Hunger

I have a favorite book, Women, Food, and God. Whenever I see a copy at a thrift store, I have to buy it. I can’t leave it on the shelf. I purchase it for $99 cents or just a little over a dollar, walking out the store with a Cheshire Cat grin on my face because I know I have something special in my hands that I get to unwrap again.

It’s the message in those pages that rings of truth to me, so for a long time, I carried a copy of it wherever I went and nibbled on it throughout the day like a bag of peanuts.

All of Geneen Roth’s writing is about hunger. She is actually a writer whose many articles and publications are focused on binge eating and dieting, weight loss and weight gain. Women, Food and God is her only book where her focus stretches and leans in the direction of faith.

All her books talk about the struggles of being human, being a woman, being enough, so it only makes sense that some mention of God would eventually appear. I have come to find out that the search for God may in fact be our biggest and deepest craving.

It starts in that moment when we feel empty. An empty belly, an empty mind, an empty moment in our day. Before the clock strikes another minute, we have run to the shed, the pantry, grabbed our iPhone, cereal bar, to do list, and with tool in hand began the routine of filling the hole. 

According to Geneen, that space within us that is so unsettling, so uncomfortable, that we squirm and wiggle our way out like toddlers, can only be filled by God. What if you don’t believe in God? Then how about if it was filled with all things that are joyful and uplifting to you. 

It’s a choice. It’s our choice to look at and examine what we put in our mouths and what we fill up our days with. This singular decision could change a life.

I love the sentence on the cover of her book, just underneath the title and cover picture;

An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything.

It’s not what I’m eating so much but why I’m eating. Not where I’m going but why I’m going anywhere at all? And at the end of the meal or the shopping spree am I satisfied, nourished, fed. 

I’m alone now, In the dark of night writing on my phone. Once I turn this off, it will be me with my thoughts. If I resist the many urges that will pop up in my head, maybe something else will arrive and I will find peace. Maybe pleasure. Maybe satisfaction. Maybe God.

Victoria