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Bread and Life

Believe • May 13, 2023

What are some of your favorite childhood memories? What made them your favorite? I have come to realize that many of my favorite memories as a child are connected to food. I think the good memories came from the gathering of people, the events being celebrated, and the happy memories that tied it all together.

One of these memories happened every week. My mom would get out the wheat grinder and start to grind wheat to begin the process of making bread. As a child I marveled at my mom’s ability to know just how much wheat to grind, the ingredients that were always stocked, and her willingness to spend the time making it for our family.

Truth be told, we hated how loud the wheat grinder was, and we would usually flee to another room to get away from the noise. When the wheat was finished being ground, we would come back to watch the magic start to happen. She would add the right amount and temperature of water, yeast, oil, wheat flour, salt, honey, and a few other ingredients. I wasn’t sure what they were but I knew they were part of making delicious bread. I loved watching her form the loaves, put them in the pans, and see them rise.

Next came the best part of making bread, the smell of freshly baked bread and eating it! We would eagerly wait for my mom to get the bread out of the oven, anticipating the taste of hot, fresh bread with butter and honey!

Now as an adult and managing my own home, I started baking bread to feed my family as it was more economical and allowed me to make it with dietary restrictions that my family had. There is an art to baking bread, just like fixing a car, caring for someone who is sick, etc.

There are special ingredients you don’t see listed that make the bread taste better, or that can make a car run smoother, medical care more personal, etc. These ingredients are time and love.

Baking bread is a labor of love and it takes quite a bit of time. When we really think about things in life that are of value, they do take time to form, curate, and share with others. Understanding how the ingredients interact with each other helped me understand how to improve the quality of my bread so that the time spent was of value and would bring about the desired results. This too is true in life.

What do you value in life? Does the way you spend your time reflect this? Are the ingredients of life interacting or reacting? For me, there have been times where my time spent on projects or with people had a great impact and the results reflected that, and other times where I came up short. This is when I found I needed to adjust my “recipe”.

One particular day, in the mess of life, I was careless in my bread making and the yeast did not rise. I was short on time and really didn’t have time to start over. If I didn’t get the bread started now, it would be waiting to be made at 11:00 at night. I found myself rationalizing that the yeast not rising wasn’t really a problem. Well, I’m sure most of you know that yeast rising is critical, unless you want to eat a loaf of bread that is like a brick. I thought through this and gratefully I realized that if I proceeded, I would not have bread to feed my family and would have wasted ingredients, and breadmaking was no longer an economical endeavor. Later that night I took the time and care to make bread again, paying attention to the details that were critical for success.

The things we value should be handled with care and attention. What legacy do you want to leave for generations to come? The things in life that matter most have a way of feeding our heart, mind, and soul. The things we give our time and attention will reflect in what we are surrounded with. If what you are surrounded with doesn’t resonate with what you intended, hoped for, or want, adjust your recipe. Sometimes it is merely a tweak, other times you find throwing out the things you thought were good and trading them for things that are best is what will bring back the purpose and value and surround you with what matters most.

What is missing or needs adjusting in your life? At Believe, we recognize the importance that comes from interacting and working together. We would love to have you join us and discover what we can create together to add value and make the world a better place.