Stuff I Didn’t Want
I had just gone to the grocery store before picking my husband up from the airport. The next day, however, he walked through the door with several bags of groceries he thought we needed. When I saw more than half of his purchases were exact duplicates of mine, my furrowed brow and exasperated huff were automatic. “He didn’t even look in the pantry,” I grumbled, wondering what I would do with all those potatoes.
Two days later, the toothache he’d been nursing became unbearable. Any attempts at chewing the bacon he yearned for resulted in sharp jabs of pain that couldn’t be addressed until Monday. When I suggested soup, he brightened. What did I end up using to make the soup? Potatoes, of course.
Everywhere I look around my home, there are more examples of things I thought I didn’t want but ended up needing—like the knife sharpener I used when preparing that infamous potato soup. My sister-in-law had gifted it to us when we got married, though, at the time, I probably demonstrated that same furrowed brow and exasperated huff at receiving a gift I didn’t ask for and didn’t imagine ever using. My knee-jerk reaction couldn’t have been more wrong. In the twenty-six years since then, we’ve lived in five US states and abroad and have schlepped this electric knife sharpener with us to each and every home. I can think of only one other kitchen appliance that holds the same honor, and—unlike the knife sharpener—it has been replaced twice.
Then there are my daughters’ cats whose presence in my bedroom always make me chuckle. If I’m honest, I didn’t really want them either. Since I’m allergic to cats, we’ve always preferred mostly outdoor cats who stayed out of my bedroom. When the pandemic turned their world upside down, however, our girls negotiated with us to adopt their indoor cats, and somehow these two cuties snuggled their way into our hearts and our bedroom. (This is why I’m now starting allergy shots for cats, but that’s another story.) I’d said a vehement no to indoor cats for years, and now can’t imagine life without them.
There are more significant examples of this phenomenon too, of course. In June, I finally fell victim to Covid-19. Being stuck in my bedroom, sick for nine days, was most certainly not something I wanted. However, in July my in-laws tested positive immediately after we arrived for a ten-day visit. Subsequently, I found myself uniquely prepared to care for them, without exposing additional family members to illness. In the end, I was actually grateful I’d gotten sick the previous month.
Another example springs to mind. Long before Covid-19 appeared on the scene, my husband and I learned about the plight of orphans in Central America and were drawn to the idea of “saving” a child. However when we traveled abroad and asked some missionaries—who we believed had done something similar—for advice, I’ll never forget their response or the humble pie I ate afterward. “You don’t have any idea what it means to care for orphans,” he began, much to our chagrin. “Go back home and serve as foster parents in your own community for a few years first.”
We were shocked and horrified at being called out. Not only did I not want to hear his prescription, I didn’t want to follow it either. Thankfully, God worked on our hearts over the next few months such that we eventually enrolled in licensing classes back home.
Becoming foster parents brought even more stuff I didn’t want, including the difficulty that comes from parenting kids experiencing trauma. I still don’t want it—for us or for them. In fact, families being torn apart, for whatever reason, is pretty high on the list of stuff I definitely don’t want. Yet, in this broken world with broken people, it happens.
What I didn’t anticipate was how much God would change me throughout the process. Even now, fourteen years and three-thousand miles from our first training classes, I can’t imagine my life without those we’ve been privileged to walk alongside. Earlier this year, we were asked to take in a seventeen-year-old man dealing with plenty of challenges. Part of me immediately thought of all the reasons why that was something I did not want to do. But another part of me—the part that’s been nurtured by repeatedly seeking discomfort within the providential care of my Father—was already excited about the opportunity to finally parent a young man after so many young women.
It seems I’m not alone in my inability to see what is good for me. In fact, in the Bible we read about a group of at least five-thousand people who felt frustrated by what Jesus offered them. They had witnessed multiple miracles, including Jesus feeding them all with just a few fish and loaves of bread before walking across the Sea of Galilee. But still they pressed Jesus to be the kind of king they wanted him to be, demanding he give them daily bread from heaven like Moses.
Jesus’s response was probably unlike anything they expected:
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh. . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:48–51, 53–54)
Yikes! If I were among that crowd asking for actual bread, a furrowed brow and exasperated huff would be immediately followed by a distinct look of disgust. Eat his flesh? Drink his blood? No, thank you. No wonder they were confused.
Yet, the people listening to Jesus’s words were just like me when I received the knife sharpener, got Covid, or received advice about how to “save” a child —they didn’t quite have the full picture. Two thousand years later, we have the benefit of knowing exactly who Jesus was and is and forever will be. His words referring to the eating of flesh, drinking of blood, and ascending to where he came from only make sense within the context of his teaching at the last supper (Matt. 26:17–30), just before his death and resurrection. Here Jesus is explaining to the people how the bread he offers is enormously more important than manna from heaven—a concept they were not capable of fully understanding just yet.
While this insight is beneficial—crucial even—in considering the meaning and weight of Jesus’s words, how can it help us make sense of our experiences? What about the stuff happening on a daily basis, in which it’s just impossible to see around the obstacles in our path? When the health issues don’t resolve, the addiction takes over, the bank account runs dry, and the prayers seem unanswered. In those seasons, our thoughts about that full picture—what’s happening that we don’t yet understand—dictate our response.
Do we fall victim to the notion God has somehow forgotten about us? Or do we instead trust that, even when we can’t yet see a path forward, “for those who love God, all things work together for good” (Romans 8:38)? Perhaps what’s really required is a shift in perspective, to allow God to change our mindset and our behavior. When we trade frustration over our unmet expectations for confident curiosity about how God is working through the difficult experiences we don’t want, we just might open ourselves up to something better than we could ever have imagined.
Wendy Willard has spent the past two decades deep in the trenches of child welfare, initially as a mom to two daughters, then also as a foster parent and adoption advocate across three US states and Nicaragua. Through writing, conversations, and service, she passionately pursues ways the Church can best care for the least of these. Follow her at gracefullyslathy.com.