A Story of Simple Blessings

I am happy to introduce to you a inspirational story written by Paula Deen herself.  This is the original full article written for Guideposts magazine. Michael Geary from Attention Usa, a pr company for Guideposts.com contacted me in hopes that I would share this wonderful story with you, my readers.  I quickly responded back and told him I would be honored to share this sweet story of love. I loved this story because I, like many of you, could relate to this story. It makes you remember that true love blossoms from friendship, and shared interests. It also makes you see that when you really need someone in your life, they will show up one way or another. It also makes you realize, that even for someone with stylists, and the ability to be as beautiful as she can be everyday, her true love fell for the real woman, not the made up beauty we see on television and in print. This is the direct link to the article on  Guideposts.com

Loneliness? Y’all might not think that’s a problem for someone like me, but you’d be surprised. I might seem happy as a lark on my Food Network series, Paula’s Home Cooking (and I am).

Down here at the restaurant I run, I seem to know half the world that walks in for some good southern cookin’. They are friends. They kept me in business when I hardly had a cent.

But you can be the life of the party, with everybody knowing your name, and still feel the ache of loneliness. I guess it happens to all of us at one time or another. In my case, the solution to my loneliness was the most incredible answer to prayer I ever got.

It really hit me a couple years back right in the middle of one of the most exciting periods of my life. Things had finally taken off. The restaurant was filled night after night, my two cookbooks were doing well and I was hard at work on a new one.

I was launching my own TV show and I’d even let myself splurge and buy a sleek 27-foot motorboat, although I didn’t know much about piloting it.

I had my own dream house looking out over the sky-blue water and the green palm-drenched islands on the horizon. I could watch the dolphins play. But when I was home with just my two shih tzus, Sam and Otis, I didn’t enjoy it. I tell you, all that success just left me feeling lonesome.

Pray, Paula, pray, I thought. I know about prayer. Prayer has been as big a part of my life as food. You can pray anytime, even when you cook. You can hold a person’s name in your head as you stir a sauce or chop a tomato or flip a piece of chicken in a frying pan. You can ask for God’s help while you sift, salt and season.

Prayer is what got me through the death of my parents when I was only 19. Prayer was about all I had when my marriage failed, leaving me with two boys to take care of. So why couldn’t I pray now?

Day after day, I’d sit in front of my computer, working on the book. I felt so isolated. I’d look out at that boat bobbing at the dock and just shake my head. What had I been thinking?

I searched for the right words to pray. I knew I had plenty to be thankful for. After years of struggle I could surely count my blessings. I could thank God for my boys, Jamie and Bobby, who had helped me in my business from the day I started out with the little catering company, which I called “The Bag Lady,” ran out of my kitchen.

The boys ran all over town delivering my meals. They were my busboys, hosts and waiters. Their girlfriends helped too. Bless me, how they helped!

But when I closed my eyes, I would also think of all the people who were gone. My mother and my daddy. My uncle George. My grandmother, who really taught me all the principles of good southern cookin’. It’s a hand-me-down art.

She started out with a little hot dog stand in Hapeville, Georgia, and her cooking did so well she moved up to country steak and creamed potatoes. The staples of southern food are butter, sugar, salt, pepper, hot sauce, vinegar, ham hocks and, to put it bluntly…fat! It’s comfort food. Pretty easy to love.

The dishes don’t require split-second timing and they don’t fall. And your kids don’t have to acquire a taste for it, ’cause we just heap good food on a plate and start eating.

Maybe what I needed was somebody I could cook for, all on my own. I had a vision of my life as a big pie, with 95 percent of that going toward work and five percent left for family.

Something was out of whack. Sure, I needed to get out and meet people. But how was I going to do that? I wasn’t going to drop in at some bar. And though I love going to church, I couldn’t be away from the restaurant most Sundays. It was our biggest day.

My one day off, Monday, I had to use for writing the book. Catch-up day, I called it. But putting down one recipe after another made me all the more lonesome. No amount of hard work could cover up for that. I just had to let it go. Unlike a good recipe, my life wasn’t perfect. Fact was, it was a mess! And now it was time to hand it over to the Lord—the whole thing—and let him deal with it.

One day I shut down the computer and put my head on my desk. I needed to say a prayer. But what? What did I want? Suddenly the words came: Lord, I need a neighbor. I had no idea what that meant. The words were no fancier than the old jeans and T-shirt I was wearing. Just, I need a neighbor. With that I went to work.

I’d been working for half an hour when my shih tzus came running up to me, barking. They wanted to go out.

“Hold on, boys,” I said to Sam and Otis. “Give me another 15 minutes. I want to finish this recipe.”

Nothing doing. They weren’t taking no for an answer. “Okay, okay,” I said. I put on an old hat to hide my undone hair. Outside it was hotter than a June bride. “As long as we don’t run into anyone we know.”

I opened the door and they made their jailbreak. Except they shot off in the opposite direction than they usually go. I turned right and those rascals went left and dashed away on their short, shaggy legs.

“Sam! Otis! Get back here!” It was not a day to run anywhere. They darted around the low wall at the end of our row of townhouses and I shimmied around after them. They went straight to a man leaning on a fence and talking on his cell phone. He looked kinda shaggy, like Ernest Hemingway with a beard that was out of control. And he didn’t look like he wanted to meet anybody.

“I’m sorry about my dogs,” I said.

He closed up his cell phone and looked at me. “Oh, no bother.”

I introduced myself and he said he knew of me because of my cookbooks, and that made me even more embarrassed because of my old T-shirt and jeans.

“Nice to meet you. I guess we’re neighbors. We should get together sometime.” He said it so soft I thought he was just being polite.

“Sure, sometime,” I replied quickly. I was anxious to get Otis and Sam back home so I could get back to my work. My life was as out of control as this guy’s beard. Today was catch-up day. I didn’t have time for small talk. I waved goodbye, thinking that was that.

Two weeks later, I was at home working and Sam and Otis came barking crazily at me again. I was in my crummy stay-at-home-to-write clothes, naturally, and my hair was in wet-mop mode. I put on the hat, headed out the door and turned right. They darted left. Again! Tore straight to the fence and there was that man with the beard, leaning there, like he’d never moved.

All right, Paula, you’ve already had a conversation with that guy. You can’t just wave and walk on, I thought. Sam and Otis were doing their business and I didn’t want to talk about writing cookbooks or running a restaurant. I looked over to the water and saw my boat sitting there.

“You know anything about boats?” I said to him, figuring he didn’t know anything more than I did.

“A bit,” he chuckled. Here’s the kicker: Turned out he was a docking pilot. His family had been working on the waters in Savannah, Georgia, for generations. I guess that made him a real neighbor. “I’m Michael,” he said.

“Well, Michael,” I said, “I just got this 27-foot Blackfin and all I know how to do is sit on it. Think you could show me the ropes?”

He took me out the next day. We cruised out to Wassaw Sound and then he turned back and brought me into the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. The boat was jumping on the waves, really bouncy, just the way I like boat-riding, and Michael was the kindest, most considerate man I could ever imagine.

He had real substance and I’m not talking about just the facial hair, though it would be something I would have to get used to. “How about if I cook for you?” I asked him.

“That’ll work,” he chuckled. So it was the beginning of a romance that led to a great marriage and a friendship that has brought a heaping slice of care and love to the mess of a pie that had been my life.

I still run around like crazy some days, cooking at the restaurant, writing books, doing my TV show, seeing my boys. But I’m constantly reminded that all of these blessings don’t mean a thing without acknowledging that they all have come to me from a loving God who has looked out for me from day one… Who even tells me what to pray for when I can’t figure it out for myself.

It’s sort of like southern cookin’. You mix up all these different ingredients, and you do everything like you’ve been taught or you’ve seen your mama or grandmother do. You say a prayer that whoever is going to eat it will like it. And then it turns out better than you ever expected it would. It’s grace, pure and simple, that makes all those things work together. And when grace pours into your life, there’s no room left to be lonely.