Weeks into the Sacramental Baking ecourse I was taking, I’d found myself with requests to taste all the yummy food I was making. (Apparently I have very hungry friends.) This week’s homework was peach pie, with bourbon caramel. Hmm. Never having purchased bourbon, I found myself at a loss in the liquor aisle at the grocery store, so I texted a friend to ask if there was a difference between whiskey and bourbon. I was, in many ways, entering new territory. Little did I know just how much new territory.
That Sunday evening, as I wrapped up the pie fresh from the oven and placed it carefully on the floor on my car, I discovered I was excited to share it with some of my hungry friends. But also found a heavy heart. I wasn’t coming with the best news. And I realized something big about me in this process that was somewhat happy news. So many conflicting emotions.
All over a pie.
So I sat with two dear friends around their kitchen table, late on a Sunday night, with dished up pie and ice cream (as well as shots of bourbon), and I discovered a fear and an openness I’d never named before. Brené Brown’s words kept echoing in my head “Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.”
So, with Brené’s words in my head, over all the “mmmmmm”s and the “yummmmm”s with friends I was rarely vulnerable with I built up the courage to say it:
“I need people more than I ever realized. And baking this food has taught me that.”
Yes, I knew I sounded crazy. But shame be damned, I needed to say it.
I was “diagnosed” a severe introvert in seminary, and wore that label proudly. I’m outgoing, but people make me want to take a nap. So this label gave me a reason excuse to crawl inside of myself when things got hard. “It’s how God wired me! My seminary professor told me so.” I would shout these words to my heart in those moments of profound sadness because I’d been let down by people – the ones who made me tired. So rather than stepping into that shame and process that vulnerability with those I trusted, I sat in my office or on my favorite chair at home and cried.
With a piece of bourbon caramel peach pie and a scoop of Tahitian vanilla bean gelato in front of me, I exposed my heart and told them how much I needed them. I began my sentence rather fearfully and I was interrupted by “I can taste some of the bourbon in there!” by Mike, who has his head very nearly buried in the pie, with his shot of bourbon to this left. His wife then said “Mike! She was telling us about her class!” (If you knew them you would understand just how funny this is to me.)
I started over again, and not long after that, their son came wondering in the kitchen in the midst of packing to head back to his own home. This was no tender, sweet moment of epiphany and truth. There were distractions and even a bit of chaos, which perhaps made it easier for me. What was heard by them, I don’t know. What was taken away I am unsure of, but the battle was in me admitting it to myself and in saying it to someone other than me. And I resolve to say it again if it wasn’t heard, and perhaps even to say it again to those I learn to trust in the future.
The conversation moved toward the pain of drinking that particular brand of bourbon, “It’s like drinking a tree,” said their son, as he sat down to join us with a plate of leftovers for his late dinner. Much laughter followed and the comfortableness of that entire night was covered in the simple fact in how they were treating me – like one of their own.
“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.” Those Johnny Cash lyrics sing inside me each time vulnerability creeps near and I am ready to crawl back inside myself. It’s never been simple as I’ve tried to be me. So much history of rejection and pain resurfaces in those moments. These dear friends accept me no matter what, because grace oozes out of every pore of their skin. Yet the fear of rejection still remains sharp and bitter in my soul.
In these beautiful moments of hesitancy and distraction, I find myself looking for ways to be still, to be true to myself. But instead of being still by myself, I long to find ways to be that way with the people I love most in my life. My family is half a country away, and in this hot dessert valley of southern Arizona, I find pockets of people to be my surrogates, that I can sit with around a table and with whom I can figure out how to be me.
