If you know me, you know how much I love my husband. 

And if you’ve read anything by me before, especially this week, then you know that yesterday marked our first family Shabbat together. 

If you don’t know me at all, or even if you do, you may wonder if I am lying, or if I am a lunatic, but I ask you to consider the fact that my precious LORD Jesus did, in fact, step in with a miracle for us last night. 

See, my husband gets all sorts of zany hours at work. I am definitely grateful for them! Our income is fearfully low, and I mean below poverty level. (Sometimes.)

So on weeks where he gets a Monday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, and a Saturday – even if some of those shifts are four or five hours—it’s great for our budget, but not for his health, though having one day of rest between two scary shifts is so helpful. (We both have physical conditions that some call disabilities; standing at all is hard on him, and getting into and out of the car wreaks havoc on my body.) 

But sometimes he’ll have a week with nothing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, not even Thursday. No hours until back to back 8-hour shifts on Friday and Saturday. 

Today, for instance, he had a meeting from nine to 9:11 AM (It was scheduled to end at 10) and is currently working from 12 noon until 8 PM. 

The break between the meeting and beginning of shift was too long to sit in the parking lot or even the park, but short enough that I felt like a beast for having had to come home before dropping him off again (IBS, lol). 

With the cost of gas—actually, never mind about that. (Heh. Lol.) 

Yesterday’s shift was a bit shorter, 1 PM to 5 PM. Barely enough time for me to hit Aldi, get the house cleaned up, and get our first Shabbat dinner ready. 

And while mobility issues are my main snag, I was also diagnosed with diabetes not seven days ago. (For years I have had non-diabetic hypoglycemia.) 

So I cut out all carbs and am trying to get into ketosis (in that regard I’m doing fantastically thank God, and have lost nearly 11lbs in as many days, praise be to God!). 

What I’m trying to get across is the fact that I am feeling a wee bit more shaky than I normally do this week. (And my precious love would add to that, saying that I’ve also dipped part of one toe into menopause or perimenopause, as well.) 

Just, like in general, but certainly yesterday. 

So. I had gone to Aldi, picked up a thing of chicken thighs and butter chicken sauce, and scampered back home. 

Getting out of the car in 97° weather basically undid me. 

I nearly fainted, and God must’ve picked me up and deposited me on the sofa right at the door, because I don’t remember getting in with grocery bags. 

Anywhoodle, here I am, staring at this family pack of chicken thighs. Ten for $1.55 a pound equals $7.42 for that package!

And I was saying THANK YOU, JESUS!! the whole time. 

And I suddenly feel this creeping dread climbing up into my head and I start BAWLING. 

Like, Jesus, I LOVE You BUT I don’t know how I’m going to stay awake, much less cook chicken for 45 minutes on the stove (we have no ovenware but a pizza round), much less drive to pick up my beloved, much less stay awake for our eagerly-anticipated dinner. 

So I’m weeping and starting to bargain with the Holy Spirit, Who didn’t say anything at first. (He ALWAYS Talks to me, so this was scary :( noooo, come back, LORD!) 

Since I didn’t hear back, I was like, sigh, I guess I have to start cooking now, and I stood up. 

I had just gotten into the kitchen and picked up a knife, looking at the pack of juicy chicken thighs.

“No.”

I feel a wave of dizziness and feel Him Prompting me to take a bite of cheese before I fall over. 

Five minutes later, I’m (somehow) back on the sofa, and steeling myself to get up and start cooking the chicken.

He lets me get to the refrigerator, where the fowl package of raw poultry (hah) had miraculously migrated to. 

“No. You’re not cooking that, lovey.” 

And I was baffled. Because He Had Gotten me into the kitchen. 

He directed my eyes to the lobster pot (?) with homemade chicken soup that I’d made two days ago (yep, more chicken thighs! Do I love Aldi or what??? Lol xD 

“But Papa Bear, there can’t be more than four pieces in there. Probably just three, after last night’s three-piece fiesta and the other three that I snatched right after taking it off the stove, and… um, that other piece that I gave Baby a few minutes later. Is three pieces enough for our first Shabbat??”

He didn’t answer, and when all was said and done, I realized how hilarious His silence was in that moment. 

(if you know the song footprints, the one that goes “one set of foot prints in the sand,” then you can go ahead and start smiling because this is exactly what happened. Loool!)

… anyway, so I feel a heavy and strong conviction to pick up that pot, which was filled up ⅓ of the way with that jiggly collagen soup stuff you get when you boil chicken bones. 

I am barely able to get the thing onto the counter— bad back (tsk!)—and cast about for my trusty silicone micro ladle (also from Aldi!). 

With a reasonably deep stoneware dish at my left side, I start scooping into the concoction, in search of my first chicken thigh, which soon appears. 

Then, a second, and a third. 

My hand automatically keeps scooping. Ah, there… the fourth.

Before my arm moves again, I harken back to the previous day, when I was having a discussion with God about Elijah and the widow who kept pouring oil out of the bottles. I don’t even remember the central thesis of that discussion, and the thought only stayed in my mind for a moment, anyway. 

So. I found that my arm was scooping with the mint green and bamboo kitchen tool again… and that it had come up with a fifth chicken thigh. 

Then a sixth; then a seventh.

Then an eighth. 

And then… more than half of a ninth. 

I hadn’t prayed for more chicken, because we already had an uncooked pack that I had just gotten home with half an hour ago. 

I had not prayed for cooked chicken, because I didn’t think we had enough to go into the simmer sauce. (Like, it didn’t even occur to me.)

I didn’t even pray for strength to do it all. 

In my fatigue and rampant wussery, I had only prayed that God would allow me to have a nap and postpone our first Shabbat. 

He didn’t cook the chicken for me or let me off the hook (which is good because later, I realized that my sobbing had been instigated by a demonic attack, as evidenced by the fact that I SUDDENLY went from ok to horrid, pre-sobbing, and then again felt completely fine—not at all sleepy, not at all whiny—the very SECOND I said “OUT, in The Name Of Jesus!”). 

He DID Multiply the chicken.

 Here is a photo of the nine pieces that had NOT been there an hour earlier—and a shot of the raw chicken thighs that is still sitting in the fridge. 

I do realize, of course, that this is not evidence that would hold up in court; in fact, the only reason I took the first photo is to remind myself of His great kindness, and of how He took, maybe not loaves and fishes but chicken thighs with fajita seasoning, blessed them, and multiplied them. 

In fact, He Doubled them and gave us enough for leftovers. He SAID He’d Always Give us “just enough,” but He ALWAYS Does so with generosity and kindness that warms us to the cockles of our hearts. (My sweet Baba used to say that God Took “Kind Care” of us,” and I see how perfect this phrase is to describe our LORD more every day!) 

Did you see the second miracle in what happened, by the way?

I suppose you couldn’t have, since I was the only one in the house at the time, apart from Holy Spirit. 

Ok, then!

Remember how I was sobbing and going on about how tired I was? 

Yes, I still maintain that demonic attack was part of it, but I was also fatigued from having stayed up all night, planning and checking out recipes and trying to learn Hebrew for the blessing. 

And when my beloved woke up, just as I was settling down for a nap, it sealed my schedule for the day, because there was no way I would go to sleep when he was awake. (We’ve both been working on books of late, and our time together is limited.)

So, demonic (supernatural) trash aside, despair and moodiness aside, I was, in fact, just plain tired… In the natural.

But He was able to reverse all of that—natural and supernatural alike!— by reversing one circumstance, which gave me hope and adrenaline in order to complete the tasks I needed to. 

If you’ve ever been at the end of your rope for a reason that seems kind of dolty, but was really significant to you at the time, then you’ll understand what I’m talking about—and why I’m still talking even though the story is basically done, lol. 

See, He COULD have said that I didn’t have to go through the ceremony. 

He could have said that I didn’t need to make three different salads—sorry, two salads, and an appetizer with the word salad in the title (Caprese). 

But he didn’t let me off the hook. Instead, he did something even better. He strengthened me to do what I had to, He inspired me and motivated me, He enabled and empowered me, and He advised me. 

The reason I was laughing earlier about how hilarious His silence was is because I imagined Him responding to my feeble attempt to start cooking with a sassy “Girl, PLEASE. Sit yourself down and have a snow cone while I handle this. Hmph! (You always turn the skin into rubber! Can we say ‘Crispy’ ???”)

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was not just training, but also a test. I think that I passed, despite the fact that I was whining like a little Bratslianna for half the day. Lol. (I often do, heh.) 

Life is difficult. Not (just) because we’re broke or we don’t get to see family often. 

Not because our schedule is insane and this house doesn’t feel like home yet. 

Not even because we have over 60 medical conditions between the two of us. 

Life is just hard because of the fall. Once Adam and Eve reacted the way they did to the loser lucifer’s deception and brattiness, once they were ousted from the garden of Eden, it was set: work would be hard, childbearing would be hard, relationships between men and women would be hard, and we humans would eventually die. 

That wasn’t in His Plan for us. 

Or, rather, it was not His desire for us. But here we are. (And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that if we had been there instead, we would have made mistake, too. Maybe not the same one that Eve and then Adam did. But we would have.)

Anyway, I digress.

I had a lot more feelings about yesterday evening, but to be honest, I may have been too weary to even consciously feel them. 

And I don’t think my feelings were important enough to relate here; or, at least, they weren’t as important as our first Shabbat miracle. 

The reason I phrased it that way, instead of saying “the miracle on the day of our first Shabbat,” is because I am beyond convinced that this was just the first of a long streak of miracles and great blessings that God will keep Doing on every single Shabbat we celebrate. 

(For the record, though, neither of us is a stranger to miracles; God Speaks to and through us daily: when we teach or preach, when we counsel others or each other, and when He Prays through our lips. 

He also Saves our lives in a BIG way every few days… and Has since we were both kids. But more on THAT another day. :) 

Much love In Christ Jesus, 

S 

PS

The reason I said how much I love my husband, at the beginning of this article is because if I had tried to bow out of our first Shabbat celebration, he would’ve been most displeased, since we’ve both been looking forward to it so so much !

You can actually read about his reaction to it right here in this article.