Old Mother Hubbard I Am Not

Grocery shopping, a chore I abhor under most circumstances, has gotten increasingly complicated. Not only do I have my list that I painstakingly put together after many minutes of meal-planning, but then there are the add-ons from The Teens that I try to decipher. Butterfly (written in pink sharpie and dotted with smiley faces) always adds “pizza rolls (cheese only-hate the meat ones)," “water bottles” and shampoos and cosmetics that I always buy wrong. Always. Wrong brand, wrong shade. Wrongly wrongishly wrong. Rock Star scribbles “pizza rolls (pepperoni because I hate plain cheese)," “ice cream,” and a myriad of other fattening sustenance that I have a difficult time decoding because his hand writing is illegible. (The boy should become a doctor.)

And now, the complexity has been magnified. On the way to my weekly grocery shopping excursion a few days ago, I dropped Butterfly off at the local food pantry, where she was meeting her church youth group. They were participating in a two-day serve of various places in the community, and for a few hours that day, they were going to sort and hand out food. As I pulled into the parking lot, she verbalized concern that, although she could see numerous people outside the food pantry, she did not recognize any of her friends. Perhaps we were in the wrong place?? She questioned this at the same time she was making sure she’d added all her “wants” to my grocery list……when suddenly the light dawned on us at the exact same moment. We looked at each other, eye growing big, and then gaped at the crowd in front of the food pantry. These people were here to receive food. Duh! These individuals, lining up outside(since 4:30am, I later learned) were there to collect handouts to feed their families. Because they were in need.

“Wow, Mom. These people need food,” she said softly, as I let her out of the car and continued off to the store. But it was a vastly different shopping experience than usual. I purchased with new eyes. I was struck by the vastness of the varieties. All the choices I had. Did I want fresh green beans or frozen? Chicken with skin or without? Would Little Squirt be tempted by the store brand of mac & cheese or should I stick with Kraft? And as my cart began filling up, so did my awareness. There were families today, in my community, that struggled to put a meal on the table. Little children who went to bed hungry.

As I scanned my debit card at the checkout, I felt heavy with emotion. Weighing down my heart was a large dose of sadness mingled with a dropperful of guilt and a big handful of confusion. How could I reconcile the fact that I have so much when others have so little? While my family is by no means wealthy, I have never ever had a day when I worried about how I could feed my children. Not once. The cupboard is never bare.

“A little boy told me he didn’t have a home,” Butterfly told us later that evening, recapping the day’s service project. “No home! Can you imagine??” I cannot. I’ve always had a home. And then some. So how do I resolve this tension I feel; wanting to be grateful for the blessings God has given me, yet aware of the considerable uneven distribution of resources? Do I enjoy with a grateful heart a monthly pedicure, when I know the cost of that pedicure could feed a child in Africa for a year?? I don’t know. But I am inviting God into my processing. Seeing those families lined up outside the food pantry changed my daughter. And it changed me. So we are going to have some conversations as a family about what to do with what we know. How is God calling us to love? I ponder……..