tiny little budget. With my tiny little kids who, by the way, proved to be incredible at pouring water and handing out napkins.
I will never forget shutting the door after my last guest left. I sat on the floor and cried. Understatement. I sobbed like a baby. But this wasn’t the same sobbing with despair I had done night after night sitting alone in my car. This was different. That Wednesday night I sobbed like a broken little girl who had just experienced her first glimmer of healing. There was something so powerful, so magical and wonderful—and above all, peaceful—about the fact that I could feed all those people. I had been convinced that I had nothing to give, yet when I gave the little that I had, the results were something so much bigger than I ever could have expected.
The following day I started hearing from people who had come to my Wednesday Night Dinner. These people were so thankful, so happy. They told me how much they enjoyed my cooking, how nice it was to eat a homemade meal. Some told me they had just moved to town a few weeks before and that the dinner made them feel less homesick.
And that right there was a turning point for me. I don’t remember ever feeling completely hopeless after that. Sure, I felt sad at times, angry and scared, but I didn’t feel defeated or desperate. Because for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel useless. Even when I thought I had nothing, I still had something to offer. I, Kristina, have something to offer. I, Kristina, am worth something. Understatement.
It would have been easy to take that incredible feeling I had after the first Wednesday Night Dinner and assume all would now go well for me. But I knew that a turning point doesn’t equal a onetime fix. As I continued with Wednesday Night Dinners, friends would often drop off ingredients to make sure I could afford to continue hosting those evenings. People started bringing salads and sides to round out the single giant pot of rice or pasta or potatoes I was serving that night, and executives in three-piece suits rubbed elbows with college students and other people struggling even more than I’d felt I was. There were so many interesting, open hearts walking through my door, and I was feeding them.
The people closest to me knew that these dinners were much more about me helping myself than me helping others. I needed those days of cooking for strangers more than those strangers needed my cooking. I needed the weekly reminder that I don’t need to have a lot to give a lot, and that it takes only a small helping to feed the soul. In this case, my soul.
We humans crave a quick fix to our problems. But going from hating your life to tolerating your life to feeling like your life is good or maybe even amazing doesn’t happen overnight. It happens slowly. Because life is cruel that way. Or maybe because our patience needs to be tested at every turn. Or maybe, just maybe, because the things we get quickly and easily carry less significance. And not as many lessons. And without lessons, just as quickly as we make some progress, we’re right back to where we started. Clueless and lost.
I remember in my hardest days being told that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That’s super cute on a fridge magnet or a key chain, but when I was deep in my misery, a beautiful quote like that from a well-intentioned friend, which under normal circumstances would have encouraged me and given me hope, sounded dismal and empty. It was cheesy gibberish that didn’t apply to someone like me. Misery can be deafening. It’s like wearing earmuffs. Misery earmuffs. You’re listening hard for encouragement, but it all sounds like nonsense that definitely wouldn’t work for you.
Escaping from complete misery is not like driving through a straight, dark tunnel toward the light waiting to embrace you at the end. It feels more like crawling neck-deep in muck through the darkest, scariest, muddiest bat-filled cave of your nightmares with so many twists and turns that the light is rarely visible at all. And then continually choosing to search for the light, believing against all evidence