Signs of Spring

I had the most incredible experience.

It was one of those moments you can't deny, but had I not been there with a witness, I might find it hard to believe.

I am standing in the tar lined driveway of the little shack I had been able to secure for my kids and I just before school started the previous summer. My son (10) is playing catch in the yard with a friend on a patch of grass just big enough for them to go out for short passes. The fresh leaves of two towering locust tree's created a canopy across the entire yard and most of the driveway.

Despite the raggedness of the house, the yard is like a personal gift to me. This little spot of earth gave us blue and white Hyacinths that Spring out of nowhere and a magnificent Blooming Cherry Tree. On one side of the house, pink Peonies are beginning to lean with their weight as they do, while in the front the Forsythias have started replacing their yellow blooms for Summer leaves.

I'm on the driveway chatting with Perron, a dad I have known for years who has come to pick up his son. We are discussing the delayed legal process I'm in and the need for the kids and I to move again soon.

He asks, "Do you have any leads on a place?"

Simple question.

"I don't have any leads," I answered.

Then something rises up out of me from an old deep well.

"All I know, is when I have been faithless, yet, He has been faithful."

It just came out like that. Sometimes I forget all the years I spent studying for ministry.

Thinking I may have crossed a boundary of political correctness, I look at him a little stunned to see how the statement landed. He's smiling and nodding with a knowing grin as if to say, "I get you."

"I guess we'll see what happens next," I conclude.

Later that evening, I am standing in virtually the same spot on my driveway with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other talking with a friend from my faith community.

Again, my living situation is the topic of conversation.

I've just told her that my temporary job has ended.

She asks with a hint of panic in her voice, "How are you going to provide for your kids?!"

Before I can answer, there is a rustling in the bridge of branches over our heads.

In the split second it takes to look up and step back, a half a ciabatta roll falls from the trees and lands at my feet...

We look at each other our mouths wide open, look up at the tree, down at the chunk of bread and then at each other again. Then we scream and laugh and laugh for a very long time.

Can you believe it?!

Bread fell at my feet at the question of how I was going to provide for my children.

What?!

I do understand that there is a very unhappy squirrel in the tree lost his dinner; it didn't fall from the sky. But bread has long been used as a spiritual metaphor of provision in many faith traditions. Jesus referred to himself as the bread of life. More than one holy book makes reference to a "bread-like" substance that appeared for the people during times of draught or famine.

It's kind of an obvious message.

I needed a hit me upside the side of the head, almost literally, kind of message.

This is the actual piece of ciabatta. It fell from the tree in 2014. It has never molded or crumbled. Make of that what you want. Twinkie levels of preservatives most likely...

The ciabatta remained unchanged, but my faith was not.

The night the bread fell concluded with my throwing up from having drank too much. It was the beginning of a long wrestling match. A battle between faith and functional alcoholism.

I kept thinking I could hold it together little longer. It would all be over within a few months at the most. I even had the delusion that it may be resolved before we had to move. That would have been helpful.

But no.

It would be another six years.

I lost all hope around year four when I again needed to find a place to live.

People would tell me, "This too shall pass," and "Everything comes to an end eventually." It really pissed me off.

Year after year the circumstances seemed to mock the idea of hope, ciabatta or not...but there would always be reminders.

More times than I can recount, on my last breath an 11th hour miracle would fall at my feet. I am talking unexpected checks coming in the mail just in time. It became a thing with my sister when I would call and say, "CIABATTA," like I was calling Yahtzee for the win...

It was undeniable.

Provision always came.

Finally, the legal matters ended.

We've had a place to live for three years in a row and I have as many years of sobriety.

I didn't think I could make it. Poor squirrel lost his dinner and I still doubted. Winters can last such an excruciatingly long time. It can be hard to remember that there were other seasons without desolation.

But eventually, Spring does come.

Sometimes you have to look for it.

Sometimes it knocks you upside the head.

But it always comes.

I have the ciabatta to prove it.