Ten of us in one small shack

From 1953 on, I was old enough to understand our family's circumstances. We lived in a 1951 Dodge for about a year before my father built us a shack. The lumber came from a barn that had burned down; the nails were square. It took about six months. In winter it was so cold it was like being outside, and in summer so hot — and ten of us lived in that shack for nine years.

We were about three-quarters of a mile from the main road, and the road to us was all mud. When it rained, sometimes we got stuck. We had a garden, pigs, and chickens that helped feed us, and a cistern for water — and when the cistern started leaking, we drove four miles to the creek to fetch spring water in whatever containers we had, every day. My father worked as a florist, making forty-eight dollars a week.

In 1965 we managed to put two hundred dollars down on a house with electricity and plumbing. That was heaven to us. We had good, loving parents. I had five sisters and two younger brothers, and we had our fights at times, like any family growing up. I learned early that community is bigger than the walls we're born inside.

What that shack taught me

I tell that story not for pity — we were rich in the ways that count. I tell it because we never went without the things that truly mattered. We were fed, we were loved, and we were held. Looking back, I can see it plainly: God was providing the whole time. Not always what we wanted, but always what we needed.

He knew our needs before we did, and He had already made provision. If the Lord fed ten of us on a muddy road, He can carry you through whatever season you're in right now. That is why, all these years later, I have never really learned to worry.