Hope for the Moment

The love-you bite, an empty bottle of lotion, and the faithfulness that carried us forward.

When I was raising my children alone, we had nothing and when I say nothing, I mean there were seasons when there was not enough money for the utilities, clothing, gas, groceries, and certainly not enough for anything that could be considered a luxury like coffee or lotion.

I worked. I tried. I stretched every dollar as far as it could possibly go, but I did not make enough to support us and no matter how carefully I calculated, it seemed as though we were constantly going backward. Yet somehow, through the miraculous accounting of God, everything worked out.

This does not mean I moved through those years with perfect peace. I stressed. I worried. I panicked. I cried out to God regularly: How is this going to happen? How are we going to make it? Where will the money come from?

There was so much we lacked, but God kept leading us forward and building our faith. The provision did not always look like abundance. Sometimes it was simply enough for the day, enough for one meal, enough to keep the lights on, or enough hope to get me out of bed and try again but somehow, the provision came. Again and again, it came.

The Love-You Bite

During one season, when I prepared dinner for my children, there was just enough food for them. There was no extra plate waiting for me in the kitchen. I would divide what we had among my children, set their meals in front of them, and then I created something I called the love-you bite. I would smile and ask each child, “Can I have a love-you bite?” One bite from one plate, another bite from another... A few bites gathered together became my dinner.

My children had no idea those bites were my meal. To them, it was simply something their mom did,  a playful little ritual around the table. They did not know there was not enough food for me. They did not know I had quietly given them everything we had and was trusting their shared bites to carry me through the evening.

And I am grateful they did not know. Children should not have to carry the fear of whether there will be enough. Somehow, in the middle of our scarcity, God helped me turn hunger into affection. Instead of placing the weight of our lack on their shoulders, I asked them to share a bite of love.

Looking back, I can see something holy happening at that table. There may not have been enough for another full plate, but there was enough love to share a bite. There was enough grace for that evening and enough to keep us moving forward.

The Bottle of Lotion

I remember another moment from this season with remarkable clarity. It was summer, and my legs were dry as a bone. I remember talking to God about lotion. Lotion, something so ordinary  most people would place it in a shopping cart without a second thought but lotion was a luxury for us. When you are trying to keep the utilities on and put food on the table, lotion does not make the list. So I went without it and still, I told God my legs were dry but it was ok. I was ok.

One Sunday, as I was leaving church, a friend was standing near the back of her vehicle, taking things out of her car. I was walking toward my own car when she called my name.

“Hey, Rebecca, I have something for you.”

I turned around, and she held out a bottle of lotion. She told me there had been a buy-one-get-one-free sale. She had an extra bottle and wondered whether I might want it. To someone else, it might have been only an extra bottle of lotion, to me, it was holy a provision straight from God through my Friend. It felt as though heaven had reached through an ordinary moment and placed that bottle directly into my hands: Here is your lotion, I see you, I heard you and I am right here. God had heard a prayer seemingly  too small to matter. In the middle of unpaid bills, limited groceries, and all the needs that appeared more important, God had heard me mention my dry legs. I went home and used this holy lotion with a gratitude sometimes to difficult to explain. Each time I rubbed the lotion into my skin, it felt like receiving love from heaven.

The Bottle Ran Empty

I still have that bottle today. It has been empty for nearly twenty years, but I have never thrown it away. For a long time, I kept the lotion only because it represented God’s provision and it does but now I understand it represents something more: the lotion was never designed to last forever, the bottle of lotion was hope for the moment.

The bottle eventually ran empty, but God’s faithfulness did not.

The provision was never truly contained inside the bottle. The lotion was physical evidence of a God who was present. It was enough for the season, enough to remind me I had not been forgotten, enough hope to help me get through another day. Sometimes, I have held too tightly to things because they once represented safety and security. I have held onto relationships, opportunities, possessions, beliefs, and old versions of myself because God once used them to carry me through a difficult season.

A provision can be holy for one moment without being meant to remain forever.

The lotion ran out. The season changed. My children grew. Our circumstances changed. The bottle remained, not as something I still needed to squeeze provision from, but as a witness: when one provision is finished, God is already able to prepare the next. Sometimes we keep turning an empty bottle upside down, pounding the bottom, trying to force one final drop from something whose purpose has already been completed. We grip yesterday’s blessing because we are afraid nothing else will come.

The bottle was never the source, God was the source.

The job was not the source, the relationship was not the source, the person who helped was not the source, they were vessels- Gods love you bites and lotion bottles- visible expressions of invisible grace.

The empty bottle was not proof the provision had ended only proof the provision had come.

Learning to Trust the Father

During those years, I lived with so much fear and doubt. When Scripture spoke about the birds of the air, how they do not spend their lives worrying about tomorrow,  I could not relate. I was not there yet, I am still learning in new areas of my life to trust. I believed in God, but I did not yet trust God the Father to protect and provide. I was not expecting God to be God. I expected God to operate within the same limitations I had experienced in human beings.

The people who had taught me, led me, disappointed me, or failed me had shaped my understanding of provision. I had experienced people withholding love, support, protection, and truth. I had seen promises broken. So even when I prayed, some part of me still expected heaven to carry the scarcity and inconsistency I had known on earth. I expected God to run out. I expected God to forget me. I expected my needs to become too much.

But God kept showing up.

Not always in the way I wanted, not always according to my timing. Sometimes, through a meal made from shared bites,  through a friend holding an extra bottle of lotion, through strength I did not know I had until I stood up and made it through another day. Each provision became a small invitation to trust more deeply. God was teaching me divine faithfulness was not limited by the scarcity I had experienced from people.

What the Love-You Bite Means Now

Even now, I reach across the table and ask one of my children who are 26-31 years old, “Can I have a love-you bite?”

But I am no longer asking because I lack food.

Today, our table holds abundance. There is enough for everyone, and often more than enough. When I ask for that bite now, I smile on the inside, because my children still remember it as a sweet little thing their mother always did. They had no idea those bites were once my entire meal. For me, the love-you bite has become a remembrance. I am not reaching from hunger; I am reaching back into our story and being grateful.

Each bite reminds me of the table where there was barely enough while I sit at a table where there is abundance. God did not only lead us into an abundance of food and material provision. God led us into an abundance of truth, love, grace, forgiveness, and healing. We did not only survive financially. We healed, learned the truth about who we were, we learned to look for the bottle of hope in our lives, to trust this isn’t the end of the story but perhaps the beginning. The beginning of seeing God manifest in our circumstances. This taught my kids to look for the lotion bottles in their own life and it the provision will come.  We learned how to trust God with our lack; or maybe not even call it lack but opportunity to see God, discover God, encounter God. God restore the places generational scarcity had wounded.

This tiny bite now carries our whole story.

It reminds me of the mother I was, the mother who quietly went without so her children could eat. It reminds me of the children who unknowingly fed their mother from their own plates and reminds me of the God who sat with us at that table, multiplying far more than food.

God was multiplying love. God was protecting their innocence. God was strengthening me. God was leading all of us toward a future we could not yet see.

What once represented survival now represents restoration. What once filled an empty stomach now fills my heart with gratitude.

Every time I take that bite, I remember: God brought us through.

Hope for This Moment

Sometimes we miss the bottles of lotion in our own lives because we are searching for the complete solution. We are looking for enough provision to carry us through the next year, while God is placing enough hope in our hands to carry us through this moment.

We want to see the whole road. God may be illuminating only the next step.

We want proof nothing will ever run out, God may be reminding us when one provision ends, another can come. Hope for the moment is not small faith, it allowing us to remain present and asking us to stop living too far down the road and to notice what is being given right now.

Where is God in the middle of this moment? What has arrived that you almost dismissed because it did not solve everything? What love-you bite or bottle of lotion is quietly reminding you, you have not been forgotten? The answer may not last forever, it’s not meant to. It may simply be enough hope for today -enough to breathe, enough to rise, enough to take the next faithful step.

•  What small provision have you overlooked because it did not solve the entire problem?

•  Are you gripping something that was sacred for a past season but is now empty?

•  Where have you mistaken a vessel for the Source?

•  What would it look like to trust God for this moment rather than demanding certainty about the whole road?

•  What abundance - truth, love, grace, forgiveness, healing, or provision,  can you recognize in your life today?

God of Provision, 

Open my eyes to the quiet ways You are meeting me today. Forgive me for the moments when fear has made me believe I am forgotten, alone, or beyond Your care.

Help me recognize the love-you bites and bottles of lotion in my own life - the small, holy reminders You are near. Give me gratitude for what has been provided without demanding today’s provision last forever.

Give me the courage to release what has run empty. Teach me not to grip yesterday’s blessing so tightly I cannot receive what You are bringing today. Remind me the vessel is not the Source and  Your faithfulness is not exhausted when a season ends.

Heal the places in me that learned to expect scarcity, abandonment, and broken promises. Teach me to trust Your love, Your truth, Your grace, Your forgiveness, and Your protection. Lead me from survival into restoration and from fear into a deeper confidence in Your presence.

When I cannot see the whole road, give me enough light for the next step. When I do not know how everything will work out, give me enough hope for this moment, and when I sit at tables of abundance, never let me forget the tables where a few shared bites became my meal. Let remembrance keep me humble, grateful, generous, and awake to the miracles hidden inside ordinary things.

Thank You for bringing us through and keep seeing us through. Thank You for the food, the truth, the love, the grace, the forgiveness, and the healing. Thank You even when the bottle runs empty, Your faithfulness remains.

Amen.