He Heard Me

My husband and I lived at the University of Utah in the married student housing in the early 1980s. We had two little children. My husband was a student at the law school, and therefore he was gone almost the entire day every day. So that pretty much left me home alone with the children.

So my children and I spent a lot of time on the playground with other children and with the other moms. One of the women that I met on the playground was a Nigerian woman.

She was pregnant with her first child. Her husband was also a student. She didn’t speak English so we, we didn’t speak more than a few words to each other. She always had a big smile on her face. And she said hello to everybody. She was just a really lovely lady. You could tell she was very kind but that was the extent of our relationship.

We were very financially poor. We lived under the national poverty line. We didn’t have a lot of money for food. My husband budgeted $15 a week for food, that’s what we had. My husband, he quit eating two meals, so he would only eat one meal a day so that we would have enough to feed me and the children. And when that $15 was up, we didn’t have any more to spend until the next week when we get paid.

But one morning, it was in the fall time, and I woke up. My husband was already gone. There were dark clouds outside was kind of dark. It was cozy. But I felt so sad. I felt kind of a lonely feeling. I just felt really kind of forgotten.

But I went to make breakfast. And my favorite comfort food is Cream of Wheat cereal.

When it’s cooked, it’s mushy. So we called it mush. And after it’s cooked, I would mix in a piece of buttered toast. I would tear toast up in pieces and then I would mix it up and you’d have that butter and you’d have that bread taste. And then on top of that, I would pour sugar on it.

And it was delicious. It was like I said, comfort. But that particular morning I didn’t have any sugar.

And it just broke my heart, broke my heart to think I don’t even have any sugar to feed my baby.

Now I know there’s so many needs that are greater than sugar. And we had our greatest needs met. And I knew that there were other people in the world that had so much less than us, that also need blessings.

That particular morning, I, I just needed some sugar. Like I said, I felt frustrated. I was feeling a bit angry because of my situation. I felt lonely. I felt forgotten. And as I was feeling this before breakfast, I got a knock on my door.

And there was this woman with a great big smile. And in her hands was a jar of sugar. And she handed that to me. And I just, I just looked at her totally flabbergasted. Like why would you bring me sugar? How would you even know I wanted sugar?

It wasn’t cookies. It wasn’t a cake. It wasn’t a loaf of bread like so many traditional things you would share, what other people bring to people. It was a jar of sugar. That was just like the oddest thing in the whole world. But yet, to me, it was that greatest blessing to me.

She didn’t know, she couldn’t have known. We never discussed anything like that. She doesn’t know my situation. But there she was with the job sugar.

I didn’t even kneel down and ask for sugar from the Heavenly Father. It wasn’t a prayer spoken out loud.

But yet, through this woman, this sister, I knew that Heavenly Father loves me. He heard me. He heard my silent prayer. He could feel the frustration. He could see that I just needed to show that I was not alone.

While we were living in that apartment, we had twin sons that were born prematurely and passed away after a few hours old.

I also knew because of this experience, that the Lord knew me and He knew that I would need to know that to help me get through harder times.

I’m forever grateful for this sister and her simple act of kindness of bringing me a jar sugar. What an odd gift, what a great blessing, it has been to me throughout all my life.