Is Dieting the Right Answer? | Tilly Dillehay

All right, we are back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I am

Sean DeMars here with Tilly Dillehay. Yeah, that's a fun name. That was smart.

You had me say it instead of trying to say it. That's right. I only read it. So I wanted to hear it. Yeah. One more time.

Would you open us in prayer sister? Ask for the Lord's help. Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Father, thank you for this beautiful day in Alabama.

I thank you for brothers in Christ, new brothers to meet here today. And I pray that you'd bless our conversation.

Fill us with your spirit to speak what is true and what is edifying to your people. It's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Amen. Sister, I'm so thankful that we got you here on the podcast for a bunch of different reasons, but the main reason being your book,

Broken Bread. I just found to be so helpful, so unique, so well -written.

I mean, I am just being effusive in my phrase here, but I mean it and I wouldn't flatter you. You've written another book on envy.

Yes. Which is also very good. And maybe we can have you back for a round two to talk about envy.

But today we're going to talk about broken bread, how to stop using food and fear to fill spiritual hunger.

But before we get into the book, can we just hear a little bit about your story, your testimony? How did you come to know the

Lord and then maybe how that led to you writing this book? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So I was raised in a Christian homeschooled home, a big family in Nashville area.

My dad was in music business and I got to be about 16 years old, graduated from high school, went to a local college and just kind of slowly the rails kind of came off and I developed an eating disorder.

I got super depressed. I basically shot out of college when

I was about 20 and decided I was an agnostic and my parents were wanting to help me so much, but they just really did not know how to help.

So they ended up sending me to go stay for a week in the home of a pastor in tiny little

Hartsville, Tennessee. He was a biblical counselor and a pastor that we had connections to from when

I was a kid. And basically he asked me to kind of present my objections to the faith during that week.

And I did, and he was very helpful in those meetings. But I think maybe even more helpful during that couple of weeks was just staying in his home and watching his family.

Just like a faithful Christian family in a small town, a faithful small little church in a small town.

Nobody was cool there. Nobody was impressive, but they were just faithful, obedient Christians.

And I was just ministered to watching the functional family atmosphere out there.

And I think it was about two weeks in that I said, okay, I'm a Christian. Now what? So I ended up moving there without a job, without any kind of plan for what was going to happen.

I was just going to live in this little town, go to this little church. Different families in the church hosted me. So I stayed with people and I ended up getting a job as an editor of a little newspaper out there.

And then I met my husband there and he was a pastoral intern at the time. And I really thought when

I moved there that I was going to get away from all the men basically and kind of be out of that for a while.

And that was true, but there was one single man in the church and it was him. So, yeah, so we got married a couple of years later and I've been in Little Hartsville for the last 10 or 15 years raising kids now.

So yeah. That must have been weird to be 20 something and for your parents to be like, hey, we want you to go live in the home of this pastor for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, it was. It was weird. What made you agree to it? Desperation, I think. Yeah. I think

I just was, I was just kind of like, well, I've tried a lot of things. I haven't tried that yet, but yeah,

I mean, they, they were genuinely just, just trying to help. And I think I knew that.

So you mentioned an eating disorder. Can you kind of walk us through that a little bit, if you're, however much you're comfortable and how that connects to the book?

Yeah. Yeah. I've written about it in both of the books, actually, because it was a big deal. So, you know,

I was a dieter. I was a, I was a very young dieter. I was like 14 years old when I started to diet.

And it was because I was trying to be a jazz musician. I was trying to break into the music business and I was like gaining a little weight and, and I was told, hey, here's what you need to do.

So I did. And dieting at a young age is a great way to set the stage for an eating disorder later on.

You see that with like gymnasts, wrestlers, people who always have to make weight or be a certain size.

Yeah, just, just, yeah, that's right. Especially when it's pressure from a young age. Yeah. So it definitely, you know, it just starts to,

I mean, anyone who's dieted knows that it starts, it sets the stage for tastelessness, for you kind of divorcing the taste of the food and the, the ritual of eating with other people and you start removing the meaning of food and turning it into kind of a math, like a math thing.

And anyway, so when I got to college, I, I just, you know, I was 16,

I was living in dorms away from my family for the first time without a lot of support. And I just started to eat. And I just ate and ate and ate.

What were you doing in college at the age of 16? I just got, I got done with school and I got a scholarship to this

Christian school in Nashville and it was like, well, what are you going to do now? I guess we'll do this.

So yeah. Okay. So you're eating a lot. Eating a lot. And the freshman five was like freshman 30, probably for me.

So when I started gaining that weight, I was like, okay, the gluttony and the vanity sort of went head to head where I was like,

I can't, I can't do this. So I think I read somewhere about throwing up and tried it.

You know, I was like 18 or so when that started and that became, I mean, it, it, it got worse.

It was definitely up, up through my twenties, that was a problem. So that was a big part of what

I was needing help with when I was kind of a wounded bird going out to Hartsville. So how did you kind of get out of that?

How did you overcome that? Yeah. I mean, it was, there were a lot of different stages. But one of the big things was learning how to cook and learning how to bring food back into kind of where it belongs in, in a community as part of a, part of a family.

So that's been, that's been really big. In fact, when me and me and my husband, Justin and I were dating, you know,

I was still really, really struggling during even part of our dating time.

And he, I remember him asking like, what can I do to, what can we, how can we help? You know, what, what can I do to help?

And I was like, well, sitting down with me to eat a meal that I cooked is helpful because that's what food is for.

And it slows you down enough to actually taste and enjoy, you know. So that was the first step in developing,

I think kind of what ended up going into some of the things that went into this book. Just the idea of like, gluttony may not be enjoying your food too much.

It may be enjoying your food too little. So that was in your early twenties.

Yes. You're in your late twenties now. I'm in my late thirties. Oh, late thirties. Okay. Yeah. If 36 is your late thirties.

Yeah. Is it, is it possible to really have victory over that stuff? I mean, do you feel like, do you ever think, okay,

I got to go throw up? Yeah. I mean, um, it is possible for your life to be completely different because it is just, it's not, it's not, food is not what it was like food is a, is a joyful and delightful thing and it's a means of serving people and it's just not, it's not a fearful ground anymore.

And I don't think, I really didn't think that was possible. There's definitely been seasons when I thought, well, and it, but I have to say,

I mean, there have been seasons and even in marriage when, you know, you get drugged back into a place for a little while for a short season, maybe having babies, you know, it's a lot, it's a lot.

Yeah. Right after birth, you think, oh, I got to drop these pounds. Yeah.

Although it's ironic because after, after birth is when it's really easiest, you know, the lactation helps.

Right. Right. Okay. I didn't know we were going to talk about lactation today, but. First time I've said lactation on this podcast.

Well, congratulations. Yeah. Let's really explore the space. Yeah. Let's talk more. All right. Let's, let's get right into what

I think is the most interesting and useful part of your book. You, you give us the category of four food poles.

I've been calling them, when I went back and reviewed in preparation for this interview, I realized I've just been calling them the food, the four food sins.

Okay. Is that wrong of me to do that? I don't think so. Okay. They're all, there's like extreme positions. Okay. So they're all.

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. So it's asceticism, gluttony, snobbery, and apathy.

Yes. Yeah. And do those pair up together? Yeah. It's like two alternate continuums, like asceticism on the opposite end from gluttony and then snobbery on the opposite end from apathy.

That's right. Okay. So we're going to explore each one at length, but can you just briefly tell us what each one is? Yes. So asceticism is the fear of pleasure.

It's just a, it's a posture that believes God is as, um, as slow to condone pleasure as we are.

Um. As slow to condone it. Okay. That's right. Or it might be quick to condemn it.

Basically that God is as stingy as we are. That's what we think about him. You know. God's not happy unless we're miserable.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. And if it's, if it's too nice, then it's, you know, probably dangerous.

So, um, and then I do think that spending a lot of time in gluttony is a great way to get you there because you get, you get this kind of out of control feeling when you live gluttonously and you think, what can

I do about this? I'm going to have to set up some rules. And so the stricter the rules, you think the safer you're going to be.

And that's usually not how it works. Um, as we know from, you know, the law and, and grace and the gospel.

So, um, so yeah, so gluttony is just an inability to stop when it's time to stop and inability to recognize your limits as a human being and a body that can only eat so much, um, and a failure to recognize the, the seasons and the times and the, the cycles of life that there's a time to do this and a time to be done and go do the next thing.

Um, and we'll talk more about that later, I think. Um, so yeah, then your other two, yeah, snobbery and apathy.

So snobbery is using food as a social marker to try to feel more important than other people.

And I think, you know, this book came out in 2020, right, right when everybody was locked up at home,

I think actually, but that was definitely right after gluten, gluten intolerance kind of had reached a peak, a peak,

I think, and had kind of maybe come, come back out the other side. I hope so. Yeah, maybe. But, um, you know,

I was, I was in the church and I was out in this little town where people are not, we're not on the front end of anything where I live, you know, like I, I find out what people are wearing five years later, maybe when, when it comes out to Hartsville, but, um, but with food, even in the church,

I was feeling like, wow, I have a lot of friends who are suddenly gluten intolerant. And then a couple of years later, they're not anymore or every everybody's taking turns being on different diets.

And I just wonder why is it that we're basically behaving the same way as the world?

And some of that I think is mixed up with the asceticism thing, just that it attempts to get control, but I have also seen it used in a very snobbish way.

Like you show up and you just want to talk about how you're not eating what other people are eating, you know, and it's, it's obnoxious, you know, but we do it because we're human beings and people have been trying to feel important for as long as we've been around.

So, um, and then on the opposite end of that, so if you are caring, you're caring so much, you're using food almost, almost as like a case system on the opposite end from that would be, sorry, just be clear,

C -A -S -T -E, C -A -S, Caste, yes. Yeah. Like, like, sorry, the Caste, I'm probably saying it wrong because most of my vocabulary comes from reading and not from listening to people.

Okay. So, um, as like a, you know, a way of, of arranging yourself hierarchically with other people.

And then on the other end, you have apathy, which is where you were, you're basically saying,

I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to act that way. So I'm going to pretend like hungry man dinner is just as good as when a lady spends five hours making, you know, a beautiful whatever.

So, um, just a failure to be grateful for the unbelievable access that we have to flavors and ingredients.

Um, that's unprecedented. Like no one, no other culture has ever lived like we do.

So it's really incredible. It is. Yeah. All right. Well, let's walk through these one by one because there's just, there's so much goodness to unpack.

So we'll start with asceticism. Um, this may be kind of a strange question to ask, but do you think, do you think we try to find our justification through food?

Yes. Yeah. And you're talking about like spiritual, moral. Yeah. I appreciate the sermon recently where I made that as an application point about how we try to mediate our spirituality through all different kinds of things, including food.

And a lot of people, I think the feedback that I got was pretty split. Half of it was, oh,

I've never heard that before. Can you tell me more? And the other half was, oh, I think I do that all the time.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that's kind of a big question to start us off. But this idea that, you know, like God will be pleased with me.

I can stand in his presence. If only I can manage my dinner table well. Yeah. Yes. And it's an, it's an old, it's an old mistake.

It's, it's a, it's a mistake that I think Jesus addressed really clearly.

And it's not that, that righteousness by food is unheard of in the, you know, in Jewish history and that's our history as Christians.

Um, but I think he dealt with it and he made it very clear that food will not commend us to God and, and yet we still want to erect new food laws that are stricter than the

Jews even had to deal with, you know? And I think it is, it's because we're seeking righteousness this way.

Um, so yeah. And the world does this. That's, that's the reason why I think it's, it's really important as Christians to have our heads on straight about this because, because this is the way the world looks at food.

It's a, I think I read somewhere, someone describing it as like a life raft. The world is looking to food to save itself, to, to bring everlasting life.

And it can't do that, but, but if a Christian behaves that way, then we're just, we're, we're imitating the world and saying, yeah, maybe food is going to save us.

Um, and that's why people get so defensive about their diet of choice is because people, people criticizing how you've chosen to keep yourself alive as long as possible.

Someone's poking at your life raft, you know, is food medicine.

Good grief. That's so funny. I mean, Justin and I were talking about this this morning, cause he was, he was trying to remind himself of what, what this book is about, you know?

And, uh, and he was, I guess he had, maybe he picked up and opened it or something, but, um,

I was telling him, no, this is a real post from a friend of mine had posted, I'm struggling with diet.

And some Christian friends wrote on that, on her wall, responded by saying, I just think of food as poison and medicine.

There's only two categories of food, poison and medicine. There's nothing in between. Yeah. So just the idea,

I mean, that's so loaded. Like, just think about that, that she literally, in order to motivate herself to stay within the walls that she's erected, she's, she's decided the best way to do that is to lie to yourself and separate the entire continuum of food, of health and wellness that you can find in food to it's going to save you, or it's going to kill you.

Like that's it. So yeah, it's amazing. So is food medicine?

Food gives life in the sense that we need food to live. Everybody needs food to live.

And God made us that way. Just like he, he made us to need sleep and oxygen and water.

Um, and I think you can eat in such a way that you are sinning against your body.

I do think that's the case. So I'm not an agnostic about food. Like, I'm not trying to say you eat nothing but donuts for the rest of your life and that's cool.

You're good. Um, no, you're being a poor steward. That's right. I mean, you will, you will feel badly.

You will, you will, um, you will not enjoy living in your body.

If that's what you're doing. And in contrast to that, if you are constantly in a calorie deficit, you're also being a poor steward of your body.

Absolutely. If you're constantly living on the threshold of starvation. Right. Yeah. And I think the, the issue with that, with these things and what makes it so hard is that, you know, these things are a continuum.

And so if you start saying it is a sin to eat at McDonald's every day for the rest of your life, then, okay.

I'm not willing to say that. Well, is it a sin to eat at McDonald's once a week for the rest of your life?

Is it? And then, and you know, like there are Christians who are going to say it's a sin to eat white sugar ever for the rest of your life, you know?

Um, I think about, uh, our time. So my, me and my wife were missionaries in the jungles of Peru.

And, uh, you know, the only thing you can really eat much of in the jungle is a little bit of protein and a lot of simple carbohydrates, plantains, yucca, white rice, just how people have lived in most every culture for most of history.

And I can just imagine having a conversation with someone today going, well, you're killing your body. Oh, what other option do they have?

You know, the most of the vegetables, you can't really grow vegetables out there. It's really difficult when you get them in from the lunch show, they're halfway rotten by the time they get to you, you know,

Hey, have you noticed, have you ever interacted with a

Christian who, whenever they talk about physical, psychological, and maybe even spiritual ailments, they somehow always connected back to their diet.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's up with that? It's just easy. It's nice to have an answer.

It's nice. It's nice to have a simple answer for everything. And it would be great if that was the answer to everything, but I just don't think it is.

Um, you know, I have kids, so I, I have, I have young children who

I'm trying to teach to eat too. And I know, I know that there's a temptation as a, as moms who are feeding people all the time.

Like we are, we are the ones who are having to make these decisions. What is the best thing for me to feed to my kids?

You know, how do I weigh budget and all these, all the information. And, and I know that it's hard.

It is. Um, and it would be, it would be easier if someone would just give you a set of rules that you could just stick with in some ways.

Um, but I think, you know, when it comes to me trying to guide my kids,

I want them to be, I don't want them to be a slave to anything. Um, but I want them to be people who recognize that food is not just fuel for your body.

It's also a social and a cultural and relational, um, ritual.

And it is a way of loving people and serving people and connecting to people.

And if you can't go to someone's house and eat what's put before you, that's rude, no matter where you are.

Like that's rude in every, in every time, in every place, I think. Um, so if what's your, if you've been so trained to think of food as either poison or medicine, that you can't go and sit down and eat what's put before you, then you're definitely sinning when it comes to food.

But that was, that was in the epistles. Like that's, that's, that kind of stuff is that's that what, that's what you know about food from the

Bible. You may not know for sure that we were meant to eat on grains only because that's what was given to us in Genesis.

Or what do you know what, some of these books that come out, like the maker's diet, the, um, there's a lot of things that we could guess about what we're supposed to eat from the

Bible. But I know there are things we know about food from the Bible and they have to do with relationships.

And those are, those are paramount, you know, I think that's the part of the book that hit me over and over again, like a dart, just right, right here, you know, just conviction.

Cause I've been that maybe not for the food snob reasons, maybe more for the asceticism reasons, but I've been the guy who has been at someone's house and been like, oh, this is what we're having for dinner.

Let me go run and grab a salad and go, oh, what's the big deal. You know, like, yeah. And everyone does it.

So it's just, it gets where people don't even raise an eyebrow, but it's just like, like, you know, our, our moms told us to eat, to eat what was set before us as, you know, as a, this is just a polite thing to do.

It's a kind thing to do. And of course, if you're the one serving a meal to somebody, try to be accommodating.

Like it's, you know, there's every side of this is love and that's repeated to us over and over again.

It's about loving people well. What does asceticism have to do with the teaching of demons?

Do not taste, do not handle, do not touch.

That's demonic logic. The logic of demons is don't touch the things that God has made because they are inherently dangerous.

And the logic of Christ is all these things are, are not good.

Safe for us, not just safe, but good to be enjoyed. That's right. These things were given to us, um, to be taken with Thanksgiving and we don't need to be afraid of things

God made. I don't want to move on from this point too quickly because it's really profound.

Satan is trying to get us to not enjoy God through his creation.

Yeah. And whenever we end up in this pattern, not saying that there's never a season of your life where you don't need to be on a diet or watch what you eat or whatever, but when we end up in this pattern where we are just unable to enjoy

God through his creation, that is a direct demonic attack. Okay.

Before we move on from asceticism, what would you say to someone who is a serial dieter, like someone who is just trapped in the loop?

Maybe they've been that way for two years. Maybe they've been that way for 20 years. What would you say to them? Yeah. Um, I would say that I just don't,

I don't know of a path out of dieting that leads through dieting. I just don't, I don't know. Personally, I've not found that path.

Um, I, I think I know people who diet pretty comfortably, like where it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't take over their brain.

It doesn't take over their minds. Like they're just, it's just something they do. Um, I know a handful of people like that.

Who it does. It's not a cycle. Like they just, they just kind of find a comfortable way of living and it, and it happens to be with parameters.

Um, I don't mind that. I, I don't, I did not find that possible.

Yeah. So what I found instead was a ricochet back and forth between gluttony and asceticism and just new versions of rules to kind of help me get control over the flesh, which was for the record out of control.

So the path out was not, unfortunately for me, at least was not found through a diet that was just the best diet.

Um, it was through learning to sit down and enjoy a meal and also the process of learning to cook for people, having kids to feed and a husband to feed was a big, huge help for me because, because dieting and being in, in, in eating disorder stuff, that is a private way to beat yourself up alone in a kitchen or alone somewhere.

That's, that's what that, that's how that worked for me. It was, it was a lonely battle. Um, but as soon as you bring other people into it to serve through the food, it changed a lot.

Um, but the other thing was starting to recognize just why our, our culture doesn't seem to understand seasons and, and cycles.

And I mentioned that earlier. Um, so there's a, there's a really great passage in peril andra by CS Lewis.

Um, I always think that of, of that, of that, um, series, peril andra is the one that women like the most.

Um, and, and I feel like men tend to like the, uh, that hideous strength the most.

At least that's, that's what the polls have shown so far, but anyway, peril andra. Um, so where the garden of Eden is re -imagined on another planet.

Eve all over again, the green lady, and she's being tempted, you know, and you get to watch the temptation and under maybe understand it a little better.

But, um, but there's a, you know, ransom is in this book as well. And he's on this planet watching the temptation happening, but he's experiencing this planet.

And he, he gets, he, at some point he finds this really wonderful fruit.

He tastes the fruit for the first time. It's this amazing fruit. And he has a temptation to go back and try to repeat that first bite of the fruit.

And, and, um, and he can't, he re he realizes it would, it would be like trying to sit down and listen to a symphony again, when you just listen to a symphony, trying to rewind it to the beginning, you couldn't, because you couldn't experience the, you can't, you can't ever have the first bite twice of anything.

No. Um, but we wish we could. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You can never have, but, but even like this particular time that you sat down to eat blueberry pancakes or whatever, you can't have the first bite again.

Um, you can't have the first pancake again. And I think part of the wisdom of, of life is, is understanding that when

God sends waves towards you, this is another analogy from Paralandra. You can't, you can't repeat the waves as they come.

He's sending these waves to you and you can swim out into them, but you can't ask him to repeat the same wave over and you can't turn back into the wave that he's already sent because it's gone.

So when you finish a good meal or any meal, when you finish a meal, part of being a grownup is recognizing that the meal is over and it's time to go do something else.

And it's time to go have a conversation or do your work or take a nap or whatever that next wave is that God is sending to you.

The meal's over and you can never repeat it. Um, because if you try to, you, you become miserable.

So that was huge for me because I never, I never paid enough attention to the meal to know that it was over because I was trying to, you know, pound donuts while watching a show or whatever, order another ice cream cone while driving through a window.

Like Americans don't know how to do this because we don't know how to sit down and eat our food. Um, we think that food is something that we, we do while we're in the middle of something else.

Like we can't make life stop for meals. So funny you say that. Yeah. I feel like I cannot enjoy my dessert unless I'm exactly where I need to be on my couch, watching the video that I want to be watching, you know, like, yeah, it's gotta be the right place at the right time.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Wow. Uh, C .S. Lewis, man, the more you dig, the more there is to find.

Oh yeah. Uh, better than I would say maybe perhaps token. Oh, okay.

Just checking. More could be said about asceticism, but that's why people should read the book. Let's move on to gluttony.

Is gluttony too much desire or not enough? It's too much. Is it too much enjoyment of your food or not enough enjoyment of your food?

Too much desire? I don't know. I mean, I think there's, if you're going to use the word desire, then there's inordinate desire.

You know, if you're thinking about food above all things all day long, then you're probably, um, imbalanced.

And that actually reminds me, I don't know if this was even in this book, but Lewis, once again, he had something else to say about, about sexuality and food.

Um, and cause he was saying, he was, he was talking about the sexual issue and at his, in his day that people were obsessed with whatever, with sex.

And he was saying that this is a sign of starvation. Like if you were in a culture and you went into a dark tent and people unveiled a meal and said, and there was like a strip tease for a meal, that would be a sign of a starving people.

Yeah. Do you remember this? I don't even remember where this was, but, um, but if for him, he was like, this is an obvious sign of imbalance and, and of starvation, you know, in your culture, if somebody is willing to sit and watch a meal and.

And he was saying the point he was making was about sexuality. Cause he was saying, if you have people who were like,

Ooh, let's, you know, let's talk about this. So there's this, this is a sign that there's not a healthy marriage bed basically in your country.

And I was, when I read that, my thought was, this is a, he's, he's, he's writing this as a joke.

Oh, what if people watched a strip tease about a meal, but people do that in our culture, that's right.

That's right. We have, you know, TV shows and, um, commercial, you know, slow, like slow zoom commercials about burgers or whatever.

Like we have, we have food porn in our culture. And I do think it is a sign of starvation.

It's a kind of starvation where we're obsessed with food, but we still don't really know how to enjoy it.

We have an abundance of something, but it's not what it ought to be.

Maybe it's not. Yeah. Maybe cause it's not a lot of it isn't, isn't great food. Um, but the other thing is we don't, we don't have any kind of cycles of like fasting and feasting because we're kind of in feasting mode at all times.

And this is going to probably sound different from the sort of anti -dieting that I'm talking about here, but I have a real strong place in my mind for fasting and feasting cycles that, you know, maybe today isn't a day where you have to eat all these lovely flavors.

Maybe today you just have time for beans and rice, you know, and you don't, if you're not thinking about food all the time, you have other things in life that you also get to think about.

Um, it's just, it's not feasting time all the time. Okay. Then you might be relieving some of my guilt and frustration here.

I kind of go through, uh, cycles, maybe not like one day out of the week, but maybe like one month out of four where I just,

I reign in all my food stuff. You know, it's like, man, I've been eating like a Viking by God's grace. I live in America.

I have access to good food all the time and I enjoy it. You know, I have to work like a Viking, but I can eat like a

Viking. But then for like a month, I'll do like keto or something like that. And I'll just, just, just to kind of tighten everything up, learn to enjoy food again, maybe, uh, uh, revive those insulin receptors.

And, uh, now I'm sure part of that is unhealthy, but what you're, what you're saying is that there is a way that you can do that.

That is useful. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if, if you're, if you're loving people in that, like you're still, if your wife is not tearing her hair out, trying to deal with, keep up with whatever is happening and you're, you're able to go and enjoy fellowship with people and not be obnoxious, you know, not talk about keto the whole time.

Um, and you're not all tore up and knots about it. Then I don't think there's a problem with having cycles where you're like, okay,

I ate a lot last week, you know, this week I'm going to, I'm going to tighten up back, back up a little bit, like back up.

Yeah. Um, I mean, I, I, I definitely in a season in life when probably for the first time ever, busyness is such just with children and with all these fun projects in our, in our town and in our church,

I probably have less time to think about food than I ever have. Um, and there's, there are times when it's like, wow,

I really forgot, you know, I forgot breakfast again or whatever. And I don't love that, but I'm like,

I'm at peace with that. I don't, I don't, I'm not worried about that. You know, I hope I get to the place where I can ever forget a meal.

That would be nice. Well, I do think, yeah, I'm just, whatever you, we can talk about,

I feel like I'm talking with a girlfriend, my, you know, when your metabolism slows down and you're, you know, you've had a few babies and you know, you know how it is and you're just not as hungry anymore.

I don't know. I don't know that, you know, someone like you or my, my husband, like, I think men probably just stay hungrier, but I mean, that's, maybe that's an obvious thing to say, but anyway, um, yeah, like cycles, you, you can't feast every day, you can't feast every week.

Um, but don't fast every week either. Right. You know, find the balance, find the balance.

Okay. What do you, what do you mean when you write about having a bad food day?

Oh yeah. That's just, that was just the, the language that we would use to describe the eating disorder stuff.

Like if I, if I ever ate way, way, way too much, you know, binged, basically that's a bad food day.

Yeah. I think I have a lot of those. Uh, are we all gluttons now?

I think about going back to my time in Peru, we almost never,

I say almost we did, I guess if I, I want to say it that way in relation to my experience in the

United States, I want to say we almost never gathered around food, but I know that that's not true. We did because that's a human thing.

But in the States, it's like, we can't do anything without having a lot of food.

It's like, Hey, we're going to have this get together. Okay. Well, who's going to bring the food? Why does it have to be food? Cause why would people show up?

Why would, why would it just for fellowship? Yeah. I don't want to see people. Yeah. So you're in the

South too. I mean, I'm Tennessee. You're, you know, here we are in Alabama. I know that.

I know that the South maybe has more of a Southern hospitality.

Yeah. It's just the Southern. I mean, we, we potluck at our church every Sunday, every Sunday, every Sunday. Wow. And it's awesome.

I love it so much because we get to know each other like crazy in our church.

Of course we have a small church and we stay small. How many members? I wish you wouldn't ask me that. I don't know.

Um, 100, 200, 150, maybe. I don't know. The thing is our church will stay small enough to always have a potluck because I feel like when you have something like that in place, you just tend to kind of, you max out.

You can't really potluck more than about 150 people. Um, I think this is,

I can't back this up at all, but I, I think that churches should stay small enough that they can do potlucks every church everywhere.

I'm just, well, I'm just talking crazy. I just think, I just think it's so, it's so great.

Like, I just don't know of any, any other thing that would keep us in each other's lives like that potluck does besides Wednesday night prayer meetings and Sunday morning services.

And of course preaching the word. There you go. But no, I get it. We, uh, we do, we have five members meetings a year and every, it goes church and then we'll go into a potluck and then we come out of the potluck and go into our members meeting and then the

Lord's supper. I love it. I love it so much. And since our church caught on fire, we've been, uh, have this lovely chapel that we're in.

But how did that fire start? Was it a potluck? It was a heater in the wall. I wish I could blame it on a crock pot or something, but, uh, we haven't been able to do it and it makes me sad, you know, cause

I just love it. So, so fun. Yeah, we used to do Wednesday night dinners too, but I think it was just too hard for people.

Yeah. So you're, you're kind of connecting the, everybody gets together and eats. We can't see how to get together without eating, you know, as maybe part of the issue.

I, I still just feel like drive through drive through culture is more of an issue for Americans that we eat together too much, but.

You want to riff on that at all? Yeah, I just, cause it's like, we just, we truly think food is, is like calories to be pounded while you're on your way to doing something else.

And because we're so busy because we're just so busy and we just don't have time to deal with people around a table, families, families sitting around.

I mean, there are, there are documented, um, anorexia cases.

Like there, there are, there are programs where all that they die, all that they recommend for an anorexic girl is that they sit around and eat as a family.

Her, her T a teenage anorexic sit down and eat as a family for a month together.

And like, that is, that is the treatment and it's actually helpful.

Um, because food is not just about calories.

Like, it's not just about numbers. It's about people. Yeah. Amen. Okay.

Let's go on a snobbery. Okay. Let's talk about different kinds of food snobs.

I, I, I created like three categories. You fill these out, add to subtract, do whatever you think you thought about this more than I have.

I think we have consumer driven snobbery. I actually, I think I got that phrase from you. So that's cheating.

That's one thing that came from your book. I got it directly from your book. Uh, so maybe we won't talk about that one health driven snobbery and then culinary driven snobbery.

Okay. So start wherever you want. Oh, that's great. I like those categories. Um, yeah.

So the consumer thing, I do remember talking about just how there's just this like trickle down, um, like again,

I'm talking to a man, but have you seen the devil wears Prada? Uh, yeah. And that's one of my favorite movie illustrations ever.

Okay. Okay. Okay. That's hilarious. Um, I don't think Justin has seen that movie, so I can't talk about this with him, but he, um, yeah, right.

Um, the, just the thing that I remember about that movie that a lot of people remember is, is, is about this blue sweater and the girl who's like,

I'm not into fashion, I'm wearing a blue sweater that whatever, and Meryl Streep gives this big takedown where she says, you think that you don't care about fashion, but that sweater was chosen for you by the people in this room because two seasons ago,

Oscar, whatever. It was on the runway. Yeah, that's right. So I use that in my spiel on wokeness.

Okay. So it's funny that the exact same thing, the exact same scene is one of my favorite scenes to use.

Okay. So it's the kind of thing that kind of sticks in your mind because you realize, oh yeah, we are, we are driven by what the tastemakers tell us to like, and we think we have taste and we, you know, whatever, maybe we have taste, but our tastes have been formed for us by these people in these industries.

And it is the same way in food. If you walk into a whole foods and you think I am such a discerning eater that I come into whole foods and I'm going to get the herbal, you know, sparkling water, whatever, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Like whatever the year is and there, you can go on, you can go online and you can see whole foods telling it's it's investors.

Here's the fad for this year. Here are the five biggest things. You know, and you realize that's right.

Kale's gone. Milk is in. That's right. Yeah. I hear they're actually going to start going to bovine milk.

Have you heard of this? Bovine milk. Yes. That's the next big thing. Yeah. So, um, we're not, we're not as cool.

Yeah. It's okay. We're not as cool as we think we are because we can walk into a whole foods or wherever it is and, and order that thing.

Um, so that's consumer. Yeah. Let's talk about health snobbery.

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously this is heavily connected to the asceticism thing.

You're trying to save your life by eating the right things. Um, if you become really convinced, this is how, this is how this works.

Like, this is how you extend your life. This is how you get your body fat down and your muscle mass up or whatever it is you're trying to do.

You're going to defend that to the death, literally, because that's what you're trying to stave off by eating that way.

Um, so you, you, you will be willing to be very rude about it.

You know, if you're, if you're, if you're off balance, you're going to be rude about it. And I do know people who like in high pressure situations, like meeting a mother -in -law for the first time type situations have brought their own food.

To that family meal, because they're on this diet and I'm just like, and in their mind, they think,

Oh, I'm being, I'm being super gracious. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not making, I'm not making them do my thing, but like you should be able, unless you have a, you know, a dire food, legitimately have celiac disease.

Okay. Makes it, let's let somebody know. I don't want to go to the hospital with you tonight. That's fine. But you should be able to go into someone's home.

Especially if it's a mother -in -law that you're meeting for the first time, you should be able to sit down and eat her food.

Even if you don't eat a lot, you know, take a bite. Thank you so much. That's right. You don't have to eat everything you're, you're given.

Yeah. So, okay. So we have the, the, sorry, a quick word before we move on on that, on that health -driven snobbery.

I know that life is complicated, but if, if you really are concerned about health, which there's nothing wrong with that.

If you're, if your concern is I want to be a good steward of my body, I want to live long enough to be a great grandma so I can help out and all that stuff.

Great. But at the end of the day, one, there's only so much you can do.

Two, it's really not that complicated. If you basically just try to avoid eating a ton of processed foods and in CrossFit, they used to say, just eat around the outside of the grocery store.

Yeah. I remember that. Right. Just stay away from the middle aisles, you know, fresh fruit, meat, nuts, vegetables, all that stuff. If you just try to eat a diet, that's not that process.

That's not totally wacky. You're going to be a basically healthy person. You don't have to work out like a monster twice a day, seven days a week.

If you get moderate exercise three or four days a week, even if it's just walking, it's, it's, it's going to be fine.

Like, you know, it doesn't have to be that complicated. So you can be concerned with health and how that relates to your food without becoming a complete whack job.

Yeah. Preaching to myself here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then culinary driven snobbery.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I probably, I probably am this kind of snob sometimes even right now because I'm, I'm into the cooking thing now and I'm, I'm not actually that good of a cook, like I have a lot of,

I have a lot of friends who just understand flavor in a way that I wish that I could, but I just can't.

Um, but I do think if I'm going to fall into anything at this, at the moment, at this season in my life, you know,

I'm, I like, I like reading cookbooks, I like, whatever.

I like trying. I like trying at least, even though it doesn't come naturally to me. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, if you're, if you're,

I live in Hartsville, Tennessee. It's the smallest County in Tennessee.

We have two Mexican restaurants and a meet and three place.

It's been open forever. And, um, and one other place that may, you might, you can get a burger there.

So like restaurants are not happening where we are. Um, but we're an hour away from Nashville where, you know, culinary snobbery is alive and well, certainly, but they have great restaurants.

Um, there would be a way that I could talk about food. Also, I'm in a church where the people in the pew are, um, middle -aged people who are, have lived in Hartsville their entire lives, who have enjoyed meet and three cooking and love it forever.

Um, and then a huge number of young families who have come in from California and New York and other places like that.

Um, and then there's me who's lived in Hartsville for about 15 years, you know, doesn't go out to eat very much likes food.

So like, I, there are ways that I could talk about food that would be extremely alienating to either any of those groups.

And there are ways that they could talk about food with each other when they're having each other to, to, to each other's houses, which they do all the time.

I should just say, because we don't have restaurants, but also because we have a great hospitality culture in our church.

Um, what the, when they're having each other over, there are ways they could do that very rudely or very unhelpfully.

And then there are ways that they could do it super graciously and just make awesome food for the meet and three guy.

And he's like, wow, what is this? You know, yeah, right. Yeah.

So honestly, it's delightful. It's delightful to watch these incredible cooks have the, the, like the guy who's who's been eating

McDonald's his whole life and loving it, you know, to have him over and give him a slow cooked braised pork loin or whatever.

Like it's delightful to watch. Do you go food hunting, like on vacations and stuff when you travel?

Yeah. I mean, I'll, I want to go to a place that I've never been. Usually I say that we went, we went and ate

Mellow Mushroom last night when we had other choices. You guys were in town. We were. Wow. If somebody would have let me know,

I could have put you guys on. Yeah. Right. Okay. Wow. That's really sad for you. We enjoyed it very much, sir.

Oh, there you go. So it's not, see, look at being pretentious. I'm a food.

So I was like, you got Mellow Mushroom. You poor sad thing. We had a great time. Okay. All right.

Well, I'm happy. I'm very cultured. I mean, Buffalo Wild Wings, you know, all that stuff.

Okay. Uh, this is going to be, this is probably going to be one of the more controversial things we talk about here.

I'm not intending to go for clickbaits, but, uh, clickbait or anything. I heard that she just had the cannon guys on last week.

Justin just told me that a couple of days ago. I was like, Oh, what's going on? We live in an interesting times.

Talk to us about people who dabble in food allergies. Oh yeah. Well, okay.

So we talked about the, the, um, gluten kind of thing.

I don't know. I don't even hear about gluten intolerance very much right now. So maybe it's still happening.

Maybe it's regional. Yeah. It might be regional. I think it came and went. Um, so dabbling in allergies,

I think it's just. There, there's a temptation when you don't feel great all the time, maybe because you, you know, we're, we're all gluttonous and we don't feel great all the time, but I think there's a tent, a temptation to be like,

I need to find the answer and the reason the panacea that's going to fix everything.

And it would be really great if I found out that that was an allergy to something like gluten. If I could just eliminate that thing, then everything would be better.

Um, but, and I think in some cases it might help, like maybe, sure. Maybe, maybe you should just eliminate gluten and you'll feel better.

Like some people like Russell, our assistant pastor, pastor Russell Berger. If he eats a peanut, he'll die.

Right. You know, that's real. It's a continuum and maybe, and I, and I, I'm not, I'm not a doctor.

So is he up there right now? Okay. Um, like the dabbling is just,

I think when I, when a person who maybe doesn't have hard data is, is kind of trying to.

Trying to live in an allergy that they don't necessarily know that they have. Um, but I don't really, it doesn't bother me if, if somebody's like,

I'm gonna, I'm avoiding this thing because I think I feel better when I avoid this thing. Whatever. It was a big deal.

You're certainly free to like, you know, experiment on your own body. If you want to say, I'm going to try not eating dairy. See if that helps.

Great. Cause you know what? A lot of people actually are lactose intolerant. That's real. Yeah. My husband is in denial about being lactose intolerant.

I'm fully convinced that he is. But you suffer the consequences whenever he eats dairy. I bet. Yeah. But it is a real problem.

There are a lot of people who there, whenever their body doesn't feel good, the first thing that they do is they say there must be something that I'm eating that's causing this.

When the fact is it could be 50 ,000 different things that are, you may not be sleeping well, you have three small children at home, you could be going through depression, uh, you are getting older and guess what?

Your body is slowly dying. You know what I mean? You could have cancer. I mean, I'm not trying to be morose, but I mean, that's probably worse than you think you're dying.

Yes, that's right. But the thing is actually, I mean, that was a joke, but, but we are dying and that is, that is something

I think that we miss in this conversation. And I do think it's, it's part of part of what I was saying about the world looking for answers to death.

Um, Christians need to be aware of death in a way that the world isn't. And we need to be, we need to have a comfortable awareness of our mortality.

Um, because that is a big part of this is, is we need to recognize we're dying and so no, we're, we're probably not going to feel as well this year as we did last year, if we're over the age of 18, that's right.

Metabolism is going to slow down. Skin is going to loosen. Gravity is going to take its effect.

Uh, energy levels are going to drop one more thing on this food allergy stuff. I think one of the things that needs to be mentioned is that a lot of this stuff is pseudoscience, right?

Throw it in the same category as the vast majority of chiropractics. It's just, a lot of this stuff has not proven data driven science.

It's anecdotal and there's a massive, uh, financial incentive for people to market this to, to Western, to Westerners in particular, who have the ability to waste money on things like this.

Uh, for example, like doing juice fasts and cleanses, uh, you're not going to drink just lemon juice for five days and cleanse any heavy metal toxins from your body.

That's everything about that statement is just antithetical to good science about how the human body works.

So, yeah. Um, I don't know how I want to put a bow on this, but I just want to say to people, like if, if, uh, for example, with essential oils,

I don't want to offend you if you love essential oils. Okay. I wish Justin was here though.

Okay. He has some things to say about that. Well, I'll speak, I'll be his spirit animal. Uh, when

I was, when we were in, in, in the jungle, we were going through some depression and, uh, somebody said,

Hey, here's some essential oils. This will help. You know, there's a, a, a billboard that used to be up in our city that said anxiety, depression, chronic pain,

CBD can fix it. Right. So if, if CBD or lavender oil or ylang ylang tea tree oil, if that stuff could actually do anything as significant as what it's being marketed to do, the pharmaceutical companies would have snatched that up or regulated it and made billions of dollars a long time ago.

I'm not saying that none of this stuff is useful. So for example, you know, that peppermint oil can help with migraines.

But the reason why peppermint oil does that is because it overwhelms your olfactory system.

Really? Yeah, that's right. So just, it, it stimulates that and it, it kind of, your nerves can only fire so much at once and your brain kind of switches to focus on the, the strong smell of peppermint under your nose, as opposed to the pain in your head.

And this is nothing new. Dr. Paul Brand, who used to work with, he's a Christian, um, used to work with, uh, leprosy patients used to talk to them about how to stimulate nerves and combat pain, all this stuff.

Anyways, that actually has real scientific basis. What I find doubly problematic is when

Christians get involved with selling this stuff and promoting this stuff as if it actually has spiritual and medical benefits when it has not been proven in any way that it does.

You're in a really ethically dangerous place as a Christian when you're doing that. So, you know, feel free to take some oils if you think it might help with something.

Yeah. But it's these big old, big old statements about it. And in tying the spiritual stuff in, in with it is dicey.

It's real dicey. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's say something else. Yeah, I don't think so.

Okay, good. Well, that's enough for now. All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about apathy.

Are we sinning when we fail to enjoy food? God made food for us to enjoy richly, to enjoy all things.

If we never notice our food, I think we're sinning. I think we're,

I think if we walk by a sunset and don't notice it, we're sinning. I think there's a lot of things in life that if you can't see them, smell them, appreciate them and thank

God for them, then you're, um, you're spiritually blind too, you know?

So what do you say to the person? I'm a, I live to eat kind of person. Like I'm always excited about the next good meal.

Yeah. What do you say to the, I just eat to live person? The person who says, I don't even really taste food.

Like, I don't know if it's like my sense of smell or what, but like, and I'm really busy and I just know that I have to eat in order to live.

Like, what would you say to them to encourage them to like, learn to enjoy their food? Yeah. I mean,

I guess I recognize that different people are more alive to different senses and joy and joys and pleasures.

And just as I know, um, there are people who don't enjoy film.

I enjoy film. There are people who don't enjoy. I can tell because you call it film. Whatever. I'm trying to be obnoxious, um, who don't enjoy reading and it is very hard for me to connect to that person, but I try very hard.

Um, I, I recognize that maybe your tongue and your brain and your nose and all the things that go into food for you are just not, not the most exciting thing to you.

And that's okay. You know, if I saw that you were dull, if you had dull senses to all of God's creation and other things as well,

I would say, I think there's a big spiritual problem here. If I saw you delighting in God's creation in other ways, and food was just like not high on the list for you,

I would say fine. Like fine. What'd you say? But let me cook a meal for you.

It'll totally change everything. No, but I would say, but let this person cook a meal for you. I would, I would point them to the person that I think ought to.

Yeah. All right. Um, you have at so let's, there's more that could be said about each of those four, but again, buy the book, read it.

Listen, when I got halfway through this book, I immediately bought a bunch of copies to give away for our church.

And I immediately added it to our women's discipleship cohort. Oh, that's so, I mean, if you're like, all right, they've stimulated my appetite and I want to know more.

I want my, my brain stomach to get fuller. All right. Then buy the book.

Seriously. You won't regret it. Uh, but at several points throughout the interview, you have kind of, you've kept trying to get back to like food and hospitality, food and community, food and fellowship.

That seems like it's kind of the heartbeat of this whole conversation. Maybe that's because when I was writing this book,

I was probably more frustrated about like, um, it's possible that the impetus for writing the book was more frustration about food, snobbery stuff, dabbling in allergies type stuff.

That was a more, that felt like a more live issue. Maybe four years ago. Um, now having lived another four years of life and having old, you know, children and more, more years of just being a pastor's wife in a, in a church,

I'm, I think the stuff that sticks with me more instead of the, the immediate problems of food snobbery is just food being used as a gift to bless people.

And that's what it does. It does seem like that's kind of the, the gold that remains after the dross of whatever's happening in that moment.

Culturally. Um, that, that's what seems to, to remain for me. So. I think this is something that we can learn from Middle Eastern cultures.

They very much use food as a, as a blessing to people. Come in, partake of this food with me.

Yeah. Oh, uh, which is funny because, you know, the Bible is not a

Western book. You know, the Bible is an ancient near Eastern book. So it makes sense. Yeah. What's the difference?

Let's talk about what gets in the way of using food to be hospitable.

Let's start with this. Tell me what is the difference between, by the way, are your arms burning? Are you doing okay?

Hold on. No, I work out. I can tell you must eat a lot of protein because I ate so much cookie.

Um, I've been changing hands and you're doing great as we go. So what is the difference? Also, let me just say this, please.

I have a baby right now that weighs 25 pounds at 11 months. So that's a big baby.

This is a small microphone. Yeah. Yeah. You're, this is nothing for you. What is the difference between hospitality and entertaining?

Okay. Um, well there was an awesome, awesome piece some years ago by Jen Wilkin that, that answered that exact question.

I think I quoted it in the book. Um, because she was the first one that I remember saying hospitality versus entertaining.

Here's the difference. Um, and definitely rings true still these, you know, few years later.

Entertaining is not sustainable. You cannot entertain all the time. It's exhausting, especially not when you have four children under the age of 10, which

I do. Um, so here's what you have to do in order to get, to get where instead of entertaining people, you're being hospitable to people.

You have to narrow the gap between what you cook normally and do normally with just your family and what you do with other people.

Because with entertaining, there's a huge gap. You have to bring the bar either way up in order to get to that, that level or, um, well, there's just, there's a big gap and it bothers me.

Like it bothers me when I realized, oh, I haven't made fresh bread for my own family in weeks and weeks, but I'm willing to do the crusty sourdough for someone else.

That bothers me because my children are also people that I'm trying to be hospitable to in life.

Like, so you have to either bring the ordinary family meal up or bring the, the, the company meal down.

And hopefully maybe a little both. So they're kind of meeting in the middle where basically when you have somebody over, you just have somebody over and maybe the pot's a little bit bigger, you know, but it's like, it's the same pizza that you're making for your family on Friday, you just make more.

Uh, uh, as a pastor of a small church, we have people over a lot. And as a kindness to my wife, who is not particularly adept at cooking, and I wouldn't offend her by saying that she would laugh and heartily.

Amen. We have sandwiches when people come over. Uh, but here's how

I kick it up. Just one notch. I get the good meat from Publix, you know what I'm saying? And I get the hearty white bread, the, the, the thick stuff, that's right.

And so, uh, that's our way of like, okay, we're going to, we're going to be this is a company meal now and see,

I would love to be over at a person's house for that meal. Like I love the, you know, the fancy Publix Publix sandwich.

Oh, it's real fancy. It's for real, but we'll do like paper plates, you know, so that she doesn't have to do, because it's one thing if you're having people over to your house, like once a month, great.

Throw the doors wide open, make a big meal, bust out the China. I guess if people still do that. Um, but, uh, when you're,

I think, especially when your spiritual gift is hospitality among others, like if you're having people in your home twice a week, that's a lot, you know, so lower the bar and focus on good conversation over, you know, take whatever two other hours you were going to spend making that fantastic over the top, good meal and just make a decent meal, you know, a good meal that people can enjoy and then rest up and just be ready to have fun and hang.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, another book that I love, love, love, love that really people should go and buy first before they go to try to buy this book.

Um, Robert Capon's the supper of the lamb. It's it's. It was huge in, in writing this book, actually.

Um, I think you quote him pretty extensively. Yeah, I'm sure that I do. Yeah, I'm sure that I do. So he, he has this, these categories in his book about festal and ferial eating.

So that was my next question. Okay. Okay. So the festal is like when everybody gets their own, their own plated meal and there's, they've got their own cut of meat and these beautiful sides or whatever.

Like festal is, is the special occasion meal. It's the feast. And then ferial is all the other meals in between where you're using, you know, a bunch of carbs basically to fill people up, like you're feeding rice or whatever, but he has, so he has this recipe in the book, which

I've never actually made before, but it's, it's using one, maybe it's like one cut of lamb to feed eight people, four different times.

So it's basically where you're making stew, like at that level, you're just, you're making soup out of the bones or whatever.

So you make it go further. And the, but the idea is that it's cheaper, you know, ferial eating is cheaper because you're using a little meat to go a long way with other more normal, whatever, more normal ingredients.

But, but that's also part of this, this cycle, this cycles of eating thing. Like sometimes it's time for beans and rice and sometimes, and also my family is from Louisiana.

My, my parents, both of my parents are from Louisiana. So when we had people growing up, we, we had, we had red beans and rice.

We had gumbo. We had jambalaya. We had a duffe. Like these are big pots, huge pots where rice is a big ingredient and you have a little meat in there, but it's like, it's a stew.

And then when the rice is left over, you make boudin balls. Oh yeah. We never made it. We always bought it.

Um, so like, you know, Cajun cooking is a great example. I mean, every culture has this though.

Every culture has the huge meal that you make with, with starches and a little bit of meat and it goes a long way, you know, that cycle thing even makes me think about how, like you, you cannot enjoy a filet mignon three times a day.

You just can't do it. Yeah. If you eat enough hamburger helper, that filet mignon is going to hit different.

And all of life is like that. You talk to young people who get married and what they expect the marriage bed to be like, you know, every night fireworks.

It was like, I don't think it works like that. You know, the ratio is not right. And if it was, then what you're talking about isn't actually fireworks because it is the exception, you know, right.

The truly amazing thing can't be the constant thing. Yeah. Like nobody wants to go to a firework show every night of the week.

It would be very boring, but yeah, we always talk about it again. This is food, food and, and sexuality again, but yeah, but, um, somebody told us when we were getting married that sex is kind of like pizza.

Like sometimes it's really good pizza and sometimes it's just pizza, but it's always, it's always good.

Yeah. Even, you know, you never turn down pizza. Right. But, um, yeah, I mean,

I just think. We are, we're a feasting culture. Like we just really think that we ought to be able to enjoy the best of everything, whatever it is, every, every day, because we're, we're a pleasure culture, you know, the iPhone culture.

Like we just, our brains are used to pleasure at all times. And yeah. Uh, you talk about food, communicating love.

Is there something to the idea of like, it tastes better if it's made with love?

Is that real? Yes. Yes. I think it is true. Well, like, cause

I never had the love of a good mother. I'm going to read the bio.

Justin said he had read some, some, some biographical material on you. So I'll, I'll find that out later.

I guess, but, um, I've wet your appetite to dig into the book. The puns just keep coming.

Okay. Go ahead. So, um, Oh, what did you just say?

Yeah. Food made with love. Is it actually better? Yeah. So I, I've gone over to a friend's house and have them made me, make me a salad before and just realized, like,

I think someone making me a salad is my love language. Like, I think it actually, Macaroni or potato?

No. Oh, you mean a, this was, in this case, it was a green salad, but it was, it was just someone else made it, they made it specially for me and it tasted so much better.

It's just so much better than if I had made it. But tell me about the joy of doing something poorly.

Okay. So I am not a good cook.

I think I've said a few different times by nature. I am not a great cook. I am a very absent minded person.

Um, it was just a big joke growing up that no one, no one gave me cooking jobs to do in my house of seven kids because it was always smarter to give it to someone else.

Um, so when we got married, I knew I, I couldn't make very many things at all.

Thankfully, I have a husband who is great, a grateful eater. That's how you, the only way you could describe just until hey, is a grateful and enthusiastic eater who is so happy to have whatever you put in front of him.

Um, so he just thinks, oh, she's such a great cook, you know, from day one. And I could make like chicken, you know, and that was it.

Um, so a lot of, a lot of ladies don't know how to cook, you know, our mothers aren't, aren't necessarily teaching us to cook in this day and age.

So you kind of have to get, get curious in order to learn. Um, but we also have more resources than you can imagine learning to cook more, more ingredients available to us than you can imagine.

So it's all there. It's just a matter of like having the time and the motive, um, to learn, but you've got to be willing to mess up a lot as I have, you know, and you've got to be willing to not be the best at things because most of the people

I know can cook even now better than I can. Perfect is the enemy of good. Of good. That's right.

That's right. Um, talk to us about being a wine mom, about wine o 'clock.

Yeah. I thought that was one of the most useful, practically pastorally useful sections of the book. Yeah. So that's a live issue, man, even now that's a live issue because, you know, we're

Baptist church, um, in a, in a small town, we, we did not have any drinkers in the church probably 20 years ago.

Um, and then you have kind of the new reformed group of guys with beards who like beer and my husband's one of those guys.

Um, so he's, he enjoys beer and I, you know,

I had drinking issues really when I was, when I was having the food issues, I was having drinking issues too, so that was some baggage, you know, that I brought in and, um,

I just started noticing right a little while after I had kids that there's like an, there's like a, a meme culture with moms talking about wine, like, thank goodness it's wine o 'clock now.

Cause the kids, you know, driven me crazy all day and it just being this big joke, like sometimes

I drink in order to deal with motherhood. Um, so that's what I was writing.

I think that's the reason why I wanted to write about that in the book. Cause it just felt like this is kind of a, a thing, you know, you did an interesting little thought experiment.

You said, well, what, how would we feel if our husbands spoke about our families like that in relation to beer, you know, it's beer o 'clock.

Or maybe that wasn't your thought experiment. I do not remember. Okay. So then, sorry. Uh, yeah, maybe you should have had that in there, but I think,

I think we did that in our discussion just like, yeah, dad says, you know, it's five o 'clock and man, just my family driving me crazy.

I got to have a couple of beers before I can like really enjoy the night. You know, I think we'd, we'd be like, Hey man, that's not cool.

Yeah. That's that's off base. Yeah. Side note. It would be great. That's a great thought experiment for wives everywhere in all kinds of areas of life.

If we were, if we demanded. Like if, if our husbands were demanding things of us that we demand of our husbands publicly online all the time, that's just walk through that.

If you ever, if you ever get a chance, keep walking there. Cause that's a great experiment for women. Yeah. Equal side note weights and measures.

Yeah. Yeah. Just be fair. Just be fair. Um, but it is not legitimate for moms to talk about wine as like the therapy that gets them through their difficult life with kids.

I know it's hard to be at home with, with children, with small children. It is, it's hard work and it's exhausting and it's emotionally taxing and all those things.

I get it. Um, but wine cannot be the answer. And if we talk about it publicly, as if it is the answer as Christians, then we are, we're defaming the gospel.

We're pretending like Christ was not sufficient, um, to get us through this season, you know?

So that's, I think that's what got me wanting to, to write. But then also we have, we have a mixture in our church of, of abstainers and of imbibers.

And, um, I think I heard a helpful talk from Joe Rigney a few, from a few years ago where he was talking about a continuum, um, of basically legitimate positions as a

Christian, illegitimate positions and the illegitimate ones being people who think it's wrong to drink at all times in all places.

Um, he, he considered that to be not a legitimate Christian position based on the biblical texts.

I agree. Um, but I do have, you know, I have dear friends who do not partake and who live alongside those who partake in a very gracious way,

I would say. So, so mom, feel free to have a glass of wine, maybe even two, depending on how much you fill the glass.

Depending on how much you weigh. That's right. And whether or not you had food beforehand, what kind of wine it is, but do not talk about wine as if it is your savior.

Yeah, that's right. I thought that was very, very useful, sister. Thank you. Um, should we fast?

Yes. Okay. Yes, we should. Okay. You're going to have to help me cause I always struggle to do it.

Convince me now. Okay. Um, read John Piper's. I did. He convinced me already, but yeah.

Okay. So do you not, when you're reading that book, hunger to fast, like there is a real desire and a yearning for fasting.

I feel like reading when I'm in that book, but do it, do it.

So your food tastes better for no other reason, but cause it does. It's, it's an incredible, you know, sharpener of appetite.

If that's, that's a, that's a great reason, but, um, you know, do it to lay something out before him, do it to quiet, quieten your mind.

Um, yeah, it's a, it's a gift. The benefits are comprehensive.

We're holistic beings. And if you fast the right way for the right reasons for the right reward.

Uh, I think, yes, spiritually it will be beneficial and I don't think it's wrong also to expect to have emotional and physical benefits that go right along with that.

Like when you come off of a fast, a dry biscuit tastes amazing. Right.

You know, praise God for that. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a real pleasure. Breaking a fast is a real pleasure in, you know, in life, um, that you really can't get any other way.

There's no other, just like you can't ever have the first bite again. You can never have that break, that true break fast.

Um, I've just breakthroughs in prayer, breakthroughs in, um, in relational help.

Um, our elders recently, we're trying to think through a pretty big issue in our church and I recommended, did not demand, but recommended that they join me in fasting one day a week.

To just say to God, like, I, uh, I want to know your will about this thing more than I want food.

And for me, I want food a lot. That's saying something. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's hard for us to want things very much.

I just, I do think that a lot of our desires and needs are dimmed, are dimmed by our, um, probably by our phones as much as anything else.

But, um, I just think it is very difficult. You know, the story about the who, which

King was it that was supposed to ask for something and he didn't beat, he didn't beat enough times with the, with the.

The bundle of arrows or what was it? I'm not, I don't know. This is terrible. I think, I think that I had this even in the book possibly, but, um, um, the

King who he was, he was told to pound on God's door and he did it halfheartedly.

And he was condemned for that because he did not ask hard. And it is really hard for us to want anything, even like the salvation of a, of a beloved family member.

It is so hard for us to sustain our desires because we're so weak in our, in our, um, our ability to even focus on a thing for that long and fasting can help with that, you know, it can help with just wanting a thing enough to ask for it.

And, uh, you know, enough. Garrett Kell makes a really good point on this. When he talks about purity, he says like, when, when you learn to do things like fast and you reign in those desires and you exert godly discipline, you usually do it for like one narrow reason.

But what you find is that it kind of becomes comprehensive in your life. Like all of a sudden you find more will and discipline and all these other areas too.

Or you, you remember these, these appetites and these desires, these spiritual appetites and desires that you had forgotten, um, kind of become awakened again.

Yeah. All right. I guess it's time for another fast. Talk to us about the, the romance and disappointment of foreign cuisine.

Oh yeah. Um, yeah, so I'll always, always some

Lewis quote probably in every, everything that I've ever written. Um, so he, he talks about going to a foreign land and how, when you go, when you go somewhere it's romantic, you are, um, you don't, you don't know the culture, so everything is new and exciting for you.

And then at some point, if you ever go and settle there permanently, you have to deal with real life there and marriage being the same way you, you know, you, you kind of start thinking this one thing and then you, you have to settle down and actually get to know that person.

Um, so I think I just wanted to write a chapter about that, about kind of the longings, the, the, the way that food for us sometimes represents this longing for another land, this kind of desire for heaven.

Um, the way that we talk about when we went to Italy and had that perfect meal and that perfect little whole, you know, it's part of the story that we tell about our travels and it's part of the, it's part of the kind of exotic.

I can never have that meal again, kind of way that we talk about these things. And, um,

I guess I just wanted to, to connect that to the desire, the un, you know, the unfulfilled desire for, for God himself and for his heaven.

We have a barbecue restaurant here in Decatur, world famous, world famous, won many awards.

Uh, the guy who founded it invented Alabama white sauce. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay.

Even I've heard of that. A pretty big deal. And, uh, people here in Decatur are just kind of like blah about it.

There's a little bit of a barbecue rivalry in town between two different restaurants, Wits and Big Bob's, but visitors come and they're like,

I got to try Big Bob's like, I'm so excited. Let's do Big Bob's. And when that happens, the locals are like, you know, don't get your hopes up.

There's nothing right home about. Yeah. And I, that to me is the Italy thing. Familiarity, breeding contempt.

Basically. The people who are in Naples are not blown away by the focaccia bread that they're eating every day.

Right. Right. They're just like, this is bread, but for you, it's this big thing. Um, yeah, it's just, anyways,

I thought like, oh, there's like the foreign travel seeking that food out. But then there's also like a local expression of that.

It's like the reverse. It's the, we're not that impressed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but this, this definitely is another,

I think it's another good piece of evidence to me that, that food has this sort of cultural meaning and, um,

I don't know, we, I mean, we shouldn't be, we shouldn't, I don't think we should be as evangelistic and crazy about that as worldly people are because for them, food is like, like it's like art.

Food is the meaning of life. Art is the meaning of life. These are, these cultural things become kind of the worst, the object of worship.

Um, you know, you would take a, you would go on a, on a, um, oh, what's it called?

A pilgrimage, you know, to go see this, this thing or this show or this food from Naples and it's okay for us to, to love and enjoy and to see the kind of mystery and delight that there is in some of these things, but as Christians, we should definitely recognize what that's all about.

Like that is a stand in. And if you go to Naples and you do love what you try there, when you come back home, rejoice in what you have there.

Yes. Right. Cause that's a gift from God too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You end your book by talking about the lady tower.

Yeah. What's the lady tower? One of like five people who read the epilogue. People don't read forwards or epilogues.

They don't, but I, they're usually my favorite parts of a book. Yeah. Well, you're weird, but go ahead. So the way there's this tower in Hartsville that it's, it's a nuclear cooling tower, is that right?

Nuclear? Is that the right word? Yeah. You nailed it. I'm as opposed to nuclear. I'm almost as good as George Bush at saying words.

So it's a cooling tower. It's the size of a skyscraper out in the middle of farmland, just standing out there and it's, it was built in the eighties.

They were going to start up a huge operation there. And I think just the, the money didn't make sense.

They, it wasn't going to be, it wasn't going to financially make sense. They abandoned the work. Um, so it's still, it's still there.

I keep thinking that someone should, should buy that piece of land and open like a, a destination rock climbing tower, because I would,

I feel like you should climb this thing cause it looks like you should climb it. Um, but it's shaped like a, like a corset, like it's shaped like this.

And so we call it the lady tower in my house. Um, and at some point it just occurred to me that it reminds me of, it reminds me of the tower of Babel, obviously, cause that's what it looks like, but, um, it's just this work that somebody poured enormous amounts of energy and resources into that just got abandoned in the eighties at the drop of a hat.

And that is what our bodies are going to be. We, we w women who I was talking to, I guess.

Um, it resonated with me though, just as much. Right. So if you, if you are a man or a woman who builds, who builds your life around your body, you are building a tower.

That's going to be abandoned when you die. It's going to be, you're not going to be working on it anymore.

No one else will either. So, you know, just know that. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah. There's a lot more that could be said sister, but now we're going to get into the most important questions of the interview, the rapid fire questions like tea or coffee.

Oh, tea. Favorite sitcom. The office. There you go.

I have to whisper that cause I'm a pastor's wife. That's right. Yeah. Which is what she said. Okay.

Now, if you could be trapped on an island with only the, the preaching of one of these men, uh, and I'm not going to put your husband in there on purpose.

So you don't have to choose. Yeah, of course he's the answer. You want all of Justin's sermons, but you can't have them on this island.

Then we'd be on an island together. It'd be awesome. It'd be amazing. But that's not the way the cookie crumbles. Another food pun.

I am amazing. Dever, Piper, Keller Sproul, John McArthur. You can only have one of their sermons on the island for the rest of your life.

Who do you choose? Same question, but books.

Does it have to be one of their books? Oh, all of their books. You can have all of Devers, all of their entire works.

Okay. All of John and John McArthur. I wish

I could have a Puritan. That'd be nice. If I was on an island alone, I just feel like I would, I would need a lot of comfort.

It sounds lonely. So Piper, I guess Piper. Yeah. Cause he's just going to channel CS Lewis to you.

Yeah, that's right. All right. You're on an island. You can only have the entire corpus of Tolkien or Lewis.

Lewis. Easy choice. Right? Favorite fiction author. Probably Jane Austen.

Huge fan. Okay. Um, second George Elliott, a big fan of George Elliott.

What has he written? It's a she actually. Oh, the classic female George. Yeah. You know how it is.

That was wild of me to not know that. Uh, it was a pen name. I'm pretty sure. Um, what middle

March is what I really like by her. Mountains or beach mountains.

Champagne or wine. I don't know if I've ever legit had champagne.

That was like a good one. Yeah. So probably just wine. Favorite and least favorite candy.

I hate candy corn so much. So bad. Right. So, so much.

Um, I have a piece of dark chocolate every day of my life while I'm, while I'm feeding, while I'm teaching someone to read,

I'm telling you everyone in my house down to the, the two and three year olds, like 70, 72 % dark chocolate.

Exactly. Like that is the percentage that everyone likes. Is that, is that annoying? That's wild.

We like it. All right. With salt though. Ooh, smart move. Yeah. Panera has a kitchen sink cookie, which

I think one bite makes you a glutton, but they put a sea salt on top and it's just, it's always the right move.

So we have a, we have a cookie that I make for our coffee shop. We opened a coffee shop last year with some friends in our town and I make a salted toffee chocolate chip cookie every day for that shop, but it's like this big.

And I guess when you make them that much, you don't find yourself tempted to eat them. I don't want to cut into profits, man.

That's right. Uh, Android or iPhone? iPhone. Macaroni salad or potato salad?

Gross. Right. Foie gras? Wait, wait, let me say that. Let me try that again. Foie gras or escargot?

Never had either. Which one would you be more interested in trying? Um, I think escargot because in It Takes Two with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, I was told that it tastes like a balloon.

And I really would like to know if that's true. That's a real throwback right there. Wow. Uh, foie gras, fatty liver, you know, paste.

Or it can be turned into a paste. It's actually one of the main ingredients of a banh mi, which is like a Vietnamese sandwich with like pickled daikon.

And I never had that. It is great. Amazing. Yeah. Cause, cause instead of putting like a fatty base, like mayonnaise, you put the fatty liver.

Oh wow. It's like cooking with. Yeah. Bacon grease or something. Yeah. A little bit. If there, if I could get more restaurants to into Hartsville, if there was just a great

Asian, some kind of tie or something, anything, it would just be so great. But. It would get a Panda Express in there or something.

Yeah. Uh, night out or night in? In. Concert or football game?

Concert for sure. I don't actually know the rules of football. Oh, okay. But again, in.

Okay. Morning person or night owl? Morning. Burger King or McDonald's?

You have to choose. Yeah. McDonald's I guess. Okay. Mexican or Italian? Italian. Uh, burgers or barbecue?

Burgers. Chinese takeout or sushi? Sushi. Theonomy? Yes or no?

Sad no. I'm not allowed to make statements on podcasts about theonomy. Your husband will have to deal with it.

My husband says I'm not allowed to talk about it because I don't understand it well enough to talk about it. He's right. I don't, but I don't really like it.

Yeah. Uh, this won't be controversial then. He won't have to deal with this question. This will be good. Why are you laughing,

Luke? Okay. What race is your least favorite? I already heard this joke on your last podcast and, and it was hilarious, but I'm not going to be taking it.

Okay. All right. Cold or hot? Um, what is the context?

That's really important. You just got to take it from there. I would rather be hot than cold. Okay. We're talking about temperatures outside.

Rock or rap? Um, probably rap.

Favorite movie? Probably the princess pride.

Sorry. Is that annoying? Classical or jazz? Jazz. Uh, what hymn would you like to be sung at your funeral?

Um, I think it would be really funny.

When the roll is called up yonder. I think it would be a cute, a cute funeral song. When the roll is called up yonder.

Oh, it's like such a great country. It's like a country hymn. But when the roll is called up yonder,

I'll be there. Okay. It's a great funeral song. But you're thinking like that would be a good prank. When the roll is called up yonder.

I love that song and it would be great for a funeral. So yes. All right. It would be a little funny though.

So people, I think people would giggle a little. Yeah. Okay. I like that. I'm digging that. No one's ever asked me that question.

Well, there you go. Well, if you thought that question was a doozy, here you go. Last one. Last one. Best one.

How many holes does a straw have? Two. What's the answer?

What? We got, we got another person who doesn't understand how the concept of holes works.

All right. You have to either explain it or don't. It's up to you. Well, let me ask you this. I mean, your wedding ring, does it have one hole or two?

Okay. So it's one hole. Yeah. So a straw is one hole. Yeah. That's what a straw is. As long as we got there, that's fine.

All right. On that note, let me close in prayer. Lord, thank you for my sister Tilly.

Thank you for giving her not only the experience that led to this book, but also the gifting that allowed her to write this book.

We pray that you will bless this book to the glory of your name. We pray that many men and women will read it and profit from it and that they will think well about how to consume and prepare and use food for the glory of your name and for the edification of your church.

pray all this in the beautiful, glorious name of Jesus Christ, the true bread of life. Amen.