The healing power of pasta

When Pete was first diagnosed, our friends made us dinner every single Sunday night. I had just started my job as a pastor... there I said it. I'm the pastor of a Presbyterian Church. I started in September 2005 having just graduated from seminary. Pete was diagnosed in November 2005.

The day that he found out that he had MS, I was setting up for a luncheon at church and one of the members (who is a physician) was helping me out and before I knew it, I just blurted it out... "They found non-specific white matter on Pete's MRI. They say he has MS." Then I realized that I had just told her something that we weren't ready to tell anyone. I had made a promise to be the leader of this congregation and now I was about to tell one of them, "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have told you. I can't really ask you not to tell anyone, but please don't tell anyone just yet."

She, of course, understood completely. As a physician, she keeps secrets all the time. But not for her pastor. Her pastor is the one who keeps secrets for her.

We all need folks who can keep secrets for us. When we're struggling with a new diagnosis, who are the few - and I mean few - who hold our lives in confidence with grace? We were so fragile and unaware, shocked and disoriented. It's those who lovingly and gently hold our lives often help us find where to begin again.

That happened for us on Sunday nights when we had pasta with friends. Every week for nearly a year, I would finish up church, go home, change, and head to our friend's home. She made homemade sauce sometime during the afternoon and we would bring a bottle or two of wine. By the time the pasta was ready, we had four full conversations started with no end in sight. Drinking and eating and laughing... these will go down in my life as some of the best meals I've ever had.

Since then I've learned that my friend's brother was paralyzed as a little boy. Being around a chronic illness was not a threat to them. They were versed in illness and they were great at holding secrets.

It's not just secrets that are important when dealing with chronic illness. It's the need to talk about details... details from doctor's visits, from research or from our own unanswered questions. And one of the great things about girlfriends is that we love the play by play. When we tell a story, we want to know all of the details. Sunday night was when I got to tell my story - play by play.

My friend (the pasta sauce maker) and I are both pastors. On Sunday nights, we would go back and forth about our churches but intermingled in those conversations were bits of how Pete and I were doing with his diagnosis. Was there anything new to report? How is he feeling? How am I feeling? Do we have enough time together? Are we able to talk about it? Is the medication working?

That makes it sound like I was bombarded with questions... it wasn't like that. Have you ever been asked, "How are you?" by someone who really wanted to know?

Our friends asked us every Sunday night.

Sometimes I felt like I was a broken record... I only talked about Pete's illness. How boring, How horrible for those who had to listen to me week after week. But it wasn't like that on Sundays. Our friends wanted to know. They asked questions and stuck around for whatever words we had. And as they kept filling our plates with pasta and sauce, we gorged on the feast of friendship.