There's always enough

The other night in our home (Bible study) group, we got momentarily sidetracked from the subject at hand (some of the BEST discussions are had this way!), and began talking about miracles.  Specifically, do people still believe in miracles and do they still occur?  Immediately this brought to mind something that happened when my daughter was still a baby.

A Mexican woman from our church had come to our house on a Monday evening in a bit of dire straits.  I can't remember her exact predicament, but my then husband was her pastor and I think she had come to our house because of an issue she was having with her husband.  She had a baby and absolutely no money.   We got her settled down with a possible course of action, but she still needed money for her baby's formula (or some necessity of that magnitude).  We gave her the last $15 we had that I had set aside for diapers, and sent her on her way.  At that time, I was a stay  at home mom of 3 small children, with my daughter, Sonja, still in diapers,  and we had one paycheck every Friday which I budgeted down to the last penny.

 I had noticed that morning that she was almost out of diapers and was planning to buy some  the next day.  The next morning I was changing Sonja's diaper and remembered, "Oh crap!  She's almost out of diapers and we gave the diaper money to ______ (wish I could remember her name)".  Sonja had a hanging diaper holder that hung from the end of the crib.  I started to count the diapers that were clearly just covering the bottom of the carrier, to see how bad the situation was.

Then, something just told me not to count them.  No voice from Heaven.  No angel walking in the room.  But as I was leaning over to take a good look in and count, I just felt like, "Don't count them, just take what you need."  And that's what I did.  For the entire week, every time I needed to change Sonja's diapers, and it was certainly a lot, a diaper was there.  I never counted them, I just took what I needed.  On Friday, payday, I finally hit the bottom of the diaper barrel and they ran out.  But from Tuesday morning to Friday, that diaper carrier kept handing up the needed diapers.

I don't think I tell that story enough, to myself or to others.  I get very nervous about coming across super religious.  I don't want to over spiritualize everything and honestly, I've never been very comfortable with people who say "God" or "Jesus" in every snippet of conversation.  That's just not me.  But maybe in my zeal not to be a zealot, I've held back what someone else might need - some assurance that God really does care about the minutia (like diapers) in our lives.  That miracles indeed still happen and they're not rare, but rather abundant when we look for them.  And that, (and I do love this!) there's ALWAYS enough.