16 Blog Post September 18, 2024 “Special Guests”

One of the hardest things for me about this journey is that everyone is treating us as if we are special, and it is very, very difficult for me to adjust to that. What I want is to be a normal guest, someone who stops by, has lunch, goes home or someone who meets you at the local coffee shop, orders a cappuccino, spends an hour at the café chatting, and then gets to go home. I am having difficulty with the idea that everyone is preparing their best food, purchasing the nicest things, setting the table with their best dishes, making the loveliest desserts—did you even know there was such a thing as Double-Cream Vanilla Ice Cream?

I am having a hard time because I prefer to be the person doing the nice thing, and I don’t mean that in a selfish way at all. I simply love to celebrate guests and visitors. I love to cook and to prepare. I love to show hospitality and welcome people. From that perspective, I absolutely understand what people are doing as we visit, but it is still so hard for me. I did not know this was going to be part of my lesson.

Maybe it’s that I feel useless when my whole vibe is to be useful in the world. When I ask if I can help prepare dinner or set the table, people invariably say “No. You just sit right there!” like it’s a privilege, but I am a worker. Not being able to work is unnatural for me and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Why don’t I feel like that about the rest of my life? Why am I not uncomfortable with the graciousness of God who always treats me like a special guest?? Hasn’t God given me everything, all the food I need, all the beauty around me—do you know that today, I saw a herd of white deer on a local estate? Pure white deer. The bucks were all hanging around together with these giant antlers swinging around every time they moved their heads. It was incredible. Gift. I did not ‘deserve’ any of it.

We shared yet another brilliant meal tonight—a whole Sea Bass, freshly caught in the nearby North Sea and gutted (I watched the fish monger clean it), cooked on the outdoor grill over an open fire, wild rice, and a green salad with my brother’s garden cucumbers, fresh lettuce and spinach and just a glossing of dressing. And homemade salsa verde that I could have eaten straight off a spoon. Gift.

We spent the early afternoon at the same estate mentioned before, Houghton House, where there was an outdoor sculpture garden installed. The weather? Unbelievably perfect, warm and sunny with no possibility of rain at all. Gift.

See what I mean? I could list the details of just this single day spent with family and it would honestly go on for pages—smoked salmon for breakfast, a cup of tea and a long chat with Chloe, the amazing tour of the estate itself with an opulence I have never experienced. Gift, gift, gift. All gift.

How can we learn to both receive with graciousness, and yet have a healthy sense of gratitude at the same time? How can I learn to be grateful without feeling guilty as we are treated with so much love, kindness and hospitality, with no possibility of returning the generosity? And isn’t this what God is doing for me every day, particularly on this sabbatical? Giving to me with no possibility of me giving enough in return?

I think of nourishment, and perhaps you do too, as being something that makes us healthier and stronger. But nourishment is also about depending on each other, being vulnerable enough to say what we need, and receiving whatever it is that others want to give us and honoring the gift, whatever that is.

Today I am full. I am full of good food, of good companionship, of love for the best dog I have even met (Rocco, or Rocky) who can catch a frisbee in midair and then gallops back to drop it so he can do it all over again, of a nearly cloudless English afternoon, of conversations that recapped childhood memories, many of which were difficult, but which were important to share, of a great run down a country road that brought me to the tiny stone church up the lane. Who could possibly go to this church, seemingly in the middle of nowhere? Gift, pure gift.

Tomorrow we head to London. We will drop off our car, the beloved MG HS that has been our trusty steed this whole time on every island, through highlands and cities. I think this will be the hardest goodbye of the whole trip because we are saying goodbye not only to my brother and his wife, but to both of our families, to our friends, and to all our UK adventures.

“ The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed; those who help others are helped.” Proverbs 11:24-25

For today, I am the one being blessed by others. I pray that I can express what it has meant to me. I pray that I can be generous in return.

May your generosity in nourishing others be contagious--ML+
(Pics are a bit random of our travels today.)