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| Source: spoonfoundation.org via TheChef/TheLuckyWife on Pinterest |
You see the pictures, you see the commercials on TV: “For only $.99 a day you can feed a hungry child”. I always thought…”Okay…let’s go to another country, pick out the cutest kid you can find in auditions, smear some dirt on her face, put her in raggedy clothes and go on camera and asked for money, the perfect way to melt hearts and open wallets.
Now before you get all offended, that was then. This is now. I have always known that there are children hurting and hungry. I believe in what the Bible says in that we are charged to “take care of widows and orphans”. So in the words of a local radio comedian…”Let me preach on it.”
Seeing a hungry kid, or more importantly, a malnourished kid on TV or elsewhere hits a little closer to home since January 2008. That the was time we completed the adoption of our son from Vietnam. Our beautiful, healthy, funny, adorable son, when our adoption was finalized, had recently been diagnosed with 3rd degree malnourishment and failure to thrive. Picking up an orphan who weighs only 14lbs at 14 months, who was not crawling, who could not sit up without support, who was still on a liquid diet and was recovering from pneumonia for the second time in a year, and feeling as though you are picking up a toy doll…”because there was just nothing there”….will change your outlook and break your heart.
Within a few weeks of coming home, he was crawling, and within in a few months we had him on solid food. By 18 months, he was walking. All it took was attention and nurturing (with a lot of praying and patience). All it took was nourishment. Now we are not out of the woods yet, almost 4 years later. Though he is healthy, meal times are still often hard. We still deal with issues like “indifference to eating”, fluctuating appetites and so forth. But I’ll take it. We have a happy, well adjusted, healthy son…who loves life.
Our family loves to eat, loves food and everything surrounding it as you can probably tell. We also have recently felt a desire to give back and help other kids enjoy eating and food as well. We feel that everything we own, every breath we take, every ability we are given comes from God. He is loaning it to us temporarily and is sitting back watching and waiting to see what we will do with it. The old saying goes, “there are no athiests in foxholes”. This scenario came true for us in 2002. I was in the middle of a career change, we were moving to another state for me to go to Culinary School, we had no money, our plans were full of holes, and needless to say, we were stressed. I made a promise to God that if things worked out and all the doors got opened to make the career move work that some day I would honor Him with the new talent I was cultivating. And eight years later, I have.
You may have noticed that we have started a recipe series called, “The Feast of the Ages”. It is our attempt to bring our faith and our passion for food together in hopes of winning people to Christ and “increasing the attendance” a little at the Feast yet to come. Along with this, we have decided to contribute part of any funds we generate off our blog through advertisements, our Amazon store and other avenues to a wonderful organization called the SPOON Foundation.
We have just recently become aware of the work of the SPOON Foundation through an Adoption Learning Partners webinar, Food for Thought, about the impact of poor nutrition on early development. The Presenter, Dr. Dana Johnson, is a SPOON Foundation Board member. The information provided in the webinar provided depth of insight into the kinds of early experiences our son may have had that contributed to his malnourishment and current approach with food. If we can help other children get a better and healthier start than he and countless other children have had, then we know we have turned the struggles he had to endure into something good and positive.
We are in touch with the SPOON Foundation to get additional information and will provide more details as we have them. We’d like to thank you, our readers, for joining us in this journey, and we appreciate the feedback you leave through comments or on Facebook.
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If you have a moment, be sure to check out our Christmas series, which will begin in September, and how you can be involved (you do not have to have a blog):
About the Author
Raised in eastern North Carolina, The Chef has always most loved southern cuisine. While working for a top resort just after finishing Culinary School at Johnson and Wales University, when they still had a campus located in Charleston, South Carolina, he began learning about Gullah cuisine and enjoys it as well. He's a family man and country boy at heart, loves hunting and is a big fan of the John Boy and Billy Big Show and the Carolina Panthers.
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