Mining for Couch Money
Help Me Lord Until The Moment That You Do
I was waiting in the self-checkout line at the Food Lion when I heard the sound of sporadic desperate clinking, the chiming of loose change being poured into the Coinstar machine. I watched a young man and woman -holding on to two young children- pour a sparse collection of coinage out of a plastic sandwich bag into the money collecting contraption. I felt a pang from the past, an avalanche of memory, all the times we had to scrape together “couch money” to get us through a week of not having enough money. Couch money is when you tear off the cushions of your hand-me-down living room furniture in order to excavate what you hope will be quarters and dimes instead of a few pennies, a Canadian nickel and a hair tie. You haven’t praised the Lord until you’ve praised the Lord standing in front of the Coinstar machine while it tallies your coins waiting for it to spit out a receipt announcing that you’re rich now: you have twelve dollars.
Abounding is great but have you ever tried being abased? There’s nothing like “persevering as seeing Him who is unseen.” That’s the way I try to do it. I ignore famous preachers and I ignore any cynicism in my own heart. I pray for miracles and I don’t take it personally if they don’t happen. I resist faith formulas that overpromise results. I don’t romanticize poverty and I don’t lust for wealth. I try not to pretend that I know what I don’t know. I am no longer offended by God’s invisibility and silence. I interpret his absence as his presence. We live and we die and it’s just tremendous that we get to exist at all. But still, I am going to keep crying out, “Help me Lord until the moment that you do.” And I am reminding myself to carry cash on me so that when I see people in hard times I can help them. Lord knows I have been the recipient of so much kindness from people who have felt the sting of their own former poverty. Enduring through suffering will make you love God so much that you will also love your neighbor enough to take care for them in their time of diminishment.
Praising in front of the coinstar machine is so #real…not one original experience LOL. So good Andy.
So good. Many times my wife and I scoured the center console and couch for change. I wrote a song called “Two Rivers” on my album Will Someone Carry Me -about growing up in love and adulthood with my wife in Sacramento. There’s a line in the chorus
“…Even though I don’t get paid
Till next Friday afternoon
I found some money in my room
Let’s go out, babe.”
This was written about a very clear memory of finding $20 in a jacket pocket at a time of desperation to do something, anything for a quick fast food date.