The Manna of Dependency

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

~ Deuteronomy 8:3

Forty years of this.

Forty years of manna. From my tiny, premature form, baptized one day after my birth. Now, a middle-aged mother, holding a newborn for the eighth time. After all these years, I am still letting go of my shattered pride.

“Letting go,” though, implies some semblance of control. This is much more like being crushed, gently but deliberately, into something I haven’t reached yet, something I can’t even adequately visualize. Something I both crave to become and fight desperately against becoming.

My physical recovery, from childbirth this time, from surgery and significant bodily events at other times, demands my utmost attention. Mostly, it does this because it hurts, first in sharp jabs and cramps, later in a soft fragility and fatigue. Pain literally alarms me, as it does us all, from the nerve endings firing into my brain to the spiritual angst it causes. It requires me to face my innate weakness and inadequacy and, ultimately, my mortality.

My body, now rebuilding after a very fast second stage of labor, when our son was born, and a postpartum hemorrhage, depended on the assistance of nurses.¹ They wiped and monitored and squeezed; they crouched and propped and held. They encouraged me and reassured me. They were with me and did not leave me. I was grateful for this. I couldn’t have labored without them.

And I can say with the utmost gratitude and sincerity that I depended upon them, upon my doctor and others. I also have depended upon my truly herculean mother, who has spent nearly the last month filling the role I normally fill, except with much more patience, wisdom, and grace—caring for our seven other children and maintaining our household while I have recovered and cared for Baby. I have depended upon the amazing generosity of many, many people who have brought us incredible, truly mountainous, amounts of food and other baby items. I have depended—heavily, desperately—upon the quiet, ongoing service of my husband. And I know without this dependency, there would be none of these gifts. Complete and utter self-sufficiency is lonely and cold, and I have reaped the warm and overflowing bounty of love in all this giving.

But I can also say with total honesty that I have hated this dependency, too. It is a bitter portion to swallow my pride and accept, let alone give thanks for, the help and the food, the presents and cards and support, all this sustenance. If it sounds ungrateful, it is because I am ungrateful. And here I find myself in the desert with the Israelites, frustrated and choking down manna from heaven.I

How can this happen? How can I know my complete and utter nonexistence, let alone helplessness, without the intercession of the One who formed me, of the One who sustains me, of the One who keeps pouring into my overflowing cup? How can I be thankful for Him and all that He gives, and also at the exact same time absolutely despise the gifts, and in so doing despise God?

The answer is satisfactory and not, because I am a daughter of Adam and Eve. Food, first in Eden that prompted a hunger that could never be filled by anything humans did, also rained upon God’s rescued people out of Egypt. His grace falls upon the righteous and the unrighteous, truly. And I am both baptized saint and sinner at the same time. Until I see clearly, actually face to face, I will never totally accept that without my dependency, I do not need God. My pride is dooming me; indeed, it already has. My bed is made, my road set. I will die because I have sinned.

But as much as this terrible truth inexorably adds gray to my hair and wrinkles to my face, I lift up my head—because my hands are bound, but He has cleansed them. He has redeemed my dependency and even my hatred of my dependency. Christ has softly broken me and continues to, battering my heart and my body with experience and brokenness to make me new, as Donne beautifully describes it.

And Christ continues to give me manna. Like the feathery food that wafted down from God Himself, the food His people absolutely needed and yet, after a childlike moment of short-term memory loss and petulance, no one wanted, He also keeps giving me what my sinful self doesn’t want. Never mind the wilderness and the hunger. Never mind ungrateful me. He comes anyway. He brings humility to me in mine; He gives me food that will never perish and always fulfill me.

May He always break me so that I may receive what He gives.

1. Again, I promise to write a birth story eventually.