Week 73: Passions
Camp, pizza and doing what you love…
Each Sunday, my wife and I cook and eat a meal together — intentionally. Every Friday, I’ll be sharing our experience here in this space. I want to see the growth that will come in our marriage because of this. I hope you enjoy our story. You can find last week’s post here.
I love to write. It’s one of the reasons we started this publication. We found a way to bring together two of our passions — writing and cooking — in a way that hopefully provides value to other people. I’ll leave that last part for you to decide, but the first part of that sentence has been so powerful for Sarah and me. Diving into our passions — together.
But sometimes, even with our passions, we go through dry periods. Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean it will always be easy. In fact, in my experience, it’s exactly those passions that require of us our greatest effort. We give it, because it’s worth it.
In some ways, the last few weeks have been a “dry period” for me when it comes to Cooking With Sarah. My passion for it hasn’t changed. Hopefully the quality hasn’t changed either. But again, I’ll leave that for you to decide. But, you may have noticed that I went through a stretch of posts coming on Saturday rather than Friday. That is never my intention, and my record of publishing every Friday has been very consistent. But not that last three weeks. Two of those weeks were directly tied to another passion — camp. Last week, I had the entire post written but I forgot to hit that sneaky “Publish” button. Things happen.
But this week, I want to focus on how we come back to our passions. I saw this in a clear way just a few days ago. I had been struggling to write. I felt mentally constipated with all these thoughts swirling in my head. But I just hadn’t written anything down for a while. That’s when Sarah, in all her wonderful wisdom, gave me the prodding I needed.
“Write! Just write! You’re going to sit down, right now, and write!”
And so I did, and it felt so good! I was reminded of why I love writing so much. Sometimes, we need that prodding. This week’s story is about diving back into passions. They’re a passion for a reason. Sometimes, like on this particular occasion, we’ve gone away from them to pursue another passion for a time. That’s okay! Dry periods aren’t always a negative thing. But the coming back is so important. Ours involved pizza, so it was even that much better…
We woke up late Sunday morning, still tired from the week at camp. Camp is fantastic. It’s my favorite place, and I truly mean that. It is so special to Sarah and me. But the week of camp is still exhausting. It’s a different feeling of exhaustion, though. There’s a great deal of satisfaction knowing that you put forth a great deal of effort towards something that is so vitally important to you. But the same question always comes up…
…now what?
For us, being a Sunday meant that we could dive right back into another passion — Cooking With Sarah. Some old college friends were getting together later that night, and I was going to meet them for dinner. So we decided to make lunch. On the menu? Sarah’s favorite food — pizza.
As is usually the case, I went to the store to get the items we needed for the recipe. I found a handy gluten-free crust back in the gluten-free section. (Shout out to Meijer for having an awesome gluten-free section!) My mouth began to water as I checked off each ingredient. Bacon. Pineapple. Ham. Cheese. Sauce.
Yum!
I got home, and we went about putting everything together. It was so nice to be back in the full routine. Making a meal on Sunday together. As I stood next to my wife placing the ingredients on the pizza, I remembered why this was our passion. Togetherness. Intention.
I love my wife, and I love cooking With her on Sundays.
We put the pizza in the oven, and then we waited. As I’ve said before, I’m not always the most patient person. This is usually the toughest part of cooking for me. Waiting until the meal is ready. But, something I’ve learned, especially in adult life, is that waiting is often important. We’re so used to getting everything instantly these days that sometimes we forget the joy of something longed for.
When that pizza finally came out of the oven, I sure felt the joy! The cheese was perfectly melted, and the crust was just right. We each took a bite and let out an audible “yum!”
It felt good to be back.
