Joy Attmore shares her story.

Joy Attmore

Historically, the kitchen has been a place of lack and a source of anxiety for me; cupboards full of disappointment and a fridge revealing systems of control. As an adult, branching out on my own and discovering a world where I am now in charge, I delight in cookery books, full pantries and feeding my nearest and dearest.

I grew from a single woman living in community with my friends, to falling in love, moving continents and marrying a wonderful man with a fierce appetite. The kitchen becomes a playground each day as I experiment with recipes, flavours and ingredients for us both to delight in. It has become the room in the house where I now take charge.

A couple of weeks ago I awoke from a vivid dream and tried to shake the last scene from my mind. My husband had been confronting me, telling me that I was hiding things from him. My emotions felt a little panicky as my waking brain processed this and connected it with the real world. I didn't want the dream to be right, to be true.

Successfully, I managed to sweep the lingering memories of slumber under the carpet and let life continue, undisrupted by this nighttime dialogue. That is, until last weekend. Last Saturday I found myself having a 'crazy' moment when my husband discovered a bottle of frankincense oil, that I had been safekeeping for later use, and began dousing it on his skin. It bothered me. He had found something that I wasn't yet ready for him to use, and he was using it in a way that I hadn't intended for him to do. So I got stressed out.

I knew even as I reacted that it wasn't really about the oil and I wasn't really being rational. My buttons were being pushed and we both knew it.

Later that day I sat down with Phillip and told him the real story. I let out the truths that I'd been hiding and acknowledged my broken areas, allowing vulnerability to shape our conversation into something beautiful and healing.

I was scared of running out, not having enough, being in lack or feeling underfed, so I would hide things, ration food, control what came in and what went out.

And the discovery of a little bottle of oil was unravelling it all.

I had a choice to make in that moment, either I could keep things in secret, under a mask of control, or I could come out of hiding and risk losing it all.

I chose truth. I chose vulnerability and to trust my husband with the deeper layers of my heart.

In choosing honesty I gained freedom and the keys to keeping it; promises which I can engrave on my heart and mind in place of the lies I'd been believing. This excerpt, taken from the book of Philippians in the Bible, is now written on a piece of slate that is hung in our apartment kitchen. Every time I look at it and read through its words of life, I am reminded that anxiety has no place in our home for there is more than enough!

'Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.' Philippians 4:6-7