Dear friend,

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Sometimes the thought of something good to eat has felt like a little light at the end of a difficult day for me. I could be stressed or lonely, disappointed about something, worried about what was coming next, or simply tired of carrying everything that particular week had required of me, and there was something comforting about knowing I had one good thing waiting. I could sit down, turn something on, eat something I enjoyed, and for a little while the day didn't require quite so much from me. Looking back, I can see that sometimes I wasn't anticipating the food nearly as much as I was anticipating the relief surrounding it. I wanted the moment when I could finally stop.
I didn't always understand it that way. I thought it was mostly a discipline problem, which meant my response was usually to create another rule. I would decide what I shouldn't eat, when I shouldn't eat it, or what I was going to do differently the next time. Then, if I found myself reaching for food again when I knew I wasn't physically hungry, I had even more evidence to use against myself. I had made the rule, and I had broken it. What I rarely stopped to consider was that perhaps the food wasn't the whole story. I was so busy trying to correct the behavior that I wasn't paying much attention to the woman who was doing it or what she might have been trying to soothe.
That has become one of the gentler changes in the way I care for myself now. Instead of immediately asking whether I should be eating something, I am learning to ask what I am really asking the food to do for me. Sometimes the answer is simply that I am hungry or that something sounds good, and I think that matters too. I don't want to create a life in which every desire for food has to be examined for some hidden emotional meaning. Food is one of the pleasures God has given us. It belongs at celebrations and around family tables. It can be part of hospitality, tradition, connection, and an ordinary Tuesday night when something delicious just sounds wonderful. I want to be able to enjoy those things without turning them into another test of whether I am doing life correctly.
But there are other times when I know I am looking for something more. I may be asking food to give me comfort because I am lonely, to distract me because I am afraid, or to give me something to look forward to because the week has felt like one obligation after another. There have been times when food became an event because I needed an event. It gave me something pleasant to anticipate when I wasn't finding much pleasure anywhere else. When I see that now, I have much more compassion for why those patterns became so familiar. Food was accessible and predictable, and it worked, at least temporarily. If something has made you feel better many times before, of course your mind remembers it when you want to feel better again.
The difficulty is that food can comfort me without necessarily caring for whatever is underneath my need for comfort. It can make loneliness quieter for an evening, but it cannot give me connection. It can distract me from fear, but it cannot make the uncertainty disappear. It can give me something enjoyable at the end of an exhausting week, but it cannot give my body the rest I have been denying it. None of that makes the comfort food provides false or bad. It simply means that sometimes I have been asking it to carry more than it was ever capable of carrying.
I think that distinction matters because I spent enough years believing the answer was to take things away from myself. Now I find myself wondering whether sometimes I need to add something instead. If dinner or a snack is consistently the only enjoyable part of my day, perhaps I don't only need a better eating plan. Maybe I need a life with more goodness in it. I may need to call someone I love, get outside, read something simply because I enjoy it, plan something with my husband, laugh, rest before I am completely depleted, or make room for something that has no productive purpose at all. I may need quiet time with God that isn't squeezed into the leftover minutes of the day. I don't want food to be the only place in my life where I know how to find comfort, pleasure, anticipation, or relief.
This is one reason Jesus' invitation in Matthew 11:28 means so much to me: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” There is something deeply tender to me about the fact that He begins with come. He doesn't tell the weary person to stop being weary before approaching Him. He doesn't require us to have already figured out what to do with the burden. We can come carrying it. I can tell God that I am lonely instead of immediately trying to make loneliness disappear. I can tell Him that I am scared, disappointed, angry, exhausted, or overwhelmed. Prayer does not always change those feelings immediately, and I don't think faith requires me to pretend that it does. But it gives me somewhere to be honest about what I am carrying instead of spending all of my energy trying not to feel it.
I am still learning this, and I don't always stop and ask the deeper question. Sometimes I eat because I am hungry. Sometimes I eat because something tastes wonderful. Sometimes I probably do eat because I have had a hard day and I want something comforting, and I don't think every one of those moments needs to become a personal-development exercise. What I want is enough awareness to recognize when food has quietly become responsible for needs that deserve care in other ways too. I want more than one place in my life where I can find comfort. I want relationships, rest, prayer, laughter, movement, beauty, quiet, and things I genuinely look forward to. I want a life that contains enough goodness that food can simply be one good thing within it rather than having to be the thing that makes everything else bearable.
Maybe that is something you can gently notice in your own life this week. The next time you find yourself really wanting something to eat, especially at the end of a difficult day, you don't have to interrogate yourself or decide whether your reason is acceptable. You might simply wonder, What am I asking food to do for me right now? There is no wrong answer. Maybe you are hungry. Maybe you want the pleasure of something delicious. Maybe you need comfort, and the food really will be comforting. But perhaps the answer will also tell you something about yourself that deserves to be heard. You may discover that you need rest, companionship, reassurance, joy, or simply a little tenderness after a day that has been harder than anyone else knows.
I think that is what I want us both to remember: caring for ourselves does not always begin with saying no. Sometimes it begins with listening closely enough to understand what we are actually asking for.
A prayer for this week
God, help me listen to myself with honesty and grace instead of immediately judging what I find. Thank You for food and for the nourishment, pleasure, celebration, and connection it can bring into my life. When I am asking it to carry something deeper, help me recognize what I truly need and bring that need to You. Teach me to make room in my life for rest, connection, joy, beauty, and the people and things that restore me. When I am weary, remind me that I can come to You before I have figured everything out. Help me care for the life You have given me without turning that care into another reason to criticize myself. Amen.
With grace, Autumn

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