like lilies

Do you know that passage of scripture about God taking care of the lilies of the field, birds of the air, and therefore, he'll take care of you, and so stop worrying already?  (Slight paraphrase).

Well, it is safe to say that it has been our life verse for this first year of school.  In fact, I'm already thinking about finding some etsy shop (or something) to print it up all nice for us as a reminder that God is really seeing us through this time of school.  I would like to share with you some stories.

So, school.  It is expensive.  As is living in New Jersey.  We knew coming into this season of our life that it would be a bare-bones, no frills, no splurges existence, and we both whole-heartedly accepted that reality. What we didn't know was just how expensive everything would be here.  We've done all we can to help our situation at the moment. We're on Food Stamps and WIC, and I'm going to be forever grateful for these small things (and for a government that provides this service. Think what you will of it, and I am sure it is full of corruption, but it has truly saved us time and again).  I won't bore you with all the details of the things we've "sacrificed" this year, instead, I want to share some pretty amazing stories. (Some are repeated from this post of last year).

Not long after we arrived, cards started arriving in the mail, addressed to "The Mulandi Family" with no return address.  In it would be an unsigned card and a gift card to Trader Joes, or a restaurant, or -- and I'm still awestruck by this -- massive gift cards to Target around Christmastime.  As is always - ALWAYS - the case, these seem to come right when I'm in "how are we going to make it work?" melt down mode.

Then friends sent us a couple of checks to help with "resettling" costs (thank you, friends, for an air conditioner).

My aunt got a HUGE box of clothes from a neighbor last summer for Kyalo which kept him going a long time. Then another friend went to a consignment sale in Philly earlier this year and got him a gazillion summer clothes.

Other friends sent us money in February for us to celebrate our anniversary. It just hadn't happened yet, so we put that money towards our trip to Philly, which meant we didn't have to pay for our little outing.

Even our spring break trip was made possible by so many people accepting us into their homes as we journeyed down to Tennessee.

Last week - Monday, I think, when I was having a terrible, terrible day (thank you, tornado warning and down pouring rain for keeping my cranky two-year old inside) - Dexter came home with a bag of cherries and a gift card to a local grocery story.  The cherries were from a friend, but the gift card was just in the mailbox - no envelop, no stamp, which means that a) it has dropped directly from heaven (and I would seriously believe that) or it is a new friend from here, which is so sweet to me. {This was the second time it had happened!} And that gift card helped make our 4th of July celebrations - small though they were - a reality.

I'm having a hard time getting my thoughts to really convey all that I want them to.  The pure amazingness of it all, the how perfectly timed these gifts have been for us.  And then there are other things like, we have all been healthy (with the exception of Kyalo's minor nebulizer incident earlier this year), there are so many things we can do within walking distance for free, even meeting Jenny and Ellen last year at the library seems to me now a perfectly orchestrated gift from God - they've been out of town this week and, oh, how I've missed them.

And then my parents.  There are not enough words in English or Swahili to properly thank them, to express all that they done for us - from housing us on every vacation we have, to house hunting, to helping us purchase a car, and SO MUCH MORE.  Where would we be without them?

Thinking through these things is making me teary, and humble, and amazed.  One major thing that these 'small' gifts have added up to is the fact that I am able to stay home with Kyalo.  Sure, I could (and probably should) find a job to help supplement things, to give us some breathing room, but as hard/exhausting/challenging/frustrating as it can be to be a stay at home mom, I am so very grateful that I can spend my days with Kyalo, watching him explore and learn and love.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

Do you see why perhaps I shouldn't worry about this year?  God is using so many of you to take care of us.  To each of you who have made it possible for us to survive this year in one way or another, we thank you.