Bethany Godoy, a member of our LifeNet Writing Team, originally published this article earlier this year on her blog Cross Culture Mama. LifeNet Blog is grateful for her permission to share it with our readers. 

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It was 2022 and the end of a children’s camp here in Belize called Hearing God in Living Color. I had been asked to teach dance sessions to the children and tell of my experiences of getting to know God and using dance as communication with Him. This is what I do on a weekly basis in my ballet classes, so I (of course) said yes. It was also one of the first things I agreed to help with after the loss of our son in 2021. I was still in the trenches of grief, but I was climbing out of that pit with a hope for the future I didn’t have before. On that night, I was told we were going to have communion and worship.

Having grown up in the church, I am accustomed to communion, or at least the religious practice of communion. So many things were going “wrong” behind the scenes of setting up and getting the area ready for communion, but because of that, so many encouraging conversations were had. It felt like a family get-together waiting for the meal to be ready to eat. I guess that’s what fellowship is meant to be, isn’t it? 

When the homemade bread was out of the oven, it was finally time. To my surprise we all sat in a circle, and in the middle of the chapel was a table. On the table were platters filled with the most amazing homemade bread you have ever tasted. There was salted butter for the bread and a huge jug of homemade sangria. As I walked up with others to get our communion, a friend was adding fresh fruit to the sangria. 

I was a bit taken aback…I didn’t know how to take this kind of communion. We were all delighted and grinning as we buttered our steaming hot slices of bread and filled our glasses. 

I sat down and continued to worship and ponder. I had already been surprised at this version of communion, but what happened next left me in tears. People kept going back for more. As we worshiped, as we listened to encouragement, they kept going back for more. In all my church experience I never saw someone go back for seconds of communion. It would seem disrespectful or wrong, wouldn’t it? But this felt holy and taught me so much, something I regularly think about now.

Here is an excerpt from my journal from that night:

“To drink the cups means to accept it all. The fullness and healing…the pain in this world we endure. Only You (Jesus) can turn the bitterness of death into sweet life. I don’t need to take a tiny sip; I can keep coming back for more and never run out.”

This concept changed a lot for me. I cannot run out, and although I knew it in my head, because of the way I had seen things in church culture/religion I had struggled to feel this level of freedom. I can keep coming back for more. I can be reverently grateful as well as filled with unspeakable joy when it comes to communion. I can shed thankful tears and keep going back, literally and metaphorically, for more of Jesus, not as an indebted servant, but as his friend.

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