Wordlessness: On Bread

I love my blog. I really do. I feel like it's a safe space for me to simply reflect, and recount, and remember, and I'm so blessed to have a group of people that enjoy reading along with me as I work through the moments of my life. As one such reader, you might notice that I haven't been posting very much lately; I'm not exposing a lot of my heart on here (my last post was almost a month ago, and a sewing tutorial. I mean c'mon, Sam, get it together, am I right?).

Right now I'm experiencing a Season of Wordlessness. Sometimes it makes me sad, to see very little come from my writing creatively, but in general I feel incredibly creative in a thousand other ways and I'm allowing myself to pursue those instead.

My Wordlessness is not a reflection of a closed-off heart. I'm still expressing my heart, my emotions and my experiences. But in a new way: I'm baking bread.

A lot of bread.

Seriously. In the last three months, I have become a bread-making addict. I'm experiencing a full bread-related transformation. As someone who tinkered with baking only a year ago, the fact that I have a full-on love obsession with bread is almost hard to believe, but here it is, and here I am. My home smells like proofing yeast and my community is becoming established around rising loaves of crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, slather-it-in-butter, bread.

My obsession has led me to creating all kinds of bread. Everything is new to me; I'm no expert, and I'm learning along the way, absorbing every. single. piece of information or ideas or knowledge or wisdom that anybody has to offer about anything bread-related. Because, you know, there are a lot of incredible bread bakers out there; moms who bake bread as a part of their weekly routine for their family, grandmothers who settle for nothing less than their 1960's cookbook recipe, bloggers who are even more obsessed than I am, and the random odd comment you hear every now and again with a slight tip you never heard in your life that you bank in your brain for who-knows-when and then use it! Because of that. Because making bread is an art, and there are many, many artists more skilled than I. And because I want to know them.

I always tell my husband that I love to see people enraptured in what they're doing. I love seeing people in love with anything. It's fun to watch, really. Have you viewed a painter, paint? Completely enthralled in their strokes? Have you ever seen my husband taking photos of beer? Or a pastor so excited about their sermon they just can't stop themselves from jumping up and down in joy as they speak to you? A few months ago, Jessi Connoly posted on her Instagram a photo of her daughter copying her mother's writing dance - the one where she flails her hands in the air and is really excited about getting her words on the screen, to speak to us, as God speaks through her. It's that. If you really can't think of the reference I'm making, turn your television on to the Food Network right now, and catch a cook in action. It looks like they're dancing, right? It's a dance, between that person, and the thing they love to do, and as Emily Freeman keeps repeating in A Million Little Ways, that person becomes FULLY ALIVE.

So here I am, with bread. Fully alive. And yet, wordless. Wordless with a new set of words. Did you know that ciabatta literally means 'slipper'? So the ciabatta bun I make for you at my home, or the one you enjoy at the local coffee shop, that should remind you of a cozy slipper? That's what I want you to feel when you eat my bread! That's what I want to feel when I make it for you. I'm crafting a pair of cozy slippers, for you to enjoy. Or, did you know that if you clap your water-covered hands over a loaf about to slide in to bake, you'll result in a crispier edge? And that crispy edge will make the soft interior ever the more beautiful to the tongue? Or that if you fill a metal bowl filled with ice and allow it to steam in the oven, you'll soon be indulging in the most moist, beautiful, golden bread you can dream? And I want to dance that for you! I want to dance that for my family; dance that bread to live, and myself to life, and pull it out of the oven and breathe a sigh of relief that the bread... it rose. It worked. It crackled.

Lately, I'm wordless. And yet I'm dancing. I am finding ways to become fully alive, in new ways. Writing makes me feel fully expressed. Bread makes me feel fully alive.

So if I continue to remain Wordless, for now, for this season, assume that I'm baking a loaf of bread.