Hope

by Derrick McQueen

The night before we used all but the heelpiece of bread to stretch dinner for my Mom, my brother and I. We had officially run out of food and had nothing to eat. My mom had a great job at AT&T as a single mother but was left with all the debts, the car breaking down right before rent was due and two boys she wanted to protect from it all. It was one of the first times I remember my mom really crying and not being able to stop. When I asked her what was wrong she told me that my brother had just eaten the last bit of bread in the house. Even though we had lots of family in town, Mom was just so sick and tired of borrowing a dollar here, some bread or milk there. Just three to five dollars would have gotten us through the next couple of days but my mom was just beaten.

As she told me all of this, when I was thirteen, I remember feeling so helpless. All I knew was that I didn’t want my seven-year-old brother to see us like this. Mom agreed and apologized that I had to be a party to this. I told her it was okay. She showed me what she was holding in her hand. It wasn’t just the bread that was gone, she was holding a gnarled and twisted tube of toothpaste that had been slit open from the bottom. There was not one bit of toothpaste left in the tube. Mom had put it on my brother’s toothbrush so that he could brush his teeth. For her that was just the last straw. I started praying for our little family, Mom joined in and when we finished she felt much better.

Today in Logan, Ohio I had the opportunity to tour a Food Bank that had a full kitchen and a process to feed thousands. I was told that on distribution day people lined up starting at 4 am to get their box of food. The facility opens at 8 am. The line stretches down the half mile of driveway and for several miles down the road. But people get food and get fed. This is not a report about the facility, I just wanted people to know how incredibly powerful it is to know that people who need food get it. It’s simple I know but it means so much.

I will be a forty-two year old man in less than week. As I am writing this tears are streaming down my face. You see today I visited the Tri-County Community Action in Logan, Ohio that houses a Food Bank, Meals On Wheels and a Headstart program. It hit me hard just how grateful I am that people here have banded together to do their bit to end poverty by feeding the hungry. Tonight in Logan, Ohio there is a thirteen year old somewhere that doesn’t have to watch his mother cry, not for himself, but because his brother won’t eat. And he won’t have to carry that for the rest of his life. To me, that is a miracle. By the way, in the mail that day after Mom and I prayed and cried, a tube of sample toothpaste, or what I like to call hope, arrived in the mail. And things just seemed to get a little better. Hope came in the mail.