I feel compelled to share a sampling of what we are experiencing and for those who are prone to worry about our little family, you don’t need to, here’s why. I read a quote recently that said “Don’t confuse your employer with your Provider”. How very true that ultimately God is the One who provides for us and many are the ways He chooses to do that.

This summer during our everything-in-the-house-is-going-to-break phase that we went through after hand washing our dishes and sopping up the dishwasher leak with towels every day, we opened the door one afternoon to find someone who candidly told us that Home Depot had been giving away free dishwashers so they stopped to get us one…likely story. It was a very nice dishwasher and though free to us, it was not free to them.

Along the same lines, a sweet young adult from the college group at church spent two days fixing our broken toilet and moldy bathroom flooring. I watched helplessly holding the baby as he scooped dirty toilet water out of the toilet so he could get it out of the house. After a minute of being at a loss for words I finally muttered “Can I get you some gloves?”. He said “That would be great” with a smile. We simply did not have the resources to fix this and I don’t know what we would have done without him.

Also this summer when the rat man came and AFTER he did his dirty work he told me he only took cash, I handed him all of our grocery money and held back tears. Within hours and before we even sat down to pray about our needs, God replaced the money in various ways and we did not go without.

Little things like my neighbor who bought me 20 pounds of tomatoes and wouldn’t let me pay her back for them, another neighbor brought us spinach and a whole chicken one night this week. These people on our street who we have finally connected with over our 3 years living here, they are part of my prayers for somehow things working out for us to stay here.

Big things, like today I went out to the car and there was an envelope there with our family’s name on it. I cried again (the 15 days in a row of crying only had 1 day off by the way). There were several things we were figuring out how to get squared away and now they will be taken care of.

I feel like we are getting a taste of the early church days, when people “gave to anyone as he had need” (Acts 2:45). And like we are being reminded that our needs are not unnoticed and they will be met in exactly the right ways-however unconventional and unexpected it may seem.

The most amazing part? If we weren’t in need, we wouldn’t have had the delight of seeing all these things done on our behalf. If we could do it ourselves, we would. But we can’t….and He can.

-Karissa