Longing For Jesus Like a Sourdough Yeast Roll

I have a problem. Okay, okay, so maybe I've got a couple. But for this particular blogging foray, I'm sharing one - one major one - which I find myself to be incredibly aware of at the moment.

You see, I'm a stress-eater. No, God did not, unfortunately, decide to gift me with the inability to eat when the going gets tough like some of you out there. You lucky ducks become like birds when things are difficult and manage to shed pounds without meaning to. The rest of us are stuck with this silly little habit that rides the waves of our anxieties, the pressures of life, and our emotions until we're left wondering why our pants are snug and we can't find the energy to do anything. Tribole and Resch, in their incredibly fascinating book Intuitive Eating, include the Emotional Unconscious Eater in their list of eating personalities and describe him or her as such:

...uses food to cope with emotions, especially uncomfortable emotions such as stress, anger, and loneliness. While Emotional Eaters view their eating as the problem, it's often a symptom of a deeper issue. Eating behaviors of the Emotional Eater can range form grabbing a candy bar in stressful times to chronic compulsive binges of vast quantities of food. (13)

I've been this way for as long as I can remember, without even knowing it for most of my life. It's like I become a different person - someone led largely by my appetites for everything that is not so nutritional and yet, oh so tantalizing. Dairy, bread, potato, and fatty products become my allies and anything remotely good for me just seems so unappealing. It's just how it's been.

I look back on this week, even this day, as evidence of the fact. Evidence of the fact that my stomach and my mind call back and forth all day long these questions to each other in a secret conversation: What will make me feel better? What will make me satisfied? What will give me comfort? And then I'm somehow the "victim", having eaten my way through a snack-sized bag of Doritos and two Oreos I wasn't even hungry for.

Take for instance, today. Want to know what I've been thinking about since I woke up this morning? No, not about how to cure AIDS, how to love the people around me, or how to do a better job. But instead, I've been thinking about sourdough yeast rolls. The most delicious bread product in the world, brought home as leftovers from our dinner last night with Aunt Joan at Barbara's Home Cooking. Even the whole drive home from work this afternoon, I kept thinking about what a delicious treat even just one would be, spread only lightly with a pat of butter and warmed in the microwave.

And then it struck me.

Whether it was the Intuitive Eater that has been slowly coming out from hiding within me or simply a divine prompting (I think, for me, those two truly go hand in hand), I realized that all of this is not so much a downfall as it is a condition that, if I look at it the right way, reminds me of the claims that Jesus made to His disciples by the shore of the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum:

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)

And here He's talking about emotional hunger, not physical, and that's where I so often find myself. Filling my face, my mouth, my stomach with food that won't make me feel any less lonely, angry, stressed out, etc. It's because I forget that hard times are not meant to be fed by my appetite for food, but instead, for God. Time spent in silence and reflection, prayer and reading, and simply being present with the Lord (as He has been incredibly present with me). What my soul cries out for will never be satisfied by an afternoon snack of a sourdough yeast roll, and as much as my stomach would like to argue that point, I know it's true.

So okay, I won't ever give up on the idea of comfort food. I think, like Tribole and Resch, that "it's normal to have a repertoire of comfort foods" and that "eating [them] occasionally can be part of a healthy relationship with food, if you do it while staying in touch with your satiety levels and without guilt" (149). It's only when it becomes the "first and only thing that comes to mind to take care of you" when you're feeling bad that it becomes an issue.

Because not even the most delicious sourdough yeast roll in the world (or from Barbara's) can fill me like Jesus. And that's a fact.