On being humbled

This morning I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was having a grand time doing it. Mercy, to be a poor 'ol gal like me....it was just awful being me this morning.
I took stock of all the unexpected bills this past month.
Then I took stock of the pantry and fridge and the fact that I don't have grocery money again until next week. I put the last of my creamer in my coffee this morning. Not good. How did we run out of bananas that fast? How could we possibly have run out of this and this and this AT THE SAME TIME?! By the time my oldest son started a sentence "Mom, we're out of...." I decided to suck it up and talk to my husband.
I am in charge of groceries. We deal with cash only, so I have a certain amount of cash every week and most weeks I do really well. But, like I said, my family was particularly hungry this week and I was left with little to deal with for the rest of the week. So, with no money left, and knowing my husband was already probably under some pressure with other financial concerns he has with the expenses that have come up this month, I asked him if I could have an extra amount of money to run to the store.
He gave it to me and off we went.
My two oldest boys in tow, we hit the store and picked up the much needed creamer, bananas and a couple other things that I wasn't going to get by without before heading to the store again next week.
As I left the store, with all of our food in our van, we saw a man standing by the stop light with this sign: "Hungry. Anything would help."
Creamer. This morning creamer was a very big deal. I needed it. At the same time I was sweating over something I put in my coffee, this man may have been making his sign in hopes to have supper tonight. Humbling.
I looked at all the groceries I had in the seat behind me and did a U-Turn. I went back to the man, grabbed a couple things out of my bag and gave them to him.
Now, my husband is very gifted in this area. It comes naturally to him and I'm learning from him. If he sees anyone walking in the rain, he picks them up. He sees someone who looks hungry, he gets them a burger at Wendy's. I remember heading into the van at one point a couple years ago and seeing another woman's name and number scribbled down on a piece of paper laying on the dash. In the majority of cases, I'm sure this would have looked suspicious. Not to me. I figured it was a hitchhiker, a hungry person, or someone caught walking in the rain. Sure enough, when I talked with my husband, he told me about the young mom walking in the rain with her baby. Nate picked her up, buckled her baby into our back seat and talked to her about Jesus. She said she would maybe be willing to come to church with us some day (after numerous calls, she declined our offer to join us in the end).
All this is to say, that Nate has taught me a lot when it comes to things like this. He has taught me that when you give someone who is homeless food, it needs to be soft because a lot of times they have bad teeth. And, you want to give them something healthy at the same time. We don't give money, we give nourishment. Those are the rules.
So, I picked out some healthy, soft things (remember how I desperately needed all those bananas??), gave it to him and then off we went.
Goodness. Here I was sweating about creamer. About bananas. About unexpected bills that the Lord knows all about.
How silly of me.
I looked at the boys in the back seat and reminded them, as we usually do, "It's by the grace of God we don't have to do that to get food for our family." They agreed. We talked about how when we give "to the least of these" we are giving to Jesus.
And it was just this great discussion I was gifted with having with my sons this afternoon.
The Lord provides. Whether it's bananas to that gentleman or medical bills for us. He just does. He is faithful. We see it time and time again. How do I still doubt Him?