A Family Blessing
Families in communities everywhere make their way to a food pantry weekly. ly. And, grandmothers are an essential part of this mix, playing their part in different ways.
Grandmothers care for the grandchildren while their parents work 2 and 3 jobs each.
Because the crowded conditions in many pantries are stressful for some children, grandmothers care for the grandchildren while the mothers shop at a food pantry.
Shopping at a food pantry can take hours depending on the crowds and the lines. People don’t just “drop in” at a food pantry with a shopping list.
One family with 5 children attends the pantry weekly. Grandmother sits in the car and watches the children and Buffy the dog while mother shops. Somehow, grandmother manages to entertain the children as they all wait in the car. The mother stands in the line, first in the the parking lot and later in the building hallway, while she waits her turn to shop in the pantry for 3-4 minutes.
Grandmothers take their grandchildren shopping at a pantry when the parents work. One grandmother I know takes her grandson with her weekly. Little David is always delighted to choose an apple as a treat on each pantry visit.
Children in our country today shop in the pantry weekly with their mothers or grandmothers. Shopping with the family to put food on the table is an outing practiced weekly the world over.
Listening and chatting with these children over the years I’ve observed something: Many of these children have never been in a large grocery store or super market. A food pantry has a product selection of probably 50 to 100 items. A grocery store has a product selection of probably 10,000 to 50,000 items.
BLESS OUR FAMILIES, O LORD.
Whether they are families by blood or circumstances, make them holy.
Make Yourself easy to find Lord. Let us find you in our marriages, our families, our households, our communities and our relationships. Let us find you globally.
Many things in our daily lives seem to conspire to divide us. Help us see beyond the divisions and see a family. Help us embrace one another as a family. Help us love each other as a family .
May families in food pantries everywhere know your presence as they go about their days.
Amen
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Everyone shopping at a pantry has a first visit
A first-time shopper in a food pantry looks at the available foods and the question coming to mind is “How am I going to get a meal out of this?”
Supermarket shoppers push some foods aside, choosing other items. When that happens, a store manager sends the rejected boxes and cans to the food bank where they land at the last stop: a food pantry somewhere.
Foods ending up on a pantry shelf are often unrecognizable to the ordinary person shopping at the supermarket.
Food pantry shoppers may not know how to make their future happen but they know standing still isn’t the answer. To be hungry is to search for spiritual sustenance, mental stamina, physical endurance, emotional balance, and food.
People go hungry when the income, whatever its source, isn’t enough to meet the cost of living.
When a person lives with hunger, just waking up in the morning and going through the day challenges heart and soul. A normal existence seems impossible. Every chance at happiness seems lost.
Most food pantry volunteers and shoppers I know are in a reconstructing and healing mode. Life is finally improving! After losing everything, getting things right again means taking many steps. For some it means “No matter how hard I try, I’m never going to be able to fix this mess”.
But this isn’t necessarily true. Hunger doesn’t rob us of every chance for happiness. Figuring this all out means trying new things again and again and again.
Food insecurity leads to questioning everything including our basic beliefs because they failed us from the getgo. For many, searching for a stable food supply, a roof, gas in the car, clothes, and healthcare becomes a search for God.
The soul needs compassion, forgiveness, and the ability to give more than take.
When shoppers don’t have enough food to eat, giving and sharing and believing are necessary. Because there are no road maps for this trip, the soul becomes the guide.
Volunteering in the pantry changes lives and heals people. My first visit to a food pantry changed my life. In my heart, I feel a food pantry has opportunities waiting for us. They are different for everyone, but they are there.
It takes much energy and time to find a food pantry you can get to and where you can shop. A person can burn up many phone minutes doing this. This experience strips away any illusions we have about ourselves and the world, and how our lives are unraveling.
Thank you for reading this blog post. I feel you are reading this article for a reason.
Maybe you need a moment for yourself. Maybe you are seeking information to change your life. There are interesting, informative, and life changing articles on this blog which date back to 2013.
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Thurman
Abundance 2: LeAnna, Catherine, and Jane – Women, Mothers, and Hunger in the Food Pantry
Abundance. LeAnna volunteered in the pantry. She had a business degree, a house, two adorable children and a spouse with a fancy career post somewhere in Europe. He decided he wanted nothing to do with her anymore. No money came across the ocean for her and the children. There was no money for taxes she owned on the house, or anything else for that matter.
LeAnna was happy to take the vegetarian items available each week. Her children loved fresh vegetables so there was much to choose from. The girls saw yogurt as a treat.
Catherine had a house full of children including two so close together, I thought they were a set of twins. She couldn’t get it together to work. And, I doubt if she could have gotten employment in our area anyway. This lovely lady had two advanced degrees.
There weren’t many, or possibly any, jobs available in Ulster County in her career field. And, of course, once a woman gets an advanced degree, the lower level jobs aren’t open to her unless she hides the education. Sometimes education can be hidden. Sometimes not. It all depends on the situation. The main thing is to get it off the resume.
Catherine was open-minded about the food she selected. She took anything not tied down. Because she qualified for cases of USDA, Catherine left the pantry with a case each of pasta sauce, canned corn, green beans, vegetarian beans, refried beans.
When she finished shopping, ten-year-old Robert Allen, our next-to-youngest volunteer, brought out the flatbed metal wheeled cart, put her groceries on it, and wheeled them to her car. Little toddler Mikey, our youngest volunteer, ran along behind.
I saw Jane, the young mother who couldn’t work because her husband threw her up against a wall, injuring her back. She had an eight-year-old child she was trying to raise without the luxury of child support.
Jane chose items from shelves where bending and stretching weren’t necessary because she couldn’t do those things.
And, to return to the beginning of Abundance, these three families and referenes to the critics about shoppers all owning upscale cars – Catherine, LeAnna, and Jane owned fairly late model SUV’s in good condition. They invited the criticism of the pantry naysayers when they drove into the parking lot to shop.
Here we had three households, single-headed households in need of food. If not for a couple of years, then for several months.
For some, feeding hungry people means we fed freeloaders. Not all hungry people look needy. Some of the best-dressed people in Woodstock never spent a dime on their clothes. They had no money for clothes so they shopped at Family of Woodstock.
Neither of these households was homeless, although they could be when the tax collector came to call.
Neither of these households was without transportation although they could be if the SUV needed expensive repairs. Nobody in these households looked poverty-stricken although they could be if the car needed repairs.
For the moment, neither LeAnna, Catherine, nor Jane looked poverty-stricken although, they would in time with no child support from the spouse to help with expenses.
These three women had several things in common. They were divorced. They had children. They received no money from the ex-spouse even though each one had a lucrative, influential employment career, money, and a bright future.
There was not a job among them.
There was little or no money for a food budget even.
LeAnna, Catherine, and Jane each lived with abundance on one hand, a large box of unpaid bills on the other hand, and hope, dreams, and fears somewhere in the middle.
The children were eligible for school breakfast and lunch programs. But, that didn’t give them enough food to eat at home. And, there was no lunch program for the mothers.
So, it was off to the pantry. This was a life-changing decision. Using a pantry requires commitment, endurance, and effort. Attitudes about food in particular and life in general change.
Pantry shoppers are often self-disciplined, self-controlled, determined to do what is best for the family.
Freeloaders? What do you think?
Every week when these women shopped I saw myself as a young woman returning from Mexico with my two daughters and nothing but the clothes on my back. There was no way anyone, just by looking at me, would have known how little I had.
Whether we come to the pantry as shoppers, volunteers, or both, all of us are asked by the pantry to leave; the past behind. And, of course, that’s different for everyone.
How can we move forward into a new life if we never give anything up? For some, giving up the past means letting go of the job we lost, the home, the furniture that went in the home, maybe the family, self-esteem, the car, good health.
What happens in the pantry, this shopping, this offloading, has the potential to be the greatest journey of one’s life. The hungry person learns things in new ways, and sees things never noticed before. And, finally, there is the knowledge that anything can happen. When all is said and done, things will never be the same again. Better off for the experience, thoughts change.
Beliefs and core values are found.
I’m sticking my neck out here to say this.
Being hunger in 21st century America is a spiritual journey involving miracles, forgiveness, endurance, and spiritual healing. It’s all about discovering that it’s never too late to be who you really are.
That’s what this story is all about.
Thank you for reading this blog post in two parts. Please forward it to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
It’s Vacation Time!
Your vacation time is here! It’s your last chance to get a break this summer. That means it’s time to go to the beach – to the mountains – to the city – ANYWHERE!
What do you have to do to get away? Well, first, find a place to go. Second, pack your bags.
FINALLY, drop off loads of food to your neighborhood food pantry before you take off on your vacation..
August is the most challenging month of the year for food pantries because it’s the month with the least amount of food available at the food bank. Food pantries get most of their food from donations and very few people donate in August. And, sadly, this carries right through to September. September brings school openings with parents getting ready for school lunches. Food pantries are often empty.
It’s my opinion that people don’t donate food to food pantries in August because they’re focused on their own activities: vacation, getting kids ready for school.
But, your neighborhood food pantry doesn’t have to be empty. There are things you can do. You can organize a food drive in your neighborhood and take the food to the food pantry. You can keep the food flowing right through to October.
Thank you in advance for thinking of things you can do for your food pantry during the leanest months of the year.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
Thurman Greco
