This past December, as I stared down the social distancing winter we’re all in the middle of, I knew I had to take up a hobby. Sure, we still have a house that’s not fully decorated or furnished, but I needed a creative outlet where I could just play. Something with very little risk, and very little cost.

So at the beginning of January, I started cultivating my first sourdough starter. I know it was very spring 2020 of me. But while everyone else was making bread during the first phase of the pandemic, we were buying our house. Now it’s my turn to bake bread.

This isn’t my first foray into bread baking. If you’ve been following me for a while you know baking bread is already one of my favorite pastimes. Only, I’ve done a lot less of it since discovering my body does better without gluten. And I’ve never tried making sourdough before.

I am making sourdough bread this winter and it’s been reminding me of a truth about life we so often deny.

While my social feeds filled with people’s bread baking journeys last spring I realized how much I missed it. Then recently, I read something that said sourdough bread digests better. So, here I am making sourdough bread this winter and it’s been reminding me of a truth about life we so often deny.

Each morning, I remove the towel covering my sourdough starter. I peer in and miraculously, bubbles cover its surface. I poke my nose into the jar to see if it smells like stinky cheese the way the bread book I’m following says it will. But instead all I smell is that yeasty aroma that reminds me of wine cellars and a few distilleries we’ve toured.

After weighing it to see how much mass it still has after the normal—what I assume is—evaporation of water, I calculate how much to keep. Twenty percent is all the bread book tells me to reserve. The remaining eighty must be thrown away. It feels wrong to throw out so much.

But all the same, I scoop out the stringy, sticky, bubbly glob of goo, weighing it as I go to make sure I’ve kept enough. After a month and two attempts, I still can’t believe I have cultivated living, wild yeast in my kitchen. That I even made four delicious, hole-filled loaves of bread out of nothing but flour, water, and a little salt. But this is what is most amazing to me:

After losing so much each day—eighty percent of it’s mass—my sourdough starter keeps giving.

Even after using it to make bread dough, there it is again, the next day—bubbling over in its jar. Each day, before I feed it, it loses at least as much as it gains. Yet it keeps on living. It keeps on giving.

Though our grief over what we’re missing, what we’ve lost, and what we’re waiting for—is very real, our story isn’t done yet.

This past year, many of us have lost more than we can name. Some of us have even lost things we didn’t know we could lose. But my sourdough starter keeps reminding me that life can keep growing—and even thriving—in a season of loss. 

Though our grief over what we’re missing, what we’ve lost, and what we’re waiting for—is very real, our story isn’t done yet. And this season, our lives don’t have to lie fallow, waiting for our world to return to normal. We can still continue to grow and give in the midst of this time.

The only things we need right now are the same things my sourdough starter needs: Patience to develop and grow. And to continue to be fed the right way, to remain strong.

Though loss always makes us feel weak, we have been created to persevere.

We need to have patience with ourselves (and the world), while we’re on this journey. We also need to continue to care for and feed ourselves—mind, body, and soul—so that we may continue to grow and give in this trying time. Though loss always makes us feel weak, we have been created to persevere.

You, my friend, are stronger than you know.

Where do you feel like giving up?

How do you need to take care of yourself, so you can continue on this journey?

Wishing you had started 2021 with more focus, but feeling like it’s too late to make any changes? It’s not! Sign up for my email list and get my FREE Start Here 2021—a guide to help you find focus and strength for the New Year. 

Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash