Collecting Heads

To put it mildly, life is uncertain at the moment. Jill is about to have a baby in a month and a half. It also means I need to quit my job at the end of November to take care of Koen because my wife makes twice as much as I do. Expenses are going up, and our already meager income is going down. Not to mention the turmoil brought on by a new baby.

Need I also mention that the stock market is really starting to tank?

Jill and I are no strangers to financially hard times. My employment history is a testament to God’s sense of humor; I’ve bounced through nearly a dozen jobs in the nine years Jill and I have been married. And now to be losing my job again, albeit a dead-end job, is yet another jab at that wound in my soul that refuses to heal. The reason, of course, is a joy, but I still find myself battling with depression, and anger, and the seemingly inescapable conclusion that God is laughing at me.

Fortunately, I collect heads.

Seven years ago, right after we bought a condo mind you, I got laid off. I want to say it was a Wednesday. The following Saturday, we got a call from a couple we knew from Church who decided to move out of state rather suddenly. Problem, of course, being that they had food in their refrigerator and freezer they didn’t want to move across the country. In our current position, we couldn’t turn down anything that was free.

What our friends neglected to tell us was that this was one of those jumbo refrigerators, and the freezer was the monster unit in the garage. We were expecting a hand full of eggs and half a gallon of milk, not eighteen eggs, two unopened gallons of milk, and an additional four apple boxes of fresh vegetables, frozen home cooked meals, a variety of meat, pastas…

Weeks after that day, opening the refrigerator was an adventure. (And opening the freezer was dangerous!) Yet, for a good three to four months, our grocery bills were cut in half. We even bartered some of the meat for electrical work we needed done.

This is the giant we were facing in that particular time in our lives.

This is that giant’s head.

I got up one Sunday Morning to play bass in the praise band, and there was an envelope on my music stand with $100 in it. It was as though God himself left us a note saying, “Dudes, chill out. I got your back.”

Another head of a dead giant.

It was a year before I had something that resembled steady employment (“resembled” being the operative word,) and in that time, we never missed a payment on anything. Yes, we went without, and Christmas money that year went to paying bills. But whenever a need arose, God arose with that need and took care of it.

As a storyteller, I collect stories. Many of those stories are true tales of God’s provision in lean times. The heads of dead giants. I pray that as uncertain and lean times come, as they are indeed coming, Jill and I will continue admiring our collection in the hunting lodge of our glorious God.