BBQ or Baguettes: My Review of Newly Released Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist

This past month I had the privilege of reading an advanced copy of Shauna Niequist's third book, enriching and creatively written, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life around the Table with Recipes.

 

As I have followed Shauna on her blog after savoring her first book, Cold Tangerines, I enjoyed journeying with her on the process of this book's completion. I loved reading her passion of food and entertaining and her true foodie status :-). Shauna's expertise of cuisine is far more extensive than mine and I looked forward to being challenged to expand my culinary abilities with recipes of risotto, goat cheese, or prosciutto. But what I love most about Shauna is her ability to tell a story. Stories that matter. I resonate with Shauna that stories of life, love and faith matter. They matter to you and to me and to all who hear them. Honest and transparent stories draw us into community unlike anything else, for we see ourselves in one another. As we do that, and especially around the table as Shauna invites us to, we more often than not find hope, encouragement, love and connection - the very things our God has created us for. Shauna boldly and challenges us through the stories of life written in Bread & Wine to take a risk and open our lives one more time to others. To use the setting of the tables in our homes to be a place where relationships flourish.

As I read through Bread & Wine, I was immediately reminded of my first place at a table, my family's. Memories of the seven of us growing up at a round table in a kitchen with avocado colored flowers on the wall and spaghetti or meatloaf to eat.

I was then lead to remember times around the little laminate table in a tiny apartment I shared with my college roommate of 4 years. I remember sitting there with Laura in between classes, or instead of them, talking for hours about dreams and young love and God, as we dined on chicken sandwiches and soup in the Illinois cornfields of NIU.

Then I found myself immersed in family memories around tables of incredible Cuban food, the food of my childhood in a little mama y papa restaurante in Melrose Park that we dined at frequently. I don't believe I ever fully understood in those moments how much those times grounded me with my understanding of love and family.

And on and on and on to my table today that I serve and set nightly for those I love the most.

 

Shauna leads us to this primary familial place and shines a huge floodlight on it and asks us to bring it out of the mundane and into a place of great importance. To intentionally use our homes, big or small, messy or immaculate, to fundamentally love those God has given to us. And she doesn't stop there :-) Bread & Wine equips us with recipes and menus and great discussion questions to remove the excuses why we can't.

My life has been transplanted to rural North Dakota this year so my table is filled with more BBQ than baguettes and sweet tea more than wine but Shauna reminds us that that is not the point. The point not to be missed is...

 

 

"That's what this is all about. This isn't about recipes. This is about a family, a tribe, a little band of people who walk through it all together, up close and in the mess, real time and unvarnished. And it all started around a table...."

Bread & Wine, pg. 31

 

 

 

I have been hesitant to open my doors in our new home because we are in the middle of a remodel and the years of being a 1917 farmhouse reveals itself in cracking plaster and brown paneling. I have always lived in places filled with many people, family, friends and children, yet these past several months I have robbed myself of what happens around the table. One of our new friends reminded us of it as she boldly told me just the other day, "I'm there to see you guys, not your carpet." I've always known this and can give that grace to others who apologize for the condition of their home, but it's different when you choose to open your home and life and mess. Shauna, through her stories, lovingly forces us to ignore those concerns and reach for the best part, the wonder of love around the table. And you'll discover some new tastes you'll want to try to encourage you to enjoy your meals even more.

 

As you dive into Bread & Wine, drink in the stories of Emily and Home Depot safety glasses. Of kiddie pools filled with beer and soda. You will imagine the taste of breakfast cookies and see little Henry in cowboy boots and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt with his toddler belly hanging out. You will be touched to remember your stories, but also make even more as you avail your life and home and heart to others.

 

Lastly, through the wonderful writing, you'll be reminded, or discover for the first time, that God, who nourishes our body and soul, is here and He is good.

 

Give yourself a gift this spring and read Bread & Wine.

 

Released  today, April 9th.



Cosette and other random farmhouse thoughts......

For the past several weeks, I stopped writing about our life here in North Dakota. It is a wonderful thing to look at my blog again today. It is April 8th, 2013 and it is accumulating snow and freezing rain is falling. I cannot believe it. We were blessed with a few days last week of 40 weather which began the slow melt of the layers of white that had become a permanent part of our landscape since October. This morning, the sky has opened up again to remind us that Old Man Winter is not yet having his fun :-).

As I opened this page today, it felt like coming home to my thoughts, prayers and presence. I didn't realize how much just journeying through words was actually leading me through this season. I didn't realize how much this practical exercise of my heart and soul was my place of stillness and wisdom building. With all transparency, when I should have been writing more, I stopped because I was overcome with the feelings and entropy that a long cold winter can do, plus a dramatic move to a new place.

God meets me here.

Many people say when they are in nature and the beauty of creation, they never feel closer to Him. Others it's when they are serving another or in community with fellow followers of Christ, which I can relate with as well. But I've found in this season when the quietness is easily found and distractions are few, times of putting myself open raw and real before God and then on "paper", I grow and connect with the Divine and thus my own soul.

At the time when these moments at my kitchen table would have helped me maneuver through this season, I stopped coming to the table.

So today, Digging Dakota, it is good to see you again :-))))

The blog below is one I began but did not finish a few weeks ago.


(Originally written February 22, 2013, in the wee hours of a dark and cold morning outside)

We are almost 4 months into our new adventure here in rural North Dakota and I think I am just now catching my breath. We have squeezed into our tiny home and learned to bundle ourselves up in the sub zero cold. We have gotten accustomed to long car drives and shopping for weeks at a time. And the weather reports take on new meaning from the uneventful news of Las Vegas weather. :-)

 

This past week, Cole and I got hit hard with the stomach flu, along with 4 other kids from his class. While Cole seemed to bounce back quickly after getting some rest and ridding himself of everything inside of him, I however didn't fare as well. After a night of feeling horrible and truly losing my breakfast, lunch and dinner, I couldn't move and I was taken in to the emergency room to get rehydrated. Matt took over in his usual "come to my rescue" kind of way and got the kids ready for school. As I was severly dehydrated, I don't remember much about the first responders bringing me out to the ambulance except one faded image I'll always remember. I could see dimly Cosette in the hallway in tears asking, "Mom, are you ok?" "Is mom going to be OK?....." I reached for her hand and told her everything was fine and mommy just needs some help to get better. Oh, my heart.

Cosette has been created and imprinted with this tenderness that is so rare these days. She loves her dolls, animals and plenty of time alone in her imagination. So often in her little life I have felt like I was always holding a china doll. Afraid she will break if tugged at too much. Yet, she has this strong and dare I say stubborn part of herself that let's you know there is so much more beneath the surface. Cosette walks through this life at her own pace and you cannot push her, although so many times I've wanted to. I've wanted to push her to move a little quicker, get ready a little faster. Break through her fears with a little more courage. But just when I feel like I'm going to worry about her forever, which I probably will, she comes to the surface with this unexplicable boldness and strength.

We were having another painfully slow homework session not because of her inability to do the work but because she frankly wanted to do something, anything else. :-) This week she was supposed to write what her teacher called a "fractured fairytale". She was supposed to take a traditional fairy tale and put her own twist on it. Make it modern. Change the characters up a bit. Make it her own. As I was misreading her slowness in getting started as a lack of idea of how to get started, she was then actually processing through an idea. All her own. Not knowing this, I mistakenly began giving her some ideas to put down on paper and as she waiting for me to finish and in her strength told me to listen, she told me about "Little Red Writing Reporter". It was a fractured fairy tale about a modern day Little Red who was a reporter and goes to New York to see her great aunt and also to write about something great that happens to her. When she finished and turned it in, her story was one of the top three stories in the class.

I love how this girl of mine surprises me at every turn. God has me at a place of watching and waiting with her. To take a seat in the front row as one of her greatest fans and let the revealing of her wonderful self come to light. My daughter, Cosette whose name was given to her with great intentionality from my favorite story of all time, is a girl to be loved, a life to be celebrated and a story to unfold.

This day, I am so thankful she is mine.