A few years ago, I made some changes in the way I fed my
family. Not dietary changes, really, but
planning changes. Previously, when I
went to the grocery store, I would get whatever was needed for the things we
usually ate. I’d have a short list,
maybe, to remind me of things that had run out, but I needed to walk most every
aisle to make sure that there was nothing there we “needed.” Of course, we needed things like flour and
applesauce and pasta and stuff, but I had a rather broad definition of “need,”
which included “things we would use or enjoy using,” like toaster strudel and
that interesting box of butternut squash soup.
When I cooked our food, it was a “what will be ready in 15 minutes?”
kind of meal. Lots of quick and easy
stuff – pasta, haystacks, umm…, how about pasta again?
Then we began to really track our finances… We realized that having a good plan – “Let’s
just live on Loren’s salary and not use Karen’s income” – is nice, but not very
helpful if you never look and see if you’re actually doing it. Which we weren’t.
Enter menu planning and real grocery listing. A whole new way of life. Since I knew what was for supper, I could
start ahead. Rice and baked potatoes
found their way back into our diet, because I started the night before, not
after I’m already really hungry. It was
a good change, with side benefits of less stress about what to eat for supper
and less guilt about “what a terrible wife I am because we never eat baked
potatoes.” I also made more detailed
shopping lists, and (mostly) stuck to them.
Sometimes I still buy things that aren’t on my list, but I do a much
better job of knowing what we will eat and when. I remember finding that box of butternut
squash soup that we “needed” in my pantry when we moved a year later. That helps me avoid a lot of impulse shopping. (Somehow the toaster strudel didn’t last a
year…)
This morning, I was praying, with my sweet little girl
curled up on my lap. Does God love us like I love her? … He knows us thoroughly and loves us
completely, even though he knows all our bad habits. He doesn’t have blinders on about our
failings. He addresses them, but that’s
not what he focuses on. When we curl up
on His lap to say good morning, His heart must just surge with joy and
love. We run to Him when we are scared,
and He shields us, comforts us, and makes us brave again – at least brave
enough to try again, or to walk and hold His hand. We say, “Daddy, I’m hungry!” and pretty soon
(although usually not soon enough for our tastes), the food is on the
table.
So that’s why I’m writing about menu planning today. It's a fun little Mother’s Day realization. Like me having already done the menu and
bought the groceries and prepped the hard part of the meal, when we tell God we
need something, I think He has already had the answer in progress for quite
some time.
