Enough for the Day
Provision through poverty, grief, and anxiety
My mom and I scrounge through the couch cushions. A penny here, a nickel there.
“A quarter!” I exclaim, pulling it from the corner crevices covered in crumbs. I add it to the meager pile and continue searching.
“Good job, baby girl.” My mom gently kisses the top of my blonde curls and begins to count the coins before us. It’s not enough. I’m young, but I can sense the defeat in my mom’s tired eyes. She was working and going to nursing school full-time, providing for her daughter in the margins. And sometimes, those margins just didn’t add up. This was one of those times.
I offer up my plastic Big Bird bank and we tip out the insides, a smattering of coins spilling onto the carpeted floor. Spare change, lucky pennies, and birthday money find their way into my mother’s hands as she carefully gathers the collection into a small ziploc bag, as if all we have could be held within its thin plastic walls.
We drive to Food 4 Less, where I follow her through aisles dimly lit with yellow fluorescents, and she methodically selects the bare minimum. A box of macaroni, a half-gallon of milk, a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, a can of pulpy, frozen orange juice. As we bag the small stack of groceries and return to our tiny, shoebox home, I learn my first lesson in enough.
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I open the front door to catch him as he collapses in my arms, weeping. Snow barrels down all around us, as though the sky has unleashed a fury of sad, heavy tears in agreement. The call had come in moments before: his mom was gone. We hadn’t even celebrated our first wedding anniversary, yet we’d already walked through the wilderness together. Health struggles, multiple surgeries, car accidents, financial strain, and now, this penultimate pain punctuating a year laden with heartbreak and grief.
His family lives six hours away by car, and every highway, airport, and train station was shut down for the night on account of the blizzard sweeping through the Midwest. My heart sinks with his; we are stranded in our sadness. I stretch my arms across his back heaving with sobs, and ask the Lord for His presence, for His provision.
In the darkened hours before daybreak the next morning, a kind woman we barely know from our church community drives us to the train station. She’s paid for our tickets and offers us a couple of bills as we close the car door in quiet gratitude. This small act is enough to get us to Chicago.
When we arrive, we’re met with provision after provision. Meal trains, cards filled with cash, tickets back home. Prayers, gentle remembrances, folks who drive hours to show us we’re seen. In the aching emptiness of loss, we are filled by both strangers and friends alike. Just enough to hold us up. Just enough to keep us going.
In the years that follow, death becomes a familiar companion to us. We say goodbye to four of our grandparents, we mourn the loss of a baby, and I watch my husband become an orphan at thirty years old. We grieve and gather with the ones we love, and each time, our needs are met like manna. Enough for the day, never more, never less. A shared sustenance, understood only through the Divine.
Though our bank accounts teeter on barren and our hearts hang heavy and our circles shrink and our “whys” lie answered, we are met each morning with grace sufficient for the day. Given not just in monetary means, but through generous spirits, kind souls, and friendships forged in the fires. In our lack, we find we are loved beyond measure, and many days, that becomes enough.
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“I don’t know how to make it work.” Tears well in my eyes as I finally speak it aloud. Failure–or the fear of it–hovers in the background, waiting to pounce at the first open door I allow. I’m disoriented by this new season, trading well-traversed terrains for uncharted waters. I’m growing restless with mere snippets from the map; I want the master itinerary.
Even though I’m thirty-something years into a proven history of God’s faithfulness, I’m still prone to run ahead, making plans, taking pride in my productivity. I want the novelty of a cloud by day and fire by night, but I also want the convenience of a flashlight at the ready. I want the promise of manna arriving from the skies, but I also want the practicality of a storehouse filled for the taking.
But oh, is the weight of the world not enough without the pressure of procuring my own provision?
So, I scrounge up faith like that little blonde girl once scrounged up coins. I dig deep into the recesses of my life and find that I have always had just what I need.
When poverty knocked on our door–
When grief weighed heavy like an anchor–
When hope was in short supply–
When anxiety resurfaces–
When unknowns span the horizon–
In every instance, I have had enough. He has been enough. From canned orange juice bought with spare change to peace unexplainably won, I remind myself that tomorrow is no different. Fresh manna is on its way; fresh hope is coming with the dawn.
Bonus listening:
Long before this post was birthed as part of Exhale’s July blog hop (more on that below), the album, “Manna,” by Chris Renzema has been playing on repeat in queue. Maybe you need it today, too.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Manna."
great piece!
also, that Manna record is gold.
I loved this. Thank you for sharing a piece of your story with us.