Grace Around the Dinner Group Table

This story is about a dinner table. But it’s not about a particular table, or two or three or four. It’s about eight different dinner tables.

I’m talking about the dinner group table.

The story starts on Valentine’s weekend 25 years ago at our church’s Sweetheart Dance. There may have been 20 couples on the floor, but the only couple I remember is Steve and Jen. They were newlyweds then, when Jim and I had just celebrated two years.

I don’t remember dancing but I do remember exchanging phone numbers with Jen. She invited us for dinner that spring, and after Steve’s homemade pico de gallo, we four were fast friends.

What came next was totally unexpected, the stuff of dinner group legend.

One night the next summer, after birthday cake in our kitchen, Jen popped the question: 

“Do you think you’d want to get together each month for dinner?”

Then I think Jen said something about “sharing life.”

It may have taken a day to commit. Soon we became three couples, then four, then five. We adopted a handy-dandy alphabetical hosting rotation: Boucher’s house in January, Jerde’s in February, Nelson’s in March, Venden’s in April, Wallace’s in May, and then back to Boucher’s.

But things change.

That array lasted seven years. Then the Jerde’s moved up north. We went on for a while until another couple came to the table. Couples have left the table, and others have sat. But I will never say replaced, because no one can ever be.

In the 24 years since the first dinner group in a fishnet-draped dining room table laden with Caribbean-themed coconut shrimp, there have been eight different couples, and 24 children added to our families since then, plus a few who went on ahead. We have shared about 240 meals together. You share life when you share that many meals around the dinner group table.

Every month has a theme. Name a country and odds are good that we’ve done it. We’ve eaten Irish Colcannon, Canadian Poutine, and Turkish Baklava. We’ve tried English, Spanish, German, Russian, Croatian, Jamaican, Brazilian, Australian (with a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda), Mongolian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Romanian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Nepalese, Icelandic, Filipino and Thai. No Azerbaijani—yet.

We’ve chosen holidays, food colors, spices, and important people as themes. Did you know President Lincoln was a big fan of Chicken Fricassee?

We learn a lot about each other, ourselves, and our world around the dinner group table. Some of us love dinner-themed trivia, including the famous, “I Have, Who Has” dinner group version. That’s how I learned that Greece consumes the most olives per person and Spain produces the most. It’s where I learned that Argan oil from Morocco is good in your hair or on your salad, that apples are in the rose family, and that the French called tomatoes “love apples.” Some of us love that game, and some of us give grace.

We learn to give and receive grace at the table. We learn who likes goat cheese and who doesn’t, who’s allergic to seafood and who can’t handle caffeine, who likes to premix their salads and who cannot let entrees touch on the plate. We learn what subjects are hot and which ones are tender to whose hearts. We learn to consider and listen.

And we learn about forgiveness. Last month, I grew impatient and said an unkind thing. I texted on the way home and found grace when I confessed.

There have been unintended wounds over the years. That first decade, as children were rapidly hatching, we devised a secret code to announce a pregnancy. The moms-to-be would sneak in some pink and the husband would don baby blue. It was fun to spy suspicious salmon stripes on her sock or a cerulean spot on his hat. But a few years into my infertility, pink and blue both started looking black.

In case you wondered, there have been food fails too. My Taiwanese Nian Gao (Glutinous Rice Cake) jumps to mind. I’ve never eaten a flip-flop, but I’m pretty sure Nian Gao gave me a taste.

And there was always grace for these.

For always, the God of all grace who gives more grace is with us at the dinner group table.

Pictured: Jim, Ab, Jen, and Steve, on the 20th anniversary of our first dinner group. All other photos are of foods that nourished us at the dinner group table. And if you’d like to get your own dinner group started and have questions, Abigail would love to help.

Abigail is a Scripture-soaked writer, joy stalker, and Bible teacher who stands by grace. She loves to help friends grow stronger in their faith as they take God at his word. Abigail lives with her husband and two teenage sons in rural Wisconsin where she enjoys fast walks, deep talks, chasing sunsets, and challenging the soul’s status quo.

Find faith-nourishing free resources and subscribe to her blog at AbigailWallace.com. Follow on Facebook, Instagram, or the JoyfullyPressingOn blog for more stories of defiant joy and gritty grace. Get Abigail’s book Meek Not Weak: A 12-Week Guide to the Gentle Strength of Meekness at Amazon.

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