We bring dinner to the women the last Monday of every month. We stand in the kitchen,  one of them asks the blessing, and then we sit down together at a big table in a small room. We eat and talk. Then we go. It’s just an hour, no big deal. I don’t always sign up. Sometimes I give in to my introvert/hermit ways. But after what happened last week, I’ll go every chance I get.

Since Nancy was bringing ham, I brought sweet potato casserole. (They go great together. Plus, I love a vegetable that can double as dessert.) We also had a marinated vegetable salad, cookies and brownies, tea, (sweet and unsweet,) and coke, (diet and regular.) And Kathy made her sourdough bread.

Oh, that bread!

Kathy’s been making it for forty years, with the same starter! Thirty some years ago, when our kids were little, she gave me some, and for a year or two it bubbled and foamed in a jar on my kitchen counter, smelling like sweetness and beer. Like a pet, I had to feed it, and if I didn’t use it in bread or pancakes or cinnamon rolls, I’d have to pour some off so it wouldn’t take over my kitchen. Kathy made it with flour and water, but there were invisible things in there too—the wild yeast and bacteria naturally found in the flour, in the water, on our hands, and in the jar. Sourdough starter is a living thing!

Maybe I’m weird but I LOVE how its wild yeast and bacteria are happy partners. How they slurp up the flour, splitting it into little sugar molecules they can eat, making acid that gives the bread its tang and bubbles of carbon dioxide that make it rise, rise, rise. The yeast makes ethanol, too, in which the bacteria is happy to bathe as it pre-digests the gluten. Thanks, bacteria, for giving our intestines less work to do!

I did not share this talk of happy yeast and bathing bacteria and intestines with the women. They’d think I was strange or trying to teach them useless stuff. They’ve got more than enough to think about. Getting their kids back. Working hard at their jobs. Learning to budget. Going to Bible study. Doing chores around the house.

When we arrived with dinner, they seemed surprised to see us. “We didn’t know you were coming,” Amy* said. (*Not her real name.) “You know, being Memorial Day. We…we just thought you’d be with your own families, doing cookouts.” I tried not to glance at the window, at the steady stream of rain. Maybe we shouldn’t have come. Maybe they needed to laze around on a holiday. “Not that we don’t appreciate it,” she said. “This meal’s delicious!”

“How do you do all this?” Sharon* said. “When do you ladies get off work?”

We looked at each other. “We’re old,” someone said. “We’re retired.”

I felt a little embarrassed, admitting it. These women were working so hard, some over hot stoves in restaurants, some changing beds and scrubbing bathrooms in hotels. Several women had two jobs or more, trying to save enough to get their own place once they graduate from the program. To bring their children home—children they never stopped loving while they were incarcerated. They’d showed us pictures, babies toddling around, kids playing in sprinklers, young adults getting ready for prom.

The women were so worn out, they didn’t have much to say.

Sylvia* finally spoke up. “The flowers are pretty. Where’d they come from?” Cindy said she cut them from her yard. “Well, it looks like a fairy bouquet.” No one said anything for a while.

I am uncomfortable with silence.

“Speaking of fairies,” I said, which probably made everybody nervous. I got out my phone and showed them pictures of little girls dressed up like fairies. I’d taken the pics as I walked behind them downtown on Saturday. “They were heading to a parade,” I said. “I didn’t want to act like a creeper, taking photos of them from behind, but they were so beautiful, I couldn’t help it. I think they saw me, though.” I took a bite of ham. “And later, I accidentally ended up in the public bathroom with them before the parade started, so that was weird.” Why did I say that? I wanted to share a funny moment, and they laughed. Probably they were just being nice.

We left a little early so they could rest. I’d told them not to wash my dish, but someone sneaked in the kitchen and washed it anyway.

On Saturday, Eileen* threw a kitchen shower for Donna*. Eileen and Donna graduated from the program last year and Donna just got the keys to a rental home. Kathy and I were happy to attend. I’d always enjoyed Eileen. I remembered how a year ago, Eileen loved Kathy’s bread so much that Kathy gave her some starter and recipes, just like she’d done for me.

The shower was so fun. Eileen and her mom made a bunch of delicious food— pineapple and cream cheese sandwiches, pigs-in-blankets, chips and dip, a veggie tray, even a banana pudding. Two friends from the program came, along with three other women I didn’t know, excited to celebrate this big step in Donna’s life. We hung tinsel streamers over the door, so when you walked through, you felt like a star, and we laughed around the table about dogs and bad haircuts that make your head look like a Q-tip, and neighbors and the price of toilet paper. Donna got lots of things she needed, necessities like cleaning solution, paper products, boxed brownies and cornbread, kitchen linens, baskets, a casserole dish. But the gifts and the food weren’t even the best part.

The best part happened near the end, when Eileen stood in front of everyone and told Donna how proud she was of her. “I want to read some scripture that’s perfect for you. James 1:2-4.”

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

“Donna, your perseverance is amazing,” Eileen said. She turned to us. “It really is. Sure, sometimes after work she’d climb in the van and grumble a minute, but she never stayed like that. She was committed to staying positive, hanging in there, working hard. She knew she’d get there. And she did!”

After it was over, we took pictures. Donna hugged each of us, thanked us at least five times, and told us how much it meant to her that we came.

“What a beautiful shower,” I said to Eileen’s mother as we cleaned up the table.

She nodded and smiled. “I’m so proud of my daughter.” She grabbed Donna’s elbow. “And my other daughter.”

As I drove home, I felt like a big emotional lump of dough, joy bubbling up, making me rise rise rise! How lucky I was to get a taste of their stories–the wild yeast of their lives– and to share a little taste of mine. How fortunate to be served and buoyed and encouraged by those women, when I thought I was the one who’d come to serve.

Holy moments, for sure.