I Did Not Plan to Be Feeding Children Again

Tonight we are making a skillet of rice with sausage and greens, and it is one pan and about twenty five minutes.

Here is the whole method. Slice whatever sausage you have and brown it in a wide pan over medium heat until it is cooked all the way through with no pink left in the middle, then lift it out and leave the fat behind. Cook a chopped onion in that fat until it goes soft. Add a cup and a half of rice and stir it around for a minute so every grain gets coated. Pour in three cups of water or broth, a good amount of salt, and put the sausage back in. Lid on, low heat, twenty minutes, do not lift the lid. In the last five minutes lay a big handful of greens on top, collards or spinach or frozen greens straight from the bag, and let the steam do the work. Stir it all together at the end. It feeds five, it costs very little, and it is one pan to wash.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the rice.

It is that some woman is reading this who thought this part of her life was going to be quieter.

She raised her children. She got them out. She sat down. And then something happened in the family, and now there are children in the house again, and they are hers to feed, and the money in that account was counted for one person and is now feeding four. She has not complained to anybody. She has not told her friends what the last week of the month looks like. She has decided that saying it out loud would be a complaint about children she loves.

The verse that goes all the way to the end

There is a promise in Isaiah that does not stop at the part everybody quotes.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

Look at how many times He says carry. He says it three times in one verse, which in that book is not decoration, it is emphasis.

And notice who is doing the carrying. Not the person. Him. The whole verse is God taking the weight of somebody's later years off them and putting it on Himself, and He says it directly to people with gray in their hair.

You are being carried in this season, and God has never once handed somebody a house full of children and then walked out of the kitchen. Isaiah 46:4 has God say the word carry three times over a person with gray hair, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a promise like that arrive in a room where the rice is going.

You have not been overlooked in this, and heaven did not lose track of whose account this is. It is written that He made and He will bear, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in this kitchen tonight.

The thing you have not said out loud

Now I want to name the sentence that has never been said out loud in this house, because saying it is the whole work of this evening.

The sentence is: I did not plan for this and I am tired and the food runs out before the month does.

It has stayed unsaid because saying it might sound like these children were unwanted. And they are wanted. That is not in question and it never was. But a person can love a child completely and still be exhausted by a situation, and those two things sit side by side without either one canceling the other out.

What is happening to you in silence is that the tiredness has nowhere to go, so it turns inward and becomes a private verdict about whether you are managing. The shortage at the end of the month is not a verdict on the woman running this house. It is arithmetic. Somebody changed the number of people and did not change the money.

You are allowed to be tired and to love them at the same time, and God has never once made a person choose between those two. The written word has God speak tenderly to somebody who is worn and does not pretend they are not worn, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a hard month from a woman's heart.

You have not fallen short of anything, and there is no standard here you are failing to meet. Isaiah 46 is God carrying rather than instructing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a private verdict off a woman who never deserved it.

Why the last week of the month is not your fault

Let me say something plain about money, and then I will leave it.

An income counted for one person does not stretch to four just because love does. Love scales infinitely and money does not, and there is nothing spiritual about that gap. It is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is not a moral document.

So the last week of the month gets thin. That is not carelessness. It is because the number of people changed and nothing else in the arithmetic changed with it.

And here is what I want to say very plainly, because this site will always say it. Asking for help is not a failure. Not from family, not from a church, not from a pantry, not from any program your county runs. Those are corners of the field. If there is a place near you where food is put out for people who need it, you are people who need it, and going there is not a confession.

You have every right to ask, and God has never once put shame on the asking. Isaiah 46:4 has God present Himself as the one who does the carrying, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a hand go out instead of staying in a pocket.