lentils

The body makes a list of things I could do instead of write: wash the dishes, eat more popcorn, check my phone, make the salad that will go with the lentil soup that is now simmering on the stove.

Making the soup saved me. The stove always does. So does the cutting board and the feeling of garlic crushing under my palm and the sound of the pepper grinder and the feeling of salt in my fingertips.

Today was the first day of October, the 11th day of fall, the second day of the week, and my 45th or so day working at an office in SoHo. I have eight days left. Eight days of waking at 6:15 and sitting at the stoop so I can wash the sun rise. Eight more days of being late to the office because I was never built for early mornings and couldn’t decide what to wear. Eight more days of sitting in the same chair at the same table. Eight days of flipping through tabs in my browser and watching emails file into my inbox, eight more days of those familiar little blue dots by which I measure the hours.

I stood in the window in the bathroom today and pulled in a breath. Six years ago, I would have been in tears or maybe screaming on the cobblestone streets outside. Or maybe I would have just stopped showing up. I am not built for offices. But I have not done any of these things and so I am proud of myself.

But 5:00 comes and I am back to cursing pedestrians who walk without looking up, glued to their phones. I am brewing with uncertainty and anger and frustration. I hear of a friend getting a job and the fiery pangs of jealousy start in my belly and then work themselves all up and down. I have been looking (have I?) since March, tumbling in and out of offices, tweaking my resume (do I really want to be a Social Strategist in ALL CAPS?), taking constantly re-extended freelance contracts for the money and roving LinkedIn like a hungry thief. In eight days, I do not know where I will land except with a burning desire to write, an allergy for offices, and that familiar tension between what Merton calls (quote).

This is where the lentils come in because they are grounding. Actually it’s not really about the lentils or the spinach salad or the bread or the white plates and bowls or the sliced pears. It’s about the two other people I’m waiting for and the mercy that allows me to make room for them despite the fire in my belly and the anger and the cursing and the uncertainty. It’s about the fact that I don’t have to be fixed before I can receive grace and extend it.

We have to do both tonight because turns out two of us are allergic to lentils. We down two bowls of soup while swapping stories about our families of origin and then suddenly there are bloated bellies and tingling faces and we’re chugging digestive drinks and stumbling to Pel’s for peppermint tea and trying to stay calm and taking turns apologizing.

I’m amazed we make it through the rest of the night. Through the reading and reflection, through our cups of tea. We finally declare there’s no room for apologies here — not for making lentils, not for getting ill, not for the tears when I ask what’s on your mind or for the way our voices break when we read Psalms 4.

Be angry and do not sin.

What a relief. How kind of God to give us that permission because we need it. But what courage to take it. To face our raw anger instead of stuffing it down. This might be the one reason why I appreciate the ESV instead: the KJV says “be in awe.” I do not want to be in awe. I want to howl. I want to moan. I want to pace back and forth and pray the kinds of prayers you can’t pray at church until I am emptied out and maybe that’s what David does and so he says at the end that ‘In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”