The Squeeze Is On

Derek and Jeannie had to face their reality in a different way a few weeks ago. Their son Abe needed a tonsillectomy, and they had to come up with a four-figure co-pay.  Then they got the news that they didn’t qualify for school lunch assistance for Abe and their daughter Breanna anymore. Under revised guidelines, they make too much money for the program. (Not that what they make feels like too much money to them.)

The bottom line about their bottom line is that they have to come up with an extra 40 school lunches a month now at a time their savings are wiped out. In their wildest dreams, they never thought they’d have to come to the Mission to get help. But for the sake of their kids, they came last week for a food box. Thank God for neighbors like you, dear reader, who bring food to the Mission warehouse or to food collections at schools, businesses, and houses of worship throughout our community. You might be amazed at how many of your neighbors are neighbors in need, if only for a season.

More families than ever are showing up for food distribution at the Mission. I don’t want to minimize the fact that they need all the other things available for families here like clothing, furniture, household and personal items and even (some weeks especially) diapers. It’s that the need for food seems to be rising dramatically -- so much so that we now encourage families to stop by for food boxes an extra time a month if they need to. 

And they’re coming from places all over town. They’re scattered among the local zip codes now. Not evenly, to be sure, but still scattered enough to demonstrate that food insecurity for families is an issue to more of our neighbors than we might have dreamed of just a few years ago. In fact, 1 in 7 people in Colorado are “food insecure.” That’s a less painful way to say those neighbors really don’t know where their next meal is coming from, if it comes from anywhere at all. Depending upon whose figures you read, up to half the population in our state could be food insecure sometime this year--maybe only once, but isn’t that enough?

The squeeze is on for families in need of simple things like food. And there are few situations as compelling to move parents into action as having your kids playing quietly in the next room and assuming that food will be on the table when you’re actually trying to create a meal and there’s nothing left to squeeze out of an empty pantry. 

It’s a wake-up moment. It may be filled with pain or a sense of failure or relief or any combination of the above, but it wakes you up in any case. 

Just as it did Derek and Jeannie last week. So this week, I’m reminding you that the community is coming together over the next two weekends at the Rampart Range campus parking lot of Pikes Peak Community College (across from New Life Church on the north side of town) to offer non-perishable food, clothing, household items, furniture and appliances to help stabilize some of the 27,000 families in the Pikes Peak Region who live in poverty. The things you bring to the “Freely Give, Freely Receive” event will help some families start the journey from homelessness to self-reliance. You might keep others from becoming homeless in the first place. Or, perhaps, you’ll keep a couple of kids in your neighborhood from going to bed hungry.

And if you’re reading this from a distance, think about taking leftovers from the spring cleaning of your closets and pantries to your local rescue mission this weekend.

The squeeze may be on for families in a season of need, but we can do something simple, practical and genuinely helpful about it.