Some of my greatest memories involve my favorite food – my Grandmother’s biscuits and gravy. It is the kind made with Jiffy Mix, Bob Evans sausage, milk, flour, oil, spices, and lots of love. It is the kind that I love to see on a big table, spread out for lots of people. It’s the kind that I made for my Macedonian friends a few weeks ago.
Yesterday’s experience with my favorite meal was a little bit different.
Let me set the scene.
– 8 citizens of the United States.
– 4 Macedonian men.
– Everyone gathered in the back of the sanctuary, drinking coffee and laughing about everything.
– Two tables pushed together with mismatched bowls, pots, pans, spoons, and forks set to use for the meal.
– Food with homemade sausage, weird milk, and weird spices (due to the lack of familiar foods here in Macedonia.)
– Biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, and fried GRANNY SMITH apples. (I never ever thought I would find granny smith apples here. Praise Him.)
I made this meal and created this time, with the help of my awesome team, so that the guys could experience a home-cooked American meal. Also, my parents carried a box of Jiffy Mix around the world to give to me last month, and I didn’t want to carry it to Africa. I was glad to share one of my favorite things with some of my new friends here.
During the meal, everyone was talking and saying how good it was to have this food. Whether it was new to them or not, it was appreciated by all… but one of the guys was more appreciative than normal.
One of the Macedonian men, Toshe, hadn’t been the most talkative. He hadn’t been the most social with us. He hadn’t really seemed to want to interact with us. He’s much more comfortable speaking Macedonian with the guys, and I respect that completely. It’s hard to go up to people that are foreigners and speak a second language, especially when you’re not too confident in your ability to speak it well. After this meal though, he came to me, thanked me multiple times, and started to tell a little of his story.
We stood in the kitchen, in the middle of the clean-up process, talking. He thanked me again for the food, and I told him that I was glad he came. He told me that he has struggled with being addicted to drugs for quite some time, much like other people in Štip. Toshe has been to rehab in the capital city and has tried other things to quit for good. He has relapsed a few times, and has been using again recently. He told me that he hadn’t eaten in 4 days because of the lack of appetite associated with the drugs. It was a blessing that he had the appetite and wanted to try American food. He LOVED it, and it was something that he needed.
He continued to tell me some of his past experiences. He had a girlfriend before, and she didn’t use when they started dating. As they grew closer, she started taking small doses of the drugs he had. That caused him to have to make a choice. He knew that drugs were not good for him. He knew that they wouldn’t be good for her, either.
[Did he want her to start down the road he was on,
or did he want to protect her from that life?]
If he kept dating her, she would progress into addiction. That’s an amazingly difficult decision.
In the end, he decided that he loved her enough to leave her. He loved her enough to save her from the pain and struggle that the addiction brings. I can’t empathize with that, but I can certainly see how admirable that decision was. He had to lose some stability in his life to make sure that she was safe and taken care of. That is love. That is a picture of the love that God has for us.
It also brought him to tears.
As this man was having his emotional response to the things that have happened, I was thinking about the joy that he had just brought to me. It seems bad when I say that I was happy when he was sad, but just hear me out…
This man, who I would appear to have nothing in common with, came to the church for a reason. He came to have fellowship and see his friends. I had no idea that he would even show up. I had no idea that he would want to eat biscuits and gravy with us, but it brought me so much joy to see him sitting with us. I was surprised to find out that my selfish act of cooking my favorite meal, God would bring him to a place of vulnerability and openness with me.
It’s amazing how God uses the little things to make connections. If my parents wouldn’t have brought me Jiffy Mix and the guys wouldn’t have made us musaka the week before week, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to make biscuits and gravy. But, it turns out that my favorite meal was exactly what Toshe needed, at the exact time he needed it. That is God at work.
Check out the continuation of this story… it’s coming soon!
