Although your dad and I have been living mostly grain-free since October (with some long stretches of EAT ALL THE BREADS!), I do have a love for baking fresh rolls and loaves. There is something magical about the rising of the dough, the power of the yeast. Working with your hands, kneading and shaping the loaves is therapeutic. Smelling the baking bread is absolutely intoxicating. Burning your tongue on the first steaming hot slice is totally worth it. And slathering the fresh roll with butter than instantly melts is almost indulgence.

Bread baking is one of those ancient processes. For millennia, humankind has been mixing flour and water and oil, baking it at high temperature and eating it as daily sustenance. This is why, in the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6, Jesus asks his Heavenly Father to give us today our daily bread. He knew that the common man, hearing his instructions, would understand this to mean we need to hear from our Father in Heaven on a daily basis…multiple times a day even…in order to sustain full, vibrant, living. The bread, the hearing from God, is as critical and as basic to our spiritual lives as fresh baked loaves are to the physical life.

I’m going to confess to you, Child, that I have been struggling to hear from God. I am thankful that His grace has poured out into my life in the form of dedicated time to spend alone with Him. But it seems that I am doing all the talking. Certainly there are times when my Heavenly Father knows I just need to talk. The struggles, the stresses, the big and the little just come pouring out like water from a broken vessel. He accepts me as the hot mess that I am. And He will hold you too.

But there comes a time when I realize, “Wait a minute…I have been spending time with God…and it has been good and rich and cleansing. But I need to hear from him.” And that requires silence, stillness.

I am praying for that restful spirit to come. 

sometimes hobbling along,

your mother