The Unexpected Village
By Karen Miller
@karen_rose_m
“If you boys can sit together nicely and watch a show while we wait in line, I’ll get you a treat.” I offer the bribe to my sons who are all home on fall break from school. I’m not above trading Sonic slushies for good behavior today. While my second grader’s friend is on vacation in Cancun and another friend is camping in Yosemite, we are here, standing third in line at the neighborhood food pantry.
A friendly older lady named Maria greets us at the door.
“Did you make an appointment, Ma’am?” she asks, the intonation in her voice telling me she’s asked this hundreds of times.
“Yes, I registered last night.”
“And you remembered to bring your paperwork?”
I nod as I fumble through the green file folder flashing the documents verifying our address and birthdates.
“Okay, hon. It’ll just be a few more minutes. Once there is room at a table we will bring you inside.”
Ten agonizing minutes pass, and Maria walks us to a table displaying a placard with the number 76. I give each of my kids one of the three seats as they crowd around my tiny phone to continue watching Lightning McQueen zoom across the screen. A woman wearing a black overcoat sits at the table next to me scrolling through her phone, and I ask to sit at her table. I try to keep my head down, glancing up every few seconds to make sure the kids are behaving.
“Look what I have for you boys!” Maria says as she walks over to my kids and pulls out three pink lollipops from her apron. I usually monitor sugar intake before noon, but today all bets are off because I’m trying to shrink into the grooves of my chair, desperately wanting to disappear.
The lady in the overcoat, Anita, comments that my boys are very well behaved. I nod and say thank you, and she begins to open up about why she is here. Her husband is on dialysis, she says. He works at the auto part store across the street, she tells me. She’s on medical disability but also works at Amazon, because “money just don’t stretch like it used to.”
She keeps telling me pieces of her life, inviting me into the story of why we are both dreadfully sitting at this card table on a Tuesday morning in October. I try to give her my full attention while also keeping track of my boys who are now curiously wandering around the table.
I want to tell her I’m here because my husband’s job barely pays the bills. I want to tell her I’m here because childcare is too expensive, and I still have a toddler at home. I want to tell her I’m here because I lost my job in the pandemic and was never able to find another one with a schedule that worked for our family.
I want to tell her I’m here because I’m hungry.
But I don’t tell her any of this because I’m embarrassed. The need to justify my own version of hard is a weight I cannot yet bear. This morning war broke out across the world and babies were stripped from their mothers’ hands. I bet they are hungry, too. So I don’t tell Anita anything.
“Number 76 we are ready for you,” I hear a volunteer call out. I grab my boys, their lollipop wrappers, and my phone and corral them towards the registration table. Forty-five minutes later, I leave with a new shopping card, three boys with sticky faces, the slightest tinge of relief but mostly, exasperation.
***
I lost my job in March of 2020. The conversation I had with my boss is seared in my memory as The Moment Everything Changed. I was working a hospitality job with coworkers I loved. I had the best of both worlds: a part time job with a flexible schedule while mostly getting to stay home with my boys. The $500 a month I made was like provision in the desert, daily food, literal manna, a way to provide for my growing children.
As the pandemic continued to ravage our lives, the demands of our family grew. One child needed expensive therapy and our kids started at a new school across town, doubling our gas bill. Despite how hard my husband worked, the money was not increasing to accommodate the growing needs. In the pandemic, everyone lost jobs, lost incomes, rearranged their lives to adjust to the uncertainty of the world. But while I saw people returning to work and their lives getting pieced back together, ours never did.
Worry became as familiar to me as my coworkers once were. I know God clothes birds and dresses flowers and I shouldn’t worry because He will do the same for me. But do birds need new school shoes like my seven-year-old? Do the flowers realize the price of strawberries are astronomical? Does God know what it’s like to limit Goldfish intake because if they are all eaten at the start of the week there won't be any left to take for snack at school? These questions swirl in my head, and my anger intensifies. I had no idea The Moment Everything Changed would start me down the road that, four years later, would find me waiting in line at the food pantry.
I never asked for this.
***
I return to the food pantry the following week once my oldest boys are back in school with only my youngest in tow. “The Fabulous Sherri” (according to her name tag) greets us at the line. She has a smile that doesn’t belong in a place teeming with desperation, but maybe that’s exactly why she is here. I strap my four-year-old in the shopping cart and round the corner to start grabbing the fifteen items we’re allotted. I see green beans and chicken noodle soup so I grab three of one and two of the other. As I pass the rice, I see another mother with a baby girl in her cart. Her eyes are tired like mine. Does she wonder how she ended up here, too?
I throw in three boxes of mac and cheese, two packages of spaghetti, two bags of rice, and three jars of peanut butter. Before long, my cart is full of produce, eggs, ground beef, and a card with scripture on it. It was handed to me by Will who prayed for me as he ushered me through the refrigerated section.
This isn’t the manna I asked for. But it’s the manna I got.
When I get home, I set my son up with babysitter Bluey. As I add the food to my empty shelves, I think of my grandmother—as often happens when I’m in the kitchen—and the stories my mom used to tell me. My grandmother cooked a single ham every Sunday and used the meat—one slice exactly—to make sandwiches for her nine children to take to school every day. On Friday, she would use the hambone to make split pea soup for the weekends. On Sunday, she would repeat it. And the next Sunday. And the next.
That was another era, I justify to myself. She had nine children and grew up during the Great Depression. Everyone was hungry then. This is 2023. I have two college degrees and only three kids. I don’t even recognize I am crying as I open the refrigerator to put in the eggs.
It’s not supposed to be this way.
***
I make my appointment for the food pantry each week for Tuesday at 10 a.m., and that time becomes a staple in my schedule like the chicken noodle soup becomes a staple on my shelves. I tuck this information away as my dirty little secret, embarrassed this is my life, embarrassed I have this need.
In another life, I’m not rationing snacks or stretching a gallon of milk to last a week.
In another life, I’m not avoiding lunch out with friends because there’s no money to pay for it.
In another life, my children don’t need to be fed from the donations at the food pantry.
But in another life, I never meet Sherri and the joy in her smile.
In another life, I never know Maria’s generosity.
In another life, I never know what it means to be supported by the kindness of strangers.
***
Each week I fill a cart with free groceries, I draw on the strength of my grandmother who did what she needed to make sure her kids were fed. The embarrassment is fading now as my belly remains full, and I finally confide in a friend where I spend my Tuesday mornings. She offers a hug, an “I’m sorry it’s this way” and doesn’t make me feel worse than I already do. She reminds me God provides in ways we don’t expect, like the Israelites in the wilderness with manna.
The volunteers I see each week slowly get to know my family. Sherri remembers I like her hugs, but my toddler would rather give her a high five. Will continues to offer his prayers. Maria asks my son about his artwork while we wait to select our weekly bread choice.
While my heart was always grateful for this provision, my face is beginning to reflect it now. My shoulders loosen as I hug Sherri each week, and I start to return the favor and ask Will how I can pray for him, too. It takes a village to raise a child, and I’m surprised—yet thankful—by the ones who have shown up for me unexpectedly. I’m thankful for the way they show up for me like I’m thankful for grandparents who pay for preschool, and grandparents who spoil my kids at Christmas.
I’m thankful for the friend—the one who knows my secret—who texts me: “I know you aren’t able to pay for many outings but do you want to meet at Chick-Fil-A on Thursday? You’ll only need to spend a few dollars for some hash browns?”
I’m thankful for the teacher who lets me cry in her classroom when I tell her how much free lunch benefits my son. She hands me a flyer telling me where we can find free lunches over the summer and hugs me with an embrace that lingers, letting me know she sees me, letting me know she cares.
My situation still feels like a secret not ready to be fully released, and I still hope for manna that looks more like a reliable paycheck and less like the manna of chicken noodle soup. I still wonder how this is my life, and yet, I muster up the strength to book another appointment. To return Sherri’s hug. To let my heart soften towards hope, to expand its capacity to receive, and to grow in thankfulness for my unexpected village.
Guest essay written by Karen Miller. Karen lives in Colorado with her superhero husband and three boys in a house filled with LEGOs and strong coffee. She is a friend of Jesus, and loves her boys, sunflowers, and dirty chai tea lattes. She's rarely without a notebook, multiple pens, or a story about finding the goodness of God in her everyday life. You can find more of her writing on Instagram and her Substack, Home Among the Stories.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.