Growing up in Southern Illinois , I had never met a vegetarian. We were meat lovers. We felt like we were supporting local industry when we indulged eggs, ground beef, brisket, steaks, or pork chops since many people who lived in our area were farmers. We never talked about cholesterol either. But one night in college, it all changed. Marcia, my wife, had painstakingly worked on dinner for Mark and Victoria, a couple on our small Bible College campus in Springfield , Missouri that we had met on campus. Mark grew up in a missionary family and was a Missions major, so we figured that missionaries-in-training would eat anything. Marcia brought out one of her specialties: gorgeous lumps of ground beef wrapped with a strip of bacon. We called them "Bacon Wraps" and we thought they were beautiful. We later learned after moving out East that wraps were actually an uppity kind of sandwich that was supposed to be healthy, but being from a small Midwestern town we had never seen ...
by Chris Rainey. This is a blog of my journaling, essays, opinion pieces, religious satire, and creative writing.