Words from the Silence Part 2: The Skinny Chef

The thing about taking a vow of silence with your mouth is that your brain doesn’t always follow. It takes a while for your thoughts to stop milling around up there. At times I wanted to laugh at how I seemed to talk to myself about the most random things. My favorite random thought was when I asked myself: “Quite possibly nature's most perfect fruit”…now is that the kiwi or is it the banana? Ok, so not every moment of my solitude was ultra-spiritual.

So I left you last time with me feeling like God had taken His own vow of silence in my life. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to connect with Him. I wanted so much to hear from Him, but I think I had about given in to the fear that He wasn’t going to show up for me. And then we went to dinner.

As we were standing outside of the dining area waiting for everyone to gather, the Lord suddenly broke His silence to me in a very strange, but captivating way. I’ve struggled with an eating disorder in the past, and from time to time unhealthy thought patterns creep back into my life and have to be chased away with prayer and His Word. Some of these thoughts had been pestering me the days leading up to the retreat, and God chose to use them and the practices of an old, old struggle to bring new light to my eyes.

Out of nowhere, He reminded me that some people who struggle with anorexia love to cook meals for other people that they would never, in a million years, eat for themselves. Then He very gently whispered to my heart, That’s what you’re doing in your ministry, Sam. You’re setting the table for others with all these good, deep spiritual truths, but you won’t allow yourself to eat from them!

Wow. It was like a punch in the gut to realize the truth He had just spoken into my heart. In my speaking, writing, teaching – even in my relationships – I have been serving others healthy, delicious truths from the Lord, but I wasn’t taking in any of them for myself. Why? Someone once told me “Never trust a skinny chef”, and now I realized I am that skinny chef. Why can’t I digest what I’m feeding to others?

By now it was time to walk in the door and eat. As I stood in line and scooped peas and mashed potatoes onto my plate, I heard Him say to me: Eat, knowing that it’s good for you, and knowing that if you don’t eat you will surely die.

I don’t know if anyone has ever experienced Communion with meatloaf and ice water, but I tell you I did that night. I cried as I ate, not because of the physical food but because of the spiritual truth it represented to clean my plate and savor each bite in the process. But still the question remained: why? That too would be answered with a picture from a familiar struggle.