In My Family, Food is a Love Language
By Sarah McDonald
Anyone who thinks summer is for relaxing has never been to my house. With six children, summer camps, summer care and summer activities keep the schedule as busy, if not busier, than during the school year.
With multiple nightly baseball games for consecutive nights (which I would not trade for the whole world), we inevitably resort to dinners on the go more often.
Just recently, though, I have had a few really successful kitchen moments. My oldest son told me I had made him the best sandwich ever, and we did a Taco Tuesday rushing to watch my third son’s All-Star team play to victory.
My children and my husband were so incredibly grateful and excited that it got me thinking that food is definitely a “love language” in my family. Sharing our meals and preparing good food for one another are some special ways we express our mutual love.
We talk enthusiastically over menus for special occasions (birthday meals are of incredible importance) and even Sunday dinners. My husband and I strive to do our best in the kitchen to make each flavor come together to make “perfect plates,” and love it when the kids join us in the kitchen.
If food is a love language in my family – my domestic church – then how much more amazing is it to think about food as God’s love language, too? He has given us the perfect food in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ.
Coming to the eucharistic table of the Lord should be done weekly with the same zeal as coming together with family for Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthday celebrations. For, in this common bread and wine transformed into Christ’s body, blood soul and divinity, God reveals his unending love for each one of us.
Just as we, as parents, feed our children to see that they grow strong and healthy, God feeds us to grow in faith and love for him and his creation.
