Accepting the Loss of the Plenteous Table

No more is the 30-foot-long table of homemade dishes from turkey and dressing to casseroles to deviled eggs. Gone will be waiting to eat because of that one cousin, one of the oldest, who would roll in consistently thirty minutes late. Also missing this year will be the catching up, the reaching for the name of someone you see one time a year among the sixty to seventy people who gather. There will also be no subtle or not-so-subtle watching to see whose dressing was eaten first.

Personally, I will miss the dessert table the most.

This year on Thanksgiving, we will miss the more explicit ritual of holding hands in a circle in that social hall at Bluewater Baptist Church. Normally, we would share our sadness at those who left us over the year. We would share our joy at the new children who have arrived. And before we finally ate, my mother, the eldest of them, would look to me to lift all of it in thanks to God.

But we won’t be there this year.

This is the year that the old church building and the attached social hall were torn down in order to “make the path straight.” Now, this path was not the “way of the Lord,” Instead, they were following the will of the state of Georgia. The church building was in the way of the expansion of Highway 441, a route that stretches from Miami, Florida, all the way to Rocky Top, Tennessee. So to clear the way, in more biblical language, “not one [brick] was left upon another.”

Brick by brick, the blessed Bluewater Baptist was broken apart and hauled away. It was a place that felt solid to me, like it would always be there. My grandparents and other relatives are buried across the road. My own children played on the adjacent playground on many Thanksgiving days. In the social hall, as we waited on cousin Wilma, I would teach them to slide closer and closer to the dessert table, aiding and abetting them in “stealing” a cookie. They were hungry (I was, too).

Although I know change is a part of life, some changes are not chosen. They feel forced upon us. These changes are challenging to accept and adjust to. We feel angry and sad at the contrast between what was and what now is. We worry about what will be.

During this time of pandemic, God’s Word has spoken to me in God’s words to the children of Israel in exile. It was a time when the people were in a strange and foreign land. It was also a time of dislocation and loss, of anger and grief.

Anger is an emotion with which I don’t like to identify but can recognize under the cover of sadness. As in Psalm 137, my sadness will cry, “How can we sing the song of the Lord here and now?” My anger shouts, “This will never be the same! And how can we have Thanksgiving during a time such as this?”

I long for the plenteous table. I crave the stability of ritual, of a place and time I thought would always be there. I miss the gathering of family.

In my field of work, we often talk about how depression is a looking back, allowing ourselves to travel back in time in a way. We relive mistakes and trouble, feeling again as if we are there. But we can just as easily return to the past and ask “why?” and “how long?” We want to go back to that place we remember, even if it is no more.

In our frustration with this present time, our temptation is to reach back in order to try to make something happen. Yet that place is gone; some of the people who were there may be gone, too.

Out of that time of exile, of our own feelings of exile, I am reminded of God’s Word in Isaiah 43:1-4. Isaiah brings us images of moving through water and fire. The promise of God is not one through which we can avoid the deep waters; the promise is that those waters will not overwhelm us. We will still feel the heat of the flames, but we will not be consumed by the fire.

What we hear is not a God who will prevent difficulty but who assures us of the Spirit’s presence with us. Jesus’s prayer to “Let this cup pass from me” in the garden of Gethsemane is one in which he acknowledges what he faces. Then, in “Let your will be done,” we see the path of acceptance.

We don’t have to like what is happening around us, but we do have to face it.

Acceptance does not mean “giving in” or “giving up” just as the death of Jesus was not a “giving up.” The death of Jesus was an act of participation in the pain of the world and, ultimately, a redemption and healing of that hurt and brokenness.

We, too, must accept the challenges before us. There is so much change and loss. The past has passed. We must acknowledge that what was is gone, whether it is the fracturing and isolation among those of us who are living or the loss of those who have died.

Then, we must return to this present with an eye to observe the gifts that are here for us. We remember the words of Jesus: “I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20).

The red brick building of Bluewater Baptist held my extended family for a time, yet that building and social hall and the long table of food are gone. Cousin Wilma and Aunt Virginia are gone, too.

This year, in this present, there will be a much smaller gathering: our immediate family and three grandparents. There will be no dessert table, although I am hopeful my daughter will be able to make Nannie’s sour cream pound cake. We may try our hand at Aunt Beulah’s dressing. Being a bread baker, I will make yeast rolls.

And maybe, my near-adult children and I will each sneak a cookie while we are waiting for the main course to be ready. We will gather around the small table in our home, which can comfortably seat six, not sixty. We will hold hands and give thanks for the present, accepting what is different, acknowledging what and who has been lost, and then sharing the broken bread together.

Jason Hobbs is a clinical social worker in private practice who spends most of his time working with children, adolescents, and adults. Along with his wife, he is coauthor of When Anxiety Strikes: Help and Hope for Managing Your Storm (Kregel). The rest of the time, he is either running or making sourdough bread.

Photograph © Wendy Wei, used with permission