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After the Sunday night post Troy declared that he was officially on board and not only was he on board but we would be legalistic and even barbaric in our eat-down rules moving forward.
Apparently if I want to mock his preferred methods, I had better be prepared to prove I am loyal to mine.
The photo above represents the last of the food in the pantry as of this morning. There are also 12 stale instant oatmeal packets remaining. The freezer has one half bag of frozen veggies and two hamburger patties. The refrigerator has condiments, two eggs, four sticks of butter, and 1/4 gallon of milk.
Last Wednesday the people living in this home began to whine and complain. They even declared there was "NO food in the house" - yes, a full week ago. Yet, we've eaten at home every night since then and no one has been forced to go hungry. Have we had some weird meals? Sure. But we ate.
The livesay family is blessed beyond measure. We are in the portion of the worlds population that live with the privilege of declaring there is "no food" - when in fact we have six to seven more days of food in our house. We learned a valuable lesson. We don't know what NO food is like. We only know that we get whiny when we're out of fruit and our favorite snacks.
The point is not to feel guilty about what we have access to and resources for, not at all. I'm not teaching my children anything of the sort. The point is to consider that what is "no food" to us and what is "no food" to most of the world cannot even be compared. The problem of hunger and poverty in just one tiny country alone is mind boggling; we know that many face a daily struggle to feed their families. This is the grievous reality that I pray I live to see changed.
The food that remains in our pantry, the amount we refer to as having "no food", may exceed the amount of food this Haitian family will consume this week.
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“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
-Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel
13 comments:
I am with you on this one! We have some pretty strange meals too! Some days its fun to see just how strange we can make it! After this summer in Haiti it is pretty hard for me to want to go to the store.
Great post.
Sobering! Thanks for your thought-provoking post.
--Bonnie
behind on my blog reading this busy October week, but my hat's off to ya!
Mike is in a men's Bible Study called "A Hole in the Gospel" (I think) and they had a challenge one week to skip your grocery shopping and give the money to a missionary.
He told me on a Monday night, and I had just gone shopping for the week. I thought, PIECE OF CAKE! We have food for two weeks! (*and we did) but by Thursday we were out of bread. I made the boys school lunch sandwiches rolled up in tortillas instead of bread. I thought I had my "A GAME" going, they thought I was NUTS!
By Sat. morning we were out of milk..... the complaining continued to the point that Mike walked to the mini-mart and got milk. I was still willing to hold out.... until I found out we were having company on Sunday after church. I can't feed someone else HODGE PODGE? (can I??)
I failed the test.......and OF COURSE we still had ALL KINDS OF FOOD in the house..... you are my hero!
we are a family of 6 and i find my kids saying this exact thing hours after a grocery store stock up mission. It truly disheartened me to hear it before my first trip to Haiti and now frustrates me immensly even more so now. My husband and I would be beside ourselves with thoughts on how are we gonna get our kids to understand we are priveledged? thank you for this great lesson. I plan on trying this challenge. also I read Elie Wisel's book Night.... and it moved me so much. great quote you posted. Thanks so much for sharing. I love following your families blog.
Another really thought provoking post Livesay Family. Thank-you.
K
I went to a United World College, I don't know if you heard about them (www.uwc.org). My family had no money, but the students get full scholarships. My school had 200 people from 93 countries. If you were from Israel, you had a roommate from Palestine, that's how the school works. I think your kids would love it...so if you have a chance check it out at some point.
But what I wanted to say is: I love what you are doing here. Wish such lessons could be extended to more people. At the UWC our food was funded by the state. The college got the money, and spent it on food. Our class of 15-to-17-year-olds voted to keep a "soup day" every week. On that day for lunch we had four different kinds of soup and three different kinds of bred served. Plus milk and other drinks. This replaced the usual 4-5 main courses, desserts, cold cuts, cheeses, jams, etc. While we voted to do this, and certainly not one of us went hungry and many of our own classmates came from terrible poverty...there was plenty of whining about the 'lack of food'.
So I admire the lesson you are teaching. I seriously recommend you check out the UWC schools. There is one in the US too, also one in Costa Rica and Canada. It's a 2-year program that gives the International Baccalaureate at the end. Also, if you get admitted to any college in the US afterwards, you receive full scholarship funded by Shelby Davis. Of course, it's a life-changing experience, and they look for children who can teach and are open to learn. It's not well-advertised in the US.
So good. So good. Love the quote, too.
I commented about this a couple days ago on your wknd review...now you just captured what I was feeling and saying perfectly, like you read my mind?!? Our church once handed out a bag of rice/beans and encouraged families to have that one night instead of what they normally would have had, I liked that idea. Good thoughts here, Tara.
I am so right there with you ... and my family is beginning to "get it". I, too, have gone a week or more after hearing "there is no food in the house". There is food ... and I LOVE the challenge of making it work ... of proving to the kids that they are NOT going hungry ... of saving money. Oh yes! Always love a challenge.
Oh ... my husband is definitely more on Troy's "page", but he would probably put me to the test if I wrote a blog post about it.
:) :) :)
We did an eat down last time we moved. We allowed ourselves to purchase whatever we needed to complete a meal (for example, noodles for the spag. sauce we already had) and necesseties like milk, but nothing else new until we moved or ran out of food. We did this for 3 months, and we still had a box full of food when we left. A valuable lesson was learned about food. Your words are so true!
I am currently in an "eat down" too - and I knew nothing about your family doing it too.
But I have a different reason - my neighbor died, and I volunteered to take all her remaining food to the local food bank (except for the opened stuff, and the beer and wine). I noticed that she had a LOT of stuff by the "best by" date - sometimes the best by date was 1999 or 1998!!
And then I decided to go through every cabinet that I have - and I found stuff that was past the "best by" date (but only a year or less). I separated out the stuff that was not past the 'best buy' date, and donated that. And that I would eat the rest of it before restocking.
That was a month ago. I can see now that I am going to end up with pasta and cereal..... and nothing else.
I am purchasing fresh items needed to complete the food I have - like milk for cereal and eggs for the cake mixes.
Next, I am doing the freezer!
I kinda doubt I will get it all eaten by Thanksgiving, and I really don't have all that much.
My deceased neighbor, on the other hand, had a lot.
AWESOME, I love it!! Finally an application lesson & some company in support of one of my favorite pastimes...
When Ted used to work out of town a lot the kids & I would play this "game" (probably bc it wouldn't fly w/ him @ home - he's from Troy's camp) It was always a challenge to see how far we could go on what was left and meant I could avoid shopping(torture w/ 5 kids in tow!)
With several moves coming up soon, I'm about to justify (w/ T) revisiting the "eat down" too!
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