If you’d told me when I was in my thirties that I would now run a popular YouTube cooking channel called Mary’s Nest, with my husband helping behind the scenes with filming and editing, I wouldn’t have believed it—not for a minute. For one thing, YouTube didn’t exist then, and for another, I was convinced I’d be a high-powered lawyer with no time for marriage and children. Yet here I am today, a wife and mom, teaching all the things my mother taught me—the gentle domestic arts, as she called them— to more than a million subscribers! Isn’t that just like the Lord, to surprise us in the most amazing ways?
I was raised in the prepper lifestyle long before the term became popular. Mom had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and she wanted to make sure that I, her only child, was prepared for every eventuality. “Hard times can hit without warning,” she’d say. She drilled into me that processed foods were bad economically and nutritionally, and that the best buttress against uncertainty was a garden, a well-stocked pantry and a no-waste kitchen. That’s a big reason my YouTube channel is all about how to become a modern pioneer through traditional cooking skills such as culturing dairy, baking with ancient grains, canning and preserving.
What I didn’t realize is that on this incredible journey, the Lord was also teaching me about spiritual preparedness, lessons that would serve me well when my little family of three—my husband, Ted; our son, Ben; and I—faced a crisis a few years ago. Let me show you what I mean.
LESSON 1: Lay the Foundation
Before I met Ted, my life was on a very different track—a fast one. I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s in suburban Bedford, New York. Much as I loved the homemaking skills my mom taught me, I couldn’t wait to go to college and join the workforce like my dad, a corporate tax executive. My own office! My own copy of The Wall Street Journal, with my name on the address label!
By my late twenties, I was working in finance in Washington, D.C., and going to law school at night. I was determined to do everything that both my parents had done. When I wasn’t at work or school, I was tending my kitchen garden, making bone broth and sewing my own curtains. I pushed myself every second.
Finally, I finished law school and was preparing for the bar exam. One rainy December night just before Christmas, I worked really late at the office. On my way home, a teenager ran a stop sign and plowed into my car. I’d thought I was so in control of my life, but as my car spun across the wet road and into a tree, all I could do was call out to God. It had been an awfully long time since I’d talked to him. Though I had been raised Catholic by devout parents, I’d put faith on the back burner in pursuit of my career.
Fortunately, the other driver and I were unhurt. Sitting on the curb in the rain as I waited for the police, I thought, Is this how I want to live? All I do is work and study. I don’t have a social life, a prayer life. Something has to change.
I was due to spend Christmas in Texas, where my parents had moved for my dad’s job. As soon as the police finished the accident report, I hopped on a red-eye flight. Mom and Dad picked me up at the airport.
“Is everything all right?” Dad asked.
I told them about the accident. “I’ve had an epiphany,” I said. “I want to live a slower, more intentional life.”
I got off the fast track and moved to Austin, Texas, to be closer to my parents. I started my own law practice, helping small-business owners. I set my own hours and made time for friends, family and faith. Going to church every week and praying daily made me feel as if I was becoming a better version of myself, the person the Lord wanted me to be. I started to understand why my mom kept Psalm 118:24, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it,” on our kitchen chalkboard.
Doing the day-to-day work—prayer, devotions, Bible reading—gives you a solid spiritual grounding and prepares you for life’s inevitable challenges, such as when our son was diagnosed with a brain tumor during college in 2021. I’m convinced that seeking the Lord’s direction in prayer, which was already a years-long habit of mine by then, enabled me to stay calm and be strong for Ben when he needed me the most.
LESSON 2: Don’t Put Your Plan Ahead of God’s Plan
That rainy-night car accident made me rethink a lot of things. Why was I working 24/7 if I didn’t feel fulfilled? Had I put my plan ahead of God’s plan? I was a total type A then, and I had a hard time letting go. But when you release the illusion of control and put your life in God’s hands, you’ll discover his plans are much better than any you might have.
Take what happened to me when I was close to 40 and had all but given up on having a family. I’d calculated how much time I had to meet the right person, build a relationship, get married and start a family before I would be too old to bear children. “The math wasn’t mathing,” as I’ve heard Ben and his friends say. No way could there be enough time. Okay, if God called me to be single, I would accept it.
That’s when I met Ted Shrader. My parents and I and Ted and his mother were flying on the same airplane and really hit it off. Ted was a software developer. We exchanged business cards. I thought he was handsome and so nice, but I didn’t expect anything to come of it because he was in his twenties, 10 years younger than me.
A couple weeks later, I arrived at my little country church early for Saturday night Mass. The lights weren’t on yet. I sat in a pew in the dark and prayed, “Father, why do I keep thinking about that guy from the airport? I don’t know what your plan is here, but I’ll go with it. Guide me, and I will follow.”
Ted emailed and invited me to meet at a local bookstore café to catch up. Was his interest in me friendly or romantic? “I think I’m a bit older than you,” I said as I sipped a café au lait and Ted enjoyed an iced tea.
“I know,” Ted said. “You have wrinkles around your eyes.” Then he stopped, realizing how that sounded, and added, “They’re the most beautiful wrinkles I’ve ever seen!”
We had a good laugh over that. In fact, we had such a wonderful time together that, by our third date, we were already discussing marriage. Ted was like no one I’d ever met. Whenever an ambulance or fire truck with sirens on passed us, he would pause to pray: “Father, please keep the emergency responders safe, and, Jesus, please put your healing hand on whomever they are going to rescue.” Soon we were praying together, growing closer to God and each other.
I discovered that the same evening I’d been sitting in that dark church, Ted had been at Mass, where a visiting priest asked people to write down their prayer requests and put them in a basket. Ted wrote, “If it’s your will, Lord, bring me someone to marry.”
Ted proposed on our seventh date. We married a month later, and Ben was born nine months after that. I still laugh at myself for thinking that God could be limited by my math!
Surrendering control to God brings far better blessings than anything we can make happen on our own. It was accepting God’s plan over mine that led me to Mary’s Nest. When Ben came along, I threw myself into motherhood. Then we found out Ben had severe dyslexia and other learning disabilities, and it became clear that I’d never go back to practicing law. Instead, I homeschooled Ben. I formed a group with other homeschooling moms. I was in my forties, and they were in their twenties. They wanted to know about good nutrition for growing brains and asked me to teach them the traditional cooking methods I’d learned from my mom. I hosted classes in my kitchen. Word spread, and the next thing I knew, I was teaching in homes all around town. Ted and Ben suggested I post videos of my classes on YouTube. Before he left for college, Ben cheered us on as Ted and I learned how to film, edit, produce and build our audience. If I’d done things according to my own plans, Mary’s Nest and the fulfilling life I have now wouldn’t exist.
LESSON 3: Make Time to Be Still and Just Be With God
Back when I was working full-time, going to law school and still making meals from scratch, a friend suggested a shortcut: “Why don’t you just buy a rotisserie chicken?” I blurted, “That’s against my religion!” I mean, it almost felt that way.
What most people don’t understand is that cooking the slow way doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most labor-intensive way. You do 15 minutes of prep, but the oven does all the work roasting the chicken after that. And the result will taste better than anything you can buy precooked.
Much of the work in traditional food preparation is simply done by time. Dough needs time to rise; stock needs time to simmer; vegetables need time to pickle. I think there’s a spiritual lesson in that. It goes along with surrendering control to God. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is wait. But it’s in the waiting, the taking time to listen, that we hear God most clearly.
Ben’s brain tumor was found during the early days of Covid, when lockdowns were in full force. He’d been having trouble hearing in his right ear. An MRI showed an acoustic neuroma, a noncancerous tumor, pressing against his brain stem. Because of its location, doctors wanted to operate right away. Then Ben tested positive for Covid despite being symptom-free.
We learned we could either wait 20 days for the virus to clear, or we could go ahead with the surgery under quarantine restrictions, which would entail bulky gear worn over the surgeons’ hands. Given the delicate nature of the surgery, we wanted the surgeons to be as unencumbered as possible. Of course, we wanted the tumor gone as quickly as practicable, but waiting seemed like the wiser choice.
I tried to break the news to my mother gently that her only grandchild had a brain tumor. She was in her nineties, and I wondered if she’d be too frail to handle the shock. I needn’t have worried. “How gracious of the Lord to give us the next 20 days to pray,” Mom said. “Ben is strong, but praise our God that he gives us even greater strength to lean on.”
Just as my mother had foreseen, the delay in Ben’s surgery turned out to be a blessing. Those 20 days gave us the time to process what was happening and prepare ourselves for what lay ahead. Ben made peace with having major brain surgery. Ted and I meditated on the words of Jesus, who taught us that tomorrow will worry about itself, and that if God takes care of the sparrow, he will surely take care of us. We prayed fervently and turned over all our worries to the Lord.
The surgery left Ben with no hearing on his right side. None of the inner-ear parts could be saved because the tumor had wrapped itself around them. I waited by his bedside in the surgical ICU for him to wake from the sedation. When he opened his eyes and saw me, he broke into a sleepy version of his joy-giving smile. “Hi, Mom,” he said. It was the sweetest “Hi, Mom” I’ve ever heard.
I think of it this way: For dough to rise, it needs to rest in a warm place, away from drafts. It’s similar to how our souls need to bask in the light of the Lord, away from earthly distractions. If we can learn to prepare spiritually for what life brings, to just be still and trust in God’s presence, he will work things out for our good and in a way far better than we could have planned for ourselves.
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