I’m having a pretending picnic—actually I have them often. To many people who are now single, mealtimes are the loneliest time of the day. Most of our lives are spent working to buy meals, preparing meals, anticipating meals, eating meals and cleaning up after meals. You don’t think much about it until there are so few meals to prepare.
I tend to make a big meal and divide it into little plastic containers that get popped in the freezer for down the road. Somehow they lose their appeal in the process of freezing and microwaving, but they feed the body, if not the soul. On TV they often show someone sitting down alone with lit candles and linen napkins on the side of their plates. Not me. I have a pink plastic tray with sections on it on which I place my microwaved plate, a glass of milk and an orange and that’s it. I carry it into the living room and there in the easy chair by the window, I watch the trees, the birds and an occasional car. It is as close as I can get to a picnic and I don’t feel alone as the world is there, just outside my windowpane.
Sometimes we just have to adapt to circumstances. The last three weeks I have had sciatica. (I can already feel the compassion flowing from those who have had it and are reading this.) It is painful, often cripplingly painful. So for three weeks I have spent a lot of time sitting at the window (when not doing light exercises and drinking cups of coffee) and I have found a lot of religious programming on the TV. It isn’t quite my way of worshipping but there is always some sort of message if I can get past the praise chorus’s music that does little for me, or the rituals that the Catholic programming sometimes has. Actually I watched a Catholic program that was so evangelical I kept re-checking to see that it was Catholic. Shows you how far off base you can be about other Christians at times. I think God wanted me there, stretching my mind and my faith. He knew I needed a little lifting of my rather ridged ideas about a few things.
Picnics in the park on a sunny spring afternoon can be enlightening, but so can picnics in the winter, with a pink plastic tray and a wide expanse of window framing God’s creation. And with Him and His creation right before you, it is a meal not eaten alone.
