“Hangry” is a real thing.
Allow me to set the scene. Ten year old me is sitting mournfully at the end of my parents big dining room table, glaring at the lacy table cloth covering glossy finish. It’s 1:00 in the afternoon. Before me is a bowl of cereal I had poured for myself, and next to me were my parents, looking concerned, waiting for me to finish so they could get me to children’s choir practice.
Why am I glaring at my cereal? Well…ok, stay with me.
Our church was about to make big decisions regarding our new building, and had called for a congregation-wide fast. Families could choose to participate, and also to fast how they saw fit in regard to what was healthy for them—skipping certain meals, drinking juice or broth for a day, choosing a meal or day that consisted of more “simple” foods, choosing something ELSE to fast from such as television or the up and coming World Wide Web, etc. etc. It was along the same parameters of what a person might consider for Lent and one of the few times we practiced specific liturgy. Our family chose a bland food for one meal on Sundays. I have opinions now on children and fasting of any kind, but before you accuse my parents of child abuse, know this—I jumped into this with both feet and the object permanence I usually have when it comes to sweets. I made a promise that was promptly forgotten when my parents tried to hold me to it, as ten year olds are wont to do.
So there I sat. Cereal. Glaring. How dare they make me eat cereal like I said I was going to do, when I so clearly wanted something different.
Hangry.
It’s a memory I look back on with fond embarrassment. Perceived suffering can be so exacerbated by the simple act of being 10.
I also think of my grandmother.
Affectionately dubbed “Mawmaw”, she came from a long legacy of matriarchs who loved their families fiercely and quietly. She was among the women in my life who remained a constant, providing stability and safety nets that children so often need. When at her house, she never failed to pray over us before kissing us goodnight. She made sure we had hot breakfasts, taught us solitaire, gave out endless snacks, laughed at our jokes, stole single jelly beans from our stash, handed out birthday spankings, clapped when we got As on our report cards, and absolutely beat the pants off us at Super Mario. In a past life she quit her job to care for her mother in law full time, and she was always showing up for her family even after arthritis claimed her joints.
She was also a child of The Great Depression, and that’s important.
She never revealed too much. We know that her mother championed the family’s survival by constantly working her garden, raising a single cow for meat, canning, baking, making soap, cooking things to preserve, and all the general rolling up of sleeves and tying of apron strings. They were not exempt from poverty, or the ramifications of a country that collapsed. Mawmaw knew the frays of tattered dresses, felt the tightness of hand me downs, remembered the warmth of shared beds and winced at the pinches of worn down shoes—when you could afford them, that is. If there was sugar it was meant for applesauce, not coffee, and only if there was enough to last. In other words, Mawmaw knew what it was to actually be hungry. She never forgot.
The older I get, the more I understand some of her issues with food alongside my own. Had she been there the day I sat glaring at my cereal, I don’t think she would have scolded me. Mawmaw was never the “eat your vegetables because there are starving children elsewhere” type. But I have to wonder at her perspective. I curse the existence of pantyhose, avoid group projects at all costs, and never knew a day without store bought flour. She remembers giving them up when nylon was rationed, an entire city turning their lights out to avoid detection,and rejoicing when her family was finally able to afford a freezer.
We have so much to glean from the women we love who learned to make do.
Here’s the thing...the inevitable place where we pivot. American Evangelicals are really good at convincing each other they are the object of persecution and I’m kind of over it.
I’ve spent...just… an alarming portion of my life being certain that a shooter was going to come into my school one day and ask if I was a Christian. I remember nights being terrified all my friends were going to get raptured and I’d have to take on a prophetic monster all by myself. I braced myself to be raucously mocked for my faith and was always on the ready to shout “NO” if someone offered me drugs*.
It was icky, to say the least. Cringe-y to those with eyes for the obvious. I still remember the day when I found that Cassie Bernall’s story of western sainthood had been misunderstood at its best and vastly exaggerated at its worst. One of my favorite classes was the one where I found out exactly how complicated of a man Martin Luther was. The slow unraveling of a conditioned martyrdom complex gave me a necessary clarity. In the twist of things it’s an unbinding, not a binding, that I hold close when the world is heavy.
I’m glad to be out of that space. But the echos are loud and lingering. I have to wonder what the underground churches** who are seeing actual suffering have to say when we cry oppression for ourselves...genuinely, and sans propaganda.
Claiming victimhood is a handy way to distract ourselves from the way of Jesus. It's easy to think we are doing God’s work by “protecting the constitution” and staving off the fear of snowball effects, but here’s the hard truth: people are wondering out loud why so-called gospel people are willing to risk the lives of their congregations on principle alone. And they are right.
Throw all the stats and likelihoods you want at me. People are dead. People are dying. People are losing jobs, and going hungry, and shriveling from isolation. Meanwhile, John MacArthur is packing his sanctuary and ignoring regulations.
Instead of bending to the bowl, wringing out the water and gently taking feet, we are saying “who is my neighbor?” and “what about me?” “These are all just fear tactics” and “you don’t understand, this is harder than I expected.”
That’s what a martyr complex does. It creates an idol out of perceived suffering. It keeps a sharp eye for the end of worlds, putting a literal focus on a figuratively written book. It praises leadership who “tells it like it is” and then promptly get butthurt when that doctor cited turns out to be a genuinely discredited source***. It slaps labels of “sheeple” when that’s a really strange insult to use given...the...entire New Testament. I’m genuinely disappointed by the amount of people I've had to remind that the plexiglass thing at the grocery store isn’t there to protect you, it’s to protect the cashier. I’m not here for any of it when my immunocompromised friends are afraid to go outside.
Real, personal, tangible people have been permanently affected by a disease and conservative Christians are using words like “just” and “only.”
No longer will I bow to the altar of confirmation bias and defensive rhetoric, taking misplaced pride in knowing more than everyone else and using my Jesus as an excuse.
These are hard days, and I’m not here to tell anyone that it isn’t or that they should just be grateful. But I do have to wonder if we’re all just glaring at our dining room tables, ignoring our moms and reluctantly eating cereal.
Cereal, you know?
Don’t tell me to wake up. I woke up a long time ago. As a result, I’m here—rolling up sleeves, tying apron strings, sinking to the floor with a bowl and a towel...hoping to live up to a legacy. On the days when I want to come back to the cereal bowl, I think of Mawmaw. Her life. Her faith. Her survival.
And then I put the spoon down and walk away.
Footnotes:
*It was brief and anticlimactic, as someone politely offered to share their hand rolled cigarette and shrugged when I said no thank you.
**and mosques, and synagogues, and temples, by the way.
***First rule of siblings: “If thou cannot taketh it then thou shalt not dish it out.”
