The one thing I hope to accomplish from this blog is authenticity. There are many blogs out there that portray an idealistic view. As though to say if you are not me, you are nobody and having nothing.
However I would like to paint a picture to you of just how much like you… even worst off than you, I am. It’s not by my own actions that I am blessed. It’s honestly, simply and truly because of God.
My husband and I suck at finances. Honestly I knew that he wasn’t good with money when we got married. I mean he had none. He thought I was better with money than he was, but once I was out of my mother’s house, I wasn’t.
The truth of the matter is that, in moments where we’ve not put enough thought into our financial decisions, we’ve ended up looking at our pantry and scratching our heads.
These were moments where we felt like idiots. Where we looked into our bank accounts and didn’t just see a donut but a minus.
When these moments came, we would apologize to God for being idiots and ask for his hand of provision. If you asked me to pinpoint this mathematical equation that has brought us to moments of complete loss; moments where we couldn’t even go to the grocery store with spare change… I honestly can’t tell you.
But what I can tell you is that my God is so gracious and he works with our flaws. There was a moment Jesiah and I literally believed we only had frozen pirogies to eat for the next two days before payday. And boy were we grumpy.
It was that feeling of exhaustion as if we were starving, but we weren’t because we were eating insane amounts of pirogies. I said a prayer that day as I fried up another batch of our frozen dinner. I begged God to give us something hearty and nutritious. Something packed with flavour. Give us the finances to have this meal through take-out!
It was then Jesiah looked into the fridge behind a bag of rotting parsley and there was a case of ground beef. We questioned its expiration date but then found it was still fresh! I then remembered I spotted a box of lasagna noodles in the pantry. But I wondered if it was a full box or left overs from a previous recipe.
I checked the box and it was packed and tightly sealed. I continued to go through our pantry and found at the very top, high enough that I needed a chair to get to, were cans of tomato chunks, tomato paste and refried beans.
I then recalled I had put a bag of fresh spinach in the freezer weeks ago. There also just so happened to be enough cheese left in an opened package in the fridge.
Suddenly Jesiah and I had this unexpected excitement and energy as though we had just gotten fresh groceries into the house. We got to work and created the best lasagna that has ever come out of our kitchen. I can’t even explain how this was possible. And we made such a large pan of it that we had more than enough to last us for our last dinner before pay day.
If you haven’t tried refried beans in your lasagna, oh man you’re missing out!
But in all honesty this shook me to my core. Because I truly believed the only way God could help us in this moment where we thought we were out of food, was to give us money. But I had no idea he could show us what we had not seen was already there.
It just puts me in awe because I’ve read so many times before in the bible about seeing with spiritual eyes instead of earthly eyes. In this moment, this idea finally made sense and hit home.
Funny enough at this time we had even cancelled a dinner we were meant to have with friends at our house because we didn’t have a proper meal to serve. And now I think to myself, this lasagna we made would have been the perfect meal for guests! How did I not see these ingredients before?
What am I presently looking at in my life that is so obviously impossible or a mess… but actually the solution is right in front of me. I’ll tell you what, if Jesiah and I knew those ingredients for that amazing lasagna were sitting in our kitchen, we likely wouldn’t have had such a grumpy day. We likely would have been excited for dinner. We likely would have had more joy in our hearts as we anticipated being provided for.
