The past week has been spent visiting my boyfriend and his family in Honduras. This time has been so rich and life-giving, and I wouldn’t change it for a thing in the world. Before coming down to visit, I had started to feel like I was running on a spiritual battery of about 7%. Thankful to report that God has been giving me little bits of life through time with people I love deeply each and every day during my time here.
It’s been about fourteen weeks since I started my support-raising journey, and praise Jesus more than 75% of my support has been COMMITTED! I am thankful for a Lord who is oh-so faithful. That being said, it’s also been more than fourteen weeks since I received my last paycheck at the end of a summer working with a non-profit organization in Puerto Rico. This is the longest I’ve ever gone without a solid paycheck. Ever since I turned 16, I’ve been working—as a babysitter, a hostess, a waitress, a receptionist, a resident assistant, a teacher’s assistant, a missions site director… you name it.
Last night, Carlos and I took a trip to the local supermercado to buy some groceries, as I had offered to prepare dinner for the family. We got everything we needed and made our way to the front. I started trying to calculate in my mind exactly how many lempiras our food would cost, and got a little more nervous as the cashier scanned each item. I was heading towards the end of my bank account with nearly a week left here. I realized in that moment that this is the least financially stable I’ve been in a long, long time. Thanks to a flight voucher, a kind friend, babysitting, and helping my parents sell the cross necklaces they make, I was able to get to Honduras, but the money I brought with me is much less than I normally have available during my trip.
After I made Carlos reassure me that everything would be okay, we grabbed our groceries, stopped at an ATM, and grabbed a taxi back to the house. Somewhere between the cash register and the kitchen, God got me thinking—as He always seems to do. I come from a culture where living in excess is normal. Where looking into a cabinet full of canned goods and non-perishables and saying there’s “nothing to eat,” is commonplace. My family has lived paycheck-to-paycheck for several years now, but we have never had to go without, and we have always, always had something. My Honduran family, on the other hand, and the people who will soon become my Nicaraguan family, live day-by-day, trusting the hand of God to provide for their every need.
…who am I to think I somehow deserve to live any differently? That I somehow deserve to always have more than my daily bread?
Friends, God has been providing for my every need, not only in terms of support-raising, but also in terms of day-to-day living. I am so undeserving of His provision and continually grateful. Last week, some friends took Carlos and me out for lunch at a local park. They refused to let me pay for our half of the meal. A couple nights ago, Carlos’s sister and brother-in-law took us out to a Christmas festival. They insisted that dinner was “on the house.”
Letting go of control is not a natural strength of mine. But the more I find myself in moments of worrying about finances, the more I recognize opportunities to trust in something and Someone much bigger than myself. I knew from the beginning of this journey to Nicaragua that accepting what God was calling to would mean letting go of my intensive control of my personal finances. Would I love to have been able to work the last few months? Yes. But had I been working while trying to raise the support that God is providing, would I truly have experienced the process of trusting?
You tell me.