Last week I found myself making Knoefle soup,a type of creamy chicken soup with little pillows of chewy noodle-like dough. It was a comfort food from my childhood on a farm in North Dakota. I was a grandchild of first generation of German American immigrants who had spent the better part of the 19th-century farming the Odessa region of what is now Ukraine.
Our comfort foods reflected my family’s farming background and moves. We loved things which could be referred to as peasant foods – foods that started with common farm foods like flour, eggs, lard, pork, chicken, beef, and dairy products. We made nearly a dozen different “dough dishes” that all started with flour. There were noodles, knoepfle, breads, savory strudel, and dumplings of all sizes.
My grandmother was five years old when they immigrated. She learned from her mother and her mother’s mother. I know these foods are not considered healthy foods. I understand the need for balance in nutrition, exercise, rest, and sleep. Yet my dairy and beef farming grandmother lived to be 96. Those women did physically exhausting work. They helped to break the prairie for farming, hitched the horses in teams, gardened and canned, did their laundry in wash tubs, milked the cows by hand and raised large families. They worked hard and did hard things.
I don’t do physically hard labor. But sometimes it is mentally and spiritually challenging.
In those times, those foods still call to me. I have discovered over the years that when I am stressed or when I need to do uncomfortable things, I also need to create. I create with food or music, sewing, gardening, or whatever medium is at hand. It gives my hands something to do when my mind is working out something else. This is how I get myself to a place where I can do hard things.
I’m a pastor. The hard things for me are:
- finding difficult words in hard situations, sometimes speaking a hard and uncomfortable truth when others are in denial.
- sit at the bedside of someone who is sick or near death – to be a comfort to them, or their family, or just to make sure they are not alone.
- keeping my chin up and my voice from cracking while presiding at a funeral.
- being a presence of hope and comfort, in a world where fear and apathy seem to be the loudest voices amid the din.
Everyone has hard stuff to do. For many people, sometimes, just checking in for the day and being the grown-up is pretty uncomfortable. For some, pain, illness, or emotional baggage makes the simple act of getting out of bed difficult.
I think, in these Covid-impacted times, finding motivation can be extra tough for people. But then, I look at those who are doing hard things on a regular basis. I want to lift up a few.
- First Responders, police, construction workers, teachers, medical personnel, people who are on their feet all day every day, anyone in the service industry – you are my every day heroes. Take some time to do something that brings you comfort.
- Caitlin Clark - This is the end of Women’s History Month. Caitlin Clark has, rightly, been in the news a lot. If you don’t know, she’s the Iowa college basketball player that is shattering basketball records set by both men and women. She is an amazing young woman. She joins other remarkable young women like
- Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani, the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, for her activism in educating girls and women. She was targeted for assassination by the Taliban in 2012. Even a bullet wound would not stop her.
- Greta Thunberg who had dozens of awards from all over the globe, for her work in climate activism – all before graduating high school. Her tenacity is admirable.
Each of these young women have had the determination to do hard things, each in their respective areas of passion. I have to wonder, what it takes for them to tap into that kind of courageous energy?
Laurel Thatcher’s quote – “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History” comes to mind. Caitlyn played on a boys’ team in elementary school because there wasn’t a girls’ team in her community. Malala and Greta defied cultural norms and rules to do the right thing.
The more decades that pass, for me, the more I appreciate the words and work of Eleanor Roosevelt:
“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.”
Much as we like comfort, it was never meant to be a permanent state (or a steady diet). Comfort is a pause, a respite, to regain our footing to help us do hard things, courageous things, difficult things. Life is not a spectator sport. What are you passionate about and what are you going to do about it? What brings you the comfort you need, to ground yourself, to go out to be your best and most wonderful self?
Rev. Dr. Pamela Marolla is pastor at Galesburg First Lutheran Church and Assistant to the Bishop for the Northern Illinois Synod, ELCA. Locally, she goes by Pastor Pam. In her spare time, she enjoys the challenge of playing French horn with the Knox Galesburg Symphony Orchestra.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Western Illinois University, Tri States Public Radio, or the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.