A good friend had a baby recently and their family was blown away by the generosity of our church in bringing them lots of food. (Our church is only about 100 strong. Really small church.) Not only were they given tons of big meals, but the church members only stayed for a 10 minute visit-- this after most of them drove at least 45 minutes to get to them. My friend's husband confided to us: Our church family was so much more generous than our actual family. Our families showed up with little bitty servings that wouldn't even feed our family, expected us to feed them as well, and then stayed until my wife was completely worn out.
I've never experienced this myself (people bringing food and then staying to eat it with you), but I can't imagine it would have been easy to be gracious about it in her postpartum state.
When Julia was born, we received dinners for almost 3 weeks from church family. And almost everybody brought brownies with dinner. I was on the "brownie a day" diet and ended up heavier 2 months after Julia was born than I weighed 2 hours after she was born. The good news is: I didn't have any brownie cravings for quite some time after that. The bad news is: It took me a good long while to remember that dinner doesn't have to be followed by dessert.
The fun thing about having a big family is that people tend to bring way too much food (except in the case of my friend's parents, I guess!) Being the frugal nut that I am, I love leftovers.
When a friend of mine,who has one child, came over for dinner the first time, she brought 4 half gallons of ice cream!! We finished one of them.
Another friend brought a full sheet cake for dessert when we invited them over. I try not to laugh out loud. Smaller families just have no idea how much it takes to feed us & lucky for us, they always err on the side of too much. "Better to have too much than not enough," Kyle tells me while he prepares 10 gallons of potato salad for the church picnic.
2 comments:
I can totally relate to your friend! Hmmm...It is amazing the way the Body of Christ becomes the Lord's hands and feet for us in our times of need...often times more generously than our family of origin. God is so good to give us sisters and brothers to come along side us and comfort/care for us. Praise our Heavenly Father for this rich blessing!
That was just how our church was when we had Canaan. We had leftovers for lunch every day and then when the 3 weeks was over, we were still eating leftovers for lunch and dinner. And, all of them drove between 30 and 45 minutes. Unlike your friend, I would have loved for them to stay and eat with us but none of them would. ;)
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