The day after the miscarriage, I opened the front door to find my mother-in-law standing on our doorstep. She held out a box of caramel rolls from the bakery. She looked into my eyes and spoke three true sentences.

“I know. It is terrible. You will always feel like you never got to meet your third child.”

I took the cardboard box from her hands and started to weep. Because she knew exactly how it felt. Because she is a woman who knows body and soul need to be fed.

. . .

I have known many people like this, who know how to bake their prayers.

They bring pies to funerals and lasagna to new parents. They cook dinners for friends going through chemo. They rally the meal train when someone gets a devastating diagnosis.

They drop off their offerings in secret, ring the doorbell, and run back to the car, because they know that sometimes we need to be fed and loved in silence.

Or they show up exactly when they said they would come, pull up a chair, and sit down to listen, because they know that comfort means presence.

They know there is no right or wrong way to feed the hungry.

There is only the gift of yourself in love.

. . .

Plenty of people have baked their prayers for us.

Baby after baby, casserole after casserole. Friends filled our fridge and freezer. My mom came to visit faithfully after every birth, and our kitchen became ground zero for her love.

I remember a meal she cooked for me after each baby was born, my mouth watering even now to taste the memories. Soft pasta with sautéed zucchini and herbs, fresh from the August garden. A flaky tomato tart as beautiful as it was delicious. Buttery scrambled eggs I scarfed down with the ravenous hunger of a newly nursing mom.

She brought me plates of fruit and cheese as I rested in bed. Grapes so cold they popped in my mouth. Sharp cheddar that melted on my tongue. With religious devotion, she kept the huge water bottle on my nightstand filled with ice, sweating in the sun as I slurped and nursed.

Plates of prayers and cups of care. Love in every bite and sip.

. . .

Then there was the terrible season. When we lost our twins after birth, and scores of friends and family—even total strangers—fed us for months.

All I wanted was to have my daughters back. I wanted the regular hard of post-partum days — soreness, sleeplessness, hormonal swings — but I wanted it with my babies in my arms. Grief swallowed up my appetite, and I didn’t want to eat. Never one to miss a meal, I now pushed my fork around my plate to make everyone think I’d nibbled.

But the prayers kept showing up, regular and relentless, pushing me to keep going, pulling me back to life.

Every time I tugged open the fridge door, strange containers of Tupperware greeted me, Post-its on top scribbled with baking instructions and notes of love. We never had to think about cooking dinner or meal planning. All we had to do was take what we received.

College roommates across the country sent us meals by mail. (Prayers don’t have to be home-baked; they can be flown, too.)

The moms’ group at church brought a flurry of gift cards for pizza, groceries, and ice cream for the kids. (They taught me that you can bake or buy with love, and all this is prayer.)

A reader I had never met sent us a batch of delicious soup and a pan of heavenly brownies. (Think of all those church ladies who cook for funerals: they don’t need to know the ones they serve with love.)

A health-nut friend kept baking us muffins for weeks. Every time I ate one, alone in the kitchen, the only small prayer I could whisper was thank you as I chewed.

All their love helped heal me, body and soul.

. . .

Scripture tells this same story over and over again.

Jesus took loaves and fishes from a child and fed a feast to the crowds. He broke bread and poured wine and said this is my body, this is my blood. He fed His friends baked fish for breakfast on the morning after He rose.

The story of Jesus is the story of how to love people in the flesh. Because the body is more than the vessel that carries us through life. Bodies bear the sacred life that God has given us.

Once Jesus told a story about a woman baking: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Matthew 13:33 NRSVUE).

A whole parable in a single sentence, honoring the holiness of women’s work. But the surprising truth, hidden like leaven in the dough, is found in the recipe.

Back in biblical times, “three measures of flour” would have been huge: about fifty pounds of flour, enough to make sixty or seventy loaves. The woman in the parable is not just baking for her family or friends: she’s feeding the whole neighborhood.

So whenever you join a meal train, bake a casserole, send a gift card, cook for a friend, or serve dinner to a stranger, never doubt the holiness of your work. You are baking your prayers. You are feeding the hungry. You are caring for God’s beloved, in body and soul.

You are making God’s kingdom come.

For more of Laura’s writing, read her essays on finding God in daily life at The Holy Labor or follow her reflections on surviving cancer at The Compassion Brigade.