the time April rolled around, I started to feel the weight of always pushing to hit another week’s writing goal. I’ve almost left church in tears some mornings because we’ve lost touch with just about everyone, and some Sundays no one talks to me beyond a passing “Hi.” With the exception of a few people, it feels like we’re starting over from scratch after a year and a half at this church.

There will always be costs when we work at such an intense level. You can’t have it all. We at least made sure that our marriage wasn’t lost.

Each time we’ve set a schedule, we’ve saved ourselves so much stress and aggravation. We don’t have very many conversations like “I thought you were only going to work for two hours instead of four!” “Who is supposed to cook dinner?” “When will you take over watching Ethan?”

One of the best parts of our schedule is our Saturday night dinner outing. Julie loves not having to cook. I love not having to do the dishes. Ethan loves staring at strangers.

During one of the toughest parts of our push toward exams and book deadlines, we stopped by a local taco joint that allegedly had authentic Mexican tacos. I’ve heard from my Texas and California friends that east coast Mexican food generally isn’t legit. They were right.

We ordered fish tacos, pork tacos, and beef tacos, and as the waitresses brought each new taco, Ethan stared with mouth agape. Large families filled the tables around us, and a small army of waitresses zoomed through with taco plate after taco plate. Ethan’s head swiveled back and forth at the spectacle that is legit Mexican food.

Julie and I rolled up our corn tortillas and enjoyed a moment of peace as Ethan occupied himself with gawking and spying. It was a sweet moment, spiced up by the sauce on the fish taco. We were making it as a family, working toward our callings together, eating cheap but delicious food, and enjoying the company of our sweet baby.

When we set out on this journey through graduate school, we didn’t know just how precarious it could be for a marriage. Then again, we never would have predicted that a decision made on a mountainside in Vermont would land us in a taco joint in the suburbs of Columbus where zippy waitresses entertained our son.

We’re making this up as we go along, but if anything, we’ve learned that a marriage doesn’t survive by accident. We’ve always needed a schedule. Tacos help too.

May 6, 2013 in Family with 16 Comments

On the Periphery of Divorce

by Leigh

“Buddy!” I exclaimed with glee when I saw his name on the Caller ID. He is one of my favorite people but rarely does he call me.

He responded just as exuberantly but then added these words, “I’m not calling with good news.”

My heart sank. I had no idea what could have possibly happened.

The call came through shortly after I crossed Tennessee’s border. I’d been keeping an eye on gas prices and realized I should’ve filled up while I was still in Alabama. I figured I’d stop at a gas station somewhere before reaching Nashville and hope for the best.

Instead, I answered the phone and didn’t stop talking until well after I parked in my driveway. Gas can wait. Loved ones with bad news can’t.

I had called him sometime in January, just checking in the way I usually do. There were no bread crumbs pointing to what lay ahead.

“We’re getting a divorce.”

The last thing I could have ever imagined. I can always tell when he’s joking but I knew this wasn’t a joke.

He filled me in on the demise of his marriage and I listened and consoled, trying to understand. No one saw it coming. At all. I started to ask him the questions we ask when someone announces divorce. As if there are good answers to these questions. The only people who fully know what goes in on a marriage is the couple themselves.

I stopped myself. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer any of this.”

It started to rain and maybe I should have hung up to concentrate on the drive. But I knew how much this conversation cost him and I wanted to be a safe place. I listened as he told me what it was like to be single, really, for the first time in his life. They’d been married for more than a decade. I scarcely remembered what his life looked like before she came in to it.

We talked about who knew and who he still needed to tell. I coached him through a few things. Mostly I listened. I wanted to make it better, even if I no longer knew what “better” meant.

Once I hung up the phone, I sat down on the couch in my living room, my weekend bags strewn around me, and I cried. I cried because I hated that he was going through this, because this is one more rotten change in a difficult year, and because I loved her, too.

The last several years have consisted of one transition or loss after another. I’d like to blot out 2007 altogether. I’ve got a side eye trained on 2012. I can’t handle one more circumstance out of my control. I crave stability. For things to stay the same while I catch my breath. I want to depend on the people in my life staying in my life. And yes, yes, there’s God but I need the tangible. I need those who are the hands and feet of Christ to stick around, lest Jesus look more like an amputee.

I’ve lost track of how many loved ones have divorced this past decade. Or even the entirety of the years I’ve been alive. As common as divorce has become, I’ll never get used to it.

This time is different than the others. I read 1 Corinthians 13 at their wedding and she told me it made her cry. Even though there are no sides, my primary allegiance is to him. He is my people. But she became my friend and I always looked forward to seeing her. Whereas other divorced spouses left my life without much of a trace, this one hurts. And if I still lived in Illinois, I’m sure (I hope?) we’d maintain that friendship. I don’t want to think about going home and not seeing her.

After I hung up the phone from talking with him, I left a message on her voicemail and told her I loved her no matter what and I hoped our paths would cross again.

I haven’t heard back yet.

Their divorce isn’t about me but I’m affected by it nonetheless.

Out of respect for the people involved, I have changed some identifying information. If you know who I’m referring to, please do not make reference to it in the comments.

May 3, 2013 in Family with 17 Comments

The Gift of a Long Life

by Diana

With the grands, one year ago this month — our one and only family portrait sitting.

Forty years ago, I was a stay-at-home housewife with three children under the age of five, wildly in love with my kids but often overwhelmed by fatigue and feelings of failure.

Thirty years ago, I had two teenagers and a pre-teen, served as an active volunteer in church and community, loved entertaining large groups of people in our home, and was oblivious to the truth that this good, rich time of my life was rushing by me.

Twenty years ago, I walked across the stage to pick up my master of divinity degree from Fuller Seminary after four years of study, all that studying done while managing a small floral business in my home, watching each of my children move into committed relationships and becoming a first-time grandparent.

Ten years ago, I was nearing the midway point of my pastoral life here in Santa Barbara, discovering the harsh reality of death in our family circle for the first time, trying to balance (what is that, anyhow?) home and church, family and congregation.

Today, right now, I am retired from parish work; I offer spiritual direction from my home; I write on my blog, here at ADF, and several other places on the internet and in print; I have children older than most of the people I meet with or write with; I am married to a man I love deeply, a man who stays home most of the day because he, too, is retired; I am mother to my mother as she fades into the dim recesses of dementia; and I am Nana to eight grands, two of whom are college students, for Pete’s sake.

And at this moment, on a warm California evening, I am reading this list and wondering . . . who do I want to be going forward?

If I am blessed by continuing good health and even the moderate level of agility which I currently enjoy, I may live another fifteen, twenty, maybe even twenty-five years at the most.

What will these years look like when I stand there, in the future, and look back at now?

What do I hope for, dream about, pray for, purpose in my heart to do — or maybe more importantly — to be during however many decades remain?

Here, in no particular order of importance, are the things that rise to the top as I ponder that question:

I want to laugh, a lot, even if it gets raucous and unseemly.

I want to cry easily and regularly, most especially when I’m with someone who is suffering, when I see someone dear to me, when I remember love.

I want to pray more with my body — with my hands and my feet, with my heart and my soul — and a whole lot less with my head and my mouth and my words.

I want to sing — even though this old alto quavers and cuts out from time to time — I want to sing, sing, sing, in harmony, out loud, and often.

I want to move — to sway with freedom, to dance with my grandgirls, to walk on the beach, to stand up and cheer for the next wave of women and men whom God will raise up to lead and to love.

I want to love my husband well as we move together into whatever comes next. We’ve been through some scary crises, the two of us, we’ve watched people we love suffer terribly and we’ve had a few major health issues ourselves. But now, right now, and for the foreseeable future, we’re good. Often tired, getting older by the minute, but good. I want to enjoy the good for as long as we’ve got it.

I want to encourage my children and my grandchildren to be and become women and men of faith and fortitude, of love and loyalty, of commitment and concern — for themselves, one another and others. I want to do this without words as often as is humanly possible.

I want to love my mother with tenderness through this last, long farewell. I want to trust her to God, to believe that even though she is increasingly lost to me, she is never lost to her Creator.

I want to slowly and carefully divest myself of much of the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over these years — not all of it, I hasten to add, because — truth be told — I love my stuff a lot. But I want to be more concerned about the inside than the outside, more generous than acquisitive, more open and less protected and protective.

I want to keep on learning — about myself, and how I’m wired, about this world, with all its gifts and its flaws, about people and how they work, about life and how rich it is, about God and the mysteries of our faith.

I want to send roots deep into the beauty of life, to stand in slack-jawed joy at the wonder of it all.

I want to be brave and kind and encouraging.

I want to admit my flaws, own up to the messiness, look in the mirror without hesitation, and tell the ugly voices within to shut the hell up — because that’s exactly where they come from.

I want to raise my hands to heaven with gratitude at least a hundred times as often as I raise my fists in frustration.

I want to lean into the future with anticipation, come what may. I want to own my wrinkles and my cellulite, to celebrate the long life that has thinned my hair and thickened my waistline, to embrace the inevitable losses because of the inestimable gains.

I want to stand there when I’m 78 or 88 or 98 (really???) and look back at 68 and say: That was a great decade, wasn’t it?

I want to live until I leave.

Every minute, every heartbeat, every breath — a gift.

May 2, 2013 in Family with 62 Comments

Cooking Lessons

by Dulce

Stirring her enchilada sauce

I stood over the stove, not quite four years old, my face screwed up in concentration as I carefully broke the egg over the pan. The fact that the yolk didn’t break (although a few bits of shell may have crumbled into there) filled me with satisfaction. My aunt had been skeptical about allowing me to break the egg, fearing I would make a mess and it would be wasted. But my mom let me try it anyway. Her confidence nourished my soul far more than the slightly shell-shocked egg fed my tummy.

Some of my happiest childhood memories were at the house of our adopted English grandma, spending weekends doing whatever I wanted. That usually consisted of eating all kinds of yummy foods, reading or watching old Disney movies till dawn, and listening to her stories of being one of the first female bobbies, of coming to the US as a war bride, and the time she and her best friend went on vacation by themselves when they were eight years old. She taught me the delights of warm bread with real butter (none of that fake stuff for her!), English tea, comforting stews, and her favorite goulash, and they somehow became inextricably linked with the fearlessness, humor and resourcefulness that featured in her tales.

Cooking was always my therapy. Not so much the eating of the food, but the creative challenges of making my own recipes that fit the ingredients we had available, the imaginative flights to far away places with the scent of a new spice or the fresh tang of an exotic new fruit. The joy of hearing other people praise a new creation that had come from my own head and hands. Of course, there were a few spectacular failures, such as the time my ten year old self blithely omitted the baking powder in the cookies, but nothing that dampened my enthusiasm for long. I still bake when I am stressed out.

My kidlets caught the cooking bug early, too, and have all cooked along with me since they could stand on a chair. At two, they were staging their own epic Iron Chef battles. By the time they were five, they knew how to turn on the stove and make their own quesadillas. Last night, my nine year old made over 120 enchiladas for a party tonight. She made the red salsa, since it is her recipe, and my seven year old son volunteered to make the green salsa (but only if we left out the onions). Filling the warm, lightly fried tortillas that are still drippy from the salsa and rolling them up was a group project led by the four year old, and the two year old, who firmly declares herself in charge of all things cheese related, insisted upon sprinkling cheese over the enchiladas (while snitching several handlfuls for herself).

Cooking with kids takes longer. It is messier. I always wind up biting my tongue repeatedly when I have the urge to make “suggestions”. And that is what makes it worth it.

Each time that I surrender my compulsion for control, refrain from criticizing or offering advice, and openly demonstrate confidence in my kids, their eyes shine just a bit brighter, their shoulders straighten just a tad. Each time someone exclaims at how delicious their food turned out to be, their grins stretch from ear to ear.

I wonder if God does that, too? If He watches our creativity and smiles, and sometimes waits instead of telling us how to do things, not to make our lives harder, but so that we can see how much we have learned? What if He is watching every challenge and each daily, little miracle and cheering us on, but letting us know it is OK to try something new and that we are more capable than we believe? I know He delights in His kids and in all that we learn, even when we make messes and take longer and occasionally forget an important ingredient.

It just makes sense to me that everyone should have a basic idea of how to cook, and since all of my kidlets have dealt with food allergies, it is important to me that they have a general idea of what ingredients are used in different dishes.

But for me, the real lesson of cooking isn’t about following recipes as much as it is about an everyday act of courage. I see my kids learning to heed their own instincts. They take risks and experiment. It is also a reminder to me at how capable they are. When I am tempted to dismiss their passions as just cute because they are only kids, I remember the authoritative voice of my daughter as she decided to throw in some unsweetened cocoa powder to her enchilada sauce because “it needed more depth”. (She was eight. Now we always add it to our sauce.) It is about letting go when they decide to do something differently from the way that I would do it and celebrating their growing maturity. As we learn all of these things together, our souls are feasting. And it reminds me that God enjoys watching us find our passions and cook recipes for our lives that will nourish ourselves and others.

Bonus:

Ariana’s Enchiladas Rojas

3 lbs chicken breast, cooked and shredded

30 corn tortillas

oil

1 28 oz can of pureed fire roasted tomatoes

1 28 oz can of your favorite red enchilada sauce (she likes Las Palmas)

1 Tbsp ancho chile powder

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp chipotle chile powder

2 Tbsp honey

salt (we love Goya’s adobo blend, which is salt with garlic and oregano added)

1 head of garlic, minced

1 1/2 tsp oregano

1 large white onion, finely diced.

32oz shredded colby jack cheese (you probably won’t need near this much, but we like lots of cheese, and some invariably gets spilled and/or snitched)

Heat oven to 350. Combine tomatoes with the chile powder, cocoa and honey and bring to a simmer. Add salt to taste. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush oil over each corn tortilla on one side. Stack them all, wrap in foil and place in the oven for about 15 minutes, until heated through. In a large bowl, mix the shredded chicken with the garlic, oregano, half of the onion and 1 1/2 C cheese. Spoon about 1/2 C of the salsa over a bakers’ half sheet pan (13 x 18″). Remove tortillas from the oven and let cool just until they can be handled safely. Dip the tortilla in the salsa, then lay it on the pan and add a heaping tablespoon of the chicken mixture. Fold it in half and roll it up so it looks like a tube. Keep doing this until you have used all the tortillas. Pout the remaining salsa over the enchiladas, then cover with the rest of the cheese and onion. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until the cheese is bubbly.

Enchiladas Verdes

Same as above, but instead of the tomatoes, cocoa and chiles, substitute 2 large jars of your favorite salsa verde (Herdez is excellent). Throw it in the blender with 1 bunch of cilantro, 4 cloves of garlic or 1 small onion and 1/2 of a jalapeño (or serrano if you prefer it a little spicier). If you want, add a teaspoon or two of honey to round out the flavors, and some fresh lime juice. Joelito says to omit the onions from the other recipe because they are yucky, but the rest of us like them.

¡Buen provecho!

April 26, 2013 in Family with 6 Comments

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