Waxing Poetic

My husband and I were married for four years before we had our first child. We were also graduate students at Yale, living within walking distance of several amazing Italian delis in New Haven. Romeo and Gioseppe's was our favorite. We'd stop by on the way home from class, pick up some fresh basil, mozarella, and Roma tomatoes, and spend the afternoon making home made basil pasta.

We had a tiny kitchen in our tiny apartment, which was really the second floor of a tiny house. Pasta would literally be hanging from the rafters, drying, while we poured over our Greek, Hebrew, and theology studies.

Dinner was often by candlelight. I hold on to these precious candlesticks as a testament to how we lingered at the table in those early years, savoring not only the food but each other's company. I know I will never try to remove all that beautiful wax, as multi-colored as those early conversations.

Almost eleven years and four children later, we no longer linger at the dinner table, and our conversations are not usually about deep theological truths (at least not while simultaneously spoon feeding a baby and attempting to teach the older children some basic table manners). We haven't made home made pasta since the first child was born.

And yet God's grace is more palpable than ever, as we sit around our growing table. We rarely light candles anymore, but the Light of the World continues to reveal himself to us in simple - yet profound - ways.