This has been an eventful day, starting with church and ending with a trip to the ER. Worship was great, and Tom was ordained and installed as an elder at our church. Our pastor advised him that he ought to walk six steps behind me for at least the next few weeks since I am the ranking elder in the house. We were blessed to have some dear friends join us for worship and to celebrate Tom’s ordination, and they and another family joined us for a 7-ingredient brunch at our house following worship.
We had a lovely meal together. I put my girlfriends and any kids who were interested to work in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on everything. I told them both that the first visit you get served, and after that you have to work to eat. The rest of the afternoon was fueled by this wonderful, almost chaos, and buoyed by great conversation and lots of laughter. I did realize that our 7 ingredients work great for brunch. We had sweet potato pancakes with applesauce, biscuits with sausage gravy, and scrambled eggs with crumbled bacon and diced avocado on top. The only dip into pre-FFE food stocks {allowed in our “rules”} were for a small amount of sugar, baking powder, and some seasoning to make the sausage.
It felt really great to share from our food stocks, without going completely nutso and over-the-top on the food prep as I am prone to do. It has been pointed out to me that I have a noticeable tendency to over-function. Noticeable to others, that is, but not always so noticeable to me. This is not so much your garden variety over-achieving as it is me doing more than anyone would reasonably expect from any normal person without my giving any serious consideration to asking for clearly needed help.
There are lots of reasons for this over-functioning thing that, like most people, tie back to my early years. I’ll save the soul-searching on this issue for another setting, but suffice it to say that since our family commitment to FFE is “public”, it gives me the structure and encouragement I need to finally admit three things:
- Small is good
- Boundaries are helpful
- A few simple, quality things on the menu are just like giving your friends happy medicine
So, I get the same personal outcome – feeding people food that adds a little happy to their day – with less self-imposed pressure. It’s funny that I didn’t until now really connect these dots. God is working on my over-functioning, perfectionistic self as much as He is my heart for good stewardship and generosity.
I mentioned that our day also involved a trip to the ER. In a cartwheel-gone-bad moment, Cate’s big toe had a run in with the couch. Seconds after she landed, I looked and knew that her toe shouldn’t be pointing the direction it was. Her hollering was a dead giveaway that she was a 10 on the pain charts. So a few x-rays, a little medical tape, and a super-fashionable Velcro shoe, and we were on our way home again.
Tomorrow I’ll post on Frequently Asked Questions. If there’s something you’re curious about our FFE project, leave a comment or a post on Facebook and I’ll do my best to answer it.
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