Today, I surrendered. I gave up. I stopped fighting the fear that God wouldn’t fulfill me when I let go of every earthly pleasure I was trying to fill my God-shaped heart with. I finally let God be God. I finally came to him with an empty heart and gave him permission to fill it. I finally let God love me. Let me tell you, He knows the way to a woman’s heart: it’s bacon.
If you’re like me, when someone offers you food after a long day, you usually politely turn it down and hurry to the next fast food place on your way home. Today for some reason, whether it’s because I was feeling a little extra hungry or a little extra empty from my talk with God, I took a kind woman up on her offer for a home-cooked meal. It turned out to be the best bacon-wrapped chicken and sausage I have ever eaten in my life, with my absolute favorite side dish of peas.
As I drove home with a full heart and a full belly, I was reminded of a few words I try to live by from St. Teresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
Usually my take-away message is to be Christ’s hands and feet, but today I let someone else be Christ’s hands and feet. I let a very kind woman fill my plate and my soul. My heart is overflowing with gratitude knowing that I will probably never be able to return a favor like this to her, and that’s exactly how she intended it to be.
This was God’s work. This was God loving me through this kind woman. This was God satisfying me not only with food to nourish my body, but also grace to nourish my soul. This was God, my ultimate lover, pursuing my heart and trying to woo me with a delicious home cooked-meal.
By the way, God, it worked.
God bless those who are your hands and feet on earth. God bless the beautiful eyes that saw a college kid’s hunger. God bless the feet that led me through the doorway of a beautiful faith-filled home. God bless the hands that set my place at the table and prepared a beautiful meal. God bless the soul that did much more than she could ever realize.
While I’m at it God, thanks for getting through to hard-headed people like me that it’s a good thing to allow others to do something that we can’t repay them for. Thank you for allowing me to walk away even more full of grace by letting someone else be Christ’s hands and feet to me.
