Miracles in the midst of want

I mentioned in my last entry that not all Christians judged us for our financial failure.

Some of them loved us through it, supported us with prayer and with kind words.

Still others went the extra mile and were willing to be God's provision for us as and whenever He led them to do that. It always turned out to be the perfect timing.

One day, about half-way through that nine months, I noticed that less and less of my clothes were fitting me. That was because we could only afford starches and high-fat meats. "Lord," I prayed. "I only have a couple of outfits left. I need some clothes, but I can't afford to go buy any, not even at the second-hand stores." Within two days, one person (I still don't know who) left a garbage bag on our back step filled with clothes... nice ones. Most of them fit me, and what didn't fit me, fit my oldest girl so she could hand down some of her clothes to her younger sister.

We didn't talk much about our problems, but there were those whose lives were affected directly, people we had to tell. Among those were members of our extended family. We got varying reactions from them, everything from hand-wringing worry from those who knew what it was to be in want, to something similar to "Let them eat cake" from those who had no clue what financial distress even looked like.

It just about drove my mother-in-law crazy that she couldn't write us a check for a hundred dollars and make everything okay for us. She even wanted to open a bank account for us. We told her that any extra money that anyone gave us would be confiscated by the bankruptcy trustee to pay the creditors with. She wanted US to benefit, not the people we owed. So every week, she would send her husband over to our house to drop off about three grocery bags of meat. Chicken legs or thighs, pork chops, lean hamburger, whole chickens. Sometimes even the occasional package of steak. She didn't get much in the run of a month; she called it "mad money." That she would spend her own money on us - just blew me away.

We never went without. There were times, the day before my husband's payday, that we had to rummage through the couch cushions for change. He'd go down the street with his head down - he was looking for coins people dropped. But with the generosity of some of God's saints, and His miraculous provision, our family never went hungry.

The first God-miracle we noticed though, came when the trustee sent an appraiser to look at our house, to see if it could be sold to pay the creditors. He made his assessment, looked at our mortgage, which we'd added to about five years previous in order to finish the basement, and told us that if the house were sold, there wouldn't be enough equity left over to pay the realty fees AND have enough to pay some to the creditors. So we got to keep the house.

A particularly trying time came when the tax department, who had been auditing my husband's taxes, decided to press charges for tax evasion. They knew full well that he couldn't fight the tax department in his situation of bankruptcy. He had made some errors in judgment about two years previous, based on lack of information about tax changes, and they decided he would be a great object lesson to anyone who wanted to have a home business and do their own taxes. Anyway, we had no extra money for a lawyer. The court date came, and the judge called his name. He stood up and the judge said, "Where is your lawyer?" He said he didn't have any. "Get one, and be back here in two weeks."

We found a lawyer willing to take our case but he charged a fee of $600. It was an enormous sum of money for a cash-only budget. It certainly wasn't an approved expense. However, my husband went to the trustee and told him the situation. Finally, after much pleading and arm-twisting, the trustee said, "Well, there's the third pay period this month. Out of that, you pay the mortgage and the lawyer. We get the rest." What about groceries, my husband asked. "No. The mortgage, and the lawyer. Nothing else."

When I heard this news, I was overcome with worry. No grocery money for two whole weeks?? How would we survive? How could anyone survive?

I needed help - some message from God to know what to do.

God was punching down the clay. Jeremiah 17 says that the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so He made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it. That's what was happening.

In desperation I opened the Scriptures. "Please tell me what to do, Lord. We are so in need of Your guidance." Somehow I remembered the story of the widow who was financially destitute. Her children were going to be sold into slavery to pay her debts. And she went to the prophet to ask him what to do. Of course this is the story of the widow's cruse of oil that didn't run out until she had enough oil to sell to pay her debts. But there was a part of the story that had escaped me... until it jumped off the pages of the Bible at me. When she explained her predicament, the prophet said, "What do you have in the house?"

I stopped. What did I have in the house? Well, now. I didn't know exactly.
"Find out," said a little voice in my head. Or was it my heart?

I decided to do an inventory. I went through the fridge and the cupboards, and put together a menu plan for 14 days' worth of breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. It amazed me that the little bit of food in the house would last that long. We actually had enough food. I discovered that if handled right, one pound of hamburger could stretch for three meals for two adults and two children. The only thing we had to buy in that 2 weeks was one container of milk. The loose change paid for that.

God had provided; there was no other explanation for it!!

The court did impose a fine, by the way, near the end of our bankruptcy period. It was substantial - and the bankruptcy laws didn't allow for that debt to be erased since it was imposed by the court system. In a way it felt as though we'd gotten out of one mess and into another.

But God wasn't finished with His miracles yet.