Death by Beans

That's going to be the epithet on my daughters' tombstones.  All three of them.  Underneath that pithy phrase will be something along the lines of, "My mom is a cruel and heartless woman who fed me nothing but beans for forty days.  Blech."

I feel sorry for them.  I really do.  Two out of the three of them HATE beans.  And the one who doesn't hate beans doesn't eat rice.  This is going to be one long Lenten season as we choose to subsist on rice and beans for the weeks that lead up to Easter. 

Why am I doing this to them you ask?  And any mother who's ever sat over their picky eater, begging them to eat just one more bite is asking, why am I doing this to myself? 

Let me tell you a story.  Once upon a time I had a friend who traveled to Honduras on a mission trip.  He was warmly welcomed by the local community who was so dirt poor, he could barely describe their living conditions.  Nevertheless, they banded together and showed him a fantastic time.  Their times of worship, he said, were full of joy and gratitude to the God they loved, the God who provided all that they needed.  They sang and danced to the Lord, not just on Sunday like we do, but on every single night of the week, so full were their hearts.  Not only that, but they were excellent hosts to their new American friends who helped them in so many ways.  They were happy to provide the meals and served plates heaped with regional favorites: plantains, rice, avacado, and that old pantry staple, refried beans.  The only problem was, their food began to run out as the week wore on with all those extra mouths to feed.  My friend noticed that towards the end of the week the beans were thinner and thinner.  Because when they were gone, they were gone.

I thought a lot about that story after I heard it.  I thought about it when I looked in my pantry and saw it overflowing with fancy stuff like store-bought cereal, chocolate chips, packaged cookies, Nutella, and even the occassional can of refriend beans. 

I thought about it on those nights when I didn't feel like cooking and we splurged on a $10 gas station pizza.

I thought about it at dinners when my girls wrinkled up their noses at what I had prepared.  I've never made my girls be members of the clean plate club so I inevitably end up washing the food they don't like down the garbage disposal with a sigh and a wish that they would at least show a little more gratitude.

I thought about it as Lent approached and I had to consider how I should use the season to prepare my heart for Easter.  Lent is a man-made holiday.  You'll not find the word anywhere in the bible.  Even so, I find it a wonderful tool, instituted by the church, to give its people a physical way to draw close to God.  It's physical because you are depriving yourself of something.  Some people fast from alcohol, chocolate, red meat, whatever.  This season, I am fasting from normal.

Why?  Because normal equals self-reliance in my little middle-America corner of the world.  I bring the paycheck home.  I spend the money at Hy-Vee.  I have all that I  need to prepare meals for my family for a least a week or two.  Or until I get tired of cooking and want to splurge on pizza. 

But do have all that I need?  Do I really?  I don't recall a time when I have EVER danced at church because my heart was overflowing with gratitude to the God who provided everything that I needed.  And here I sit with a pantry full of food, a checking account with plenty of money, and grocery store down the street that is stocked with every type of food I could imagine and more.  Something is very, very wrong with this.

With apologies to my sweet bean-hating girls, they are coming along with me on the journey to right this wrong.  I can't make them feel that kind of gratitude to God.  I can't even make them love God.  But as a parent, I am charged with the reponsibility of putting them in the path of the divine so that He can do the work in their hearts.

And maybe by eating the same food that billions of people all over the world eat because it's ALL THEY HAVE, my girls will gain a new perpective on all that WE have.  I expect it to be difficult.  I dread day 14 or 15 when I have to face the kitchen and prepare a meal that I am sick and tired of eating.

But we will not give up, as Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 4:16!  For, "though our bodies are [being deprived], our spirits are being renewed every day."  I look foward to telling the story of our rice and beans Lent experience as the days unfold and I pray for 5 hearts changed when Easter arrives in April.

Inspiration has struck!

Did you know that the Pilgrims spent nearly 10 years in Holland before coming to America?  They left England not with the original intent of laying the foundation of the greatest nation to ever grace this broken earth.  They just wanted to get out from under the corruption of the Church of England and escape the persecution they faced for resisting its authority.  Not very romantic, is it?

I'm not sure why they picked Holland.  Maybe the politics of the region led them to believe they'd be left alone there.  Maybe someone had family there.

I want to share a paragraph that I read in a book about the early days of American history that just fascinates me.  This came from a letter written by William Bradford, a man who, though not the pastor of the congregation, had been with them from the beginning and was always considered a leader among them.  These are his reasons for giving up on Holland by the time 1620 rolled around:

"1. Their life (though they never complained of it) was so hard that almost no others were coming from England to join them..., 2. Their life was aging them prematurely (everyone old enough to hold a job worked 12 to 15 hours a day), and was so debilitating them that, should the time come when they would have to move again, they might not physically be able to do so, 3. Their children were also being worn down, and many were being drawn away by the lures of the world around them, 4. They had cherished a 'great hope and inward zeal' of at least playing a part, if as only a stepping stone for others, in the carrying forth of the Light of Christ to remote parts of the world."

Can you guess which sentence in the paragraph above sparked an idea for a new story?  Ok, ok, I'll just tell you.  It's sentence number 3 about their children.  I read that and thought to myself, "Aha!  They were humans like us!  They had the same challenges in raising their kids to love God--just like us!" 

I forget this when my kids bring home worksheets every Thanksgiving with silly-looking Pilgrims donning huge black hats and shaking hands with Squanto.  They bury the fish with the corn kernels and the next thing you know, it's time to eat!  Happy Thanksg-er, uh, Happy Turkey Day!

The Pilgrims become cartoon characters to us, ceasing to be real. But if you dig around through history, you'll find that they were, in fact very real.  Both in their superhero-like abilities to deal with hardship, and in their weaknesses, of which they had in abundance too. 

This is what makes a story really great, I think.  I don't need my hero or heroine to be so pure and flawless that his/her perfection is completely unattainable and thereby unrelatable.  In the same way, I want my villain to have some redeeming qualities because we ALL have a little bit of darkness in us, right?   

To think of the Pilgrims, or any other historical figures as any less complex than that is to misunderstand history.  And to miss out on a great story.

So, inspiration has struck.  I'm living in the world of 17th Century Holland, at least in my mind.  And when you're a teenage girl who has lived a brutally challenging life and you finally get a taste of freedom, who is the villain?  Why it's your parents, of course, who want you to stay the course of a faithful life of servitude and sacrifice.  Or maybe...it's the hunky guy who calls himself a Christian but who only lives for himself and diminishes your parents and their crazy notion to go to the New World.

Will she she make the choice in the end that honors God?  Will she end up on the Mayflower with her family?  I can't even say for sure because the characters and the plot tend to take on a life of their own as they develop in my mind.  But one thing I DO know.  They will be human.  They will breath life into a group of people that seem plastic and cartoonish even to those of us today who know our American history.

As a Christian and an American who has benefited in so many ways from the toil and sacrifice of these 102 brave souls who left such a giant thumbprint on the world, it's the least I can do.