Soup

Have you ever added lemon juice and cinnamon to your chicken soup? I learned about this from a church friend who dropped off a couple of glass jars of her chicken soup to save us from making a meal six or seven years ago when I was a newly minted mother of three. She forever changed how I eat chicken soup.

This past Friday, a friend who happens to be a neighbor and mom of three, shared a late night message in one of our WhatsApp groups that her son may have broken his shoulder. I replied to her separately to see if I could drop off some chicken soup. She accepted and I got to work on it in my InstantPot somewhere between school drop-off and work day began the next day. I left it in the pot for the whole day while I worked and picked up the kids from school.

I ran into my old neighbor from when I lived in Sugar Hill on the train yesterday. We took a picture together and sent it to our other neighbor from our former building, who just happens to be one of my friend’s from high school.

When they got home, they could smell the soup. It was around 3:30pm when we walked into the house and Ila asked somewhat shocked, “Did you make dinner already?” I said, “Of course not!” and then told her who the soup was for.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I try to walk through life with the leading question, “How can I be a blessing to others?” I was raised on the belief that whatever you sow, you reap. Me making that soup was not convenient and honestly I wished it was our dinner that I made early, but I also knew being able to help a neighbor and friend during a crazy time would be a blessing to them. And, it was!

I was blessed with chicken soup and I was able to bless someone else with the same, saving them the worry of answering the question, “What’s for dinner?” after a long day in the emergency room.

Generosity and neighborliness create positive ripple effects that extend far past our reach.

Text message from my friend who got the chicken soup

The act of giving and receiving soup illustrates a broader principle about how we steward our resources. You may have heard me say that we have three assets to manage in our lives—our time, our money, and our relationships. So many of us think so much about how to manage and protect our money and we don’t give enough attention to how we manage and protect our relationships. Our relationships can take a hit if we are singularly focused on amassing money. I saw this in my own life when I started earning more. The more I earned, I noticed that I asked for help less. I could just pay for the solution. Maybe you remember my story of how I crowdsourced childcare with a very simple Google Form when I first had Ila. At the time, my non-profit salary plus Nick’s could not bear full-time daycare plus the cost of childcare on the weekday evenings and weekends when I needed to work, or the babysitting co-op a colleague-turned-friend and I started when we were looking to lessen the cost of paying for childcare for quick errands and date nights.

Sometimes when we have less, we are rich in relationships.

Screen grabs from my childcare Google Form submissions

While my goal is to be resourced in all of my asset classes, I believe that our relationships are the most valuable of them.

Many of us strive for more financial means so we won’t have any material needs or worries. Any time I’m tempted to think like this, I’m reminded of this quote by Miguel "Mickey" Melendez from his book We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords, "That's the paradox of our own desires, the damaging poverty hidden in wealth. Often we strive for a fortune that would liberate us from want, from the shortcomings of scarcity and dependence on others. But on many occasions, success brings along a new form of deprivation."

It’s easy for us to not want to accept help either because we believe we’re burdening someone or because we’ll feel beholden to them. Sometimes the path of least resistance is to Instacart our own soup, but leaning into the discomfort of receiving help as well as submitting to the slight inconvenience of helping is what creates a true ecosystem of support.

Asking for help and receiving it is the way to bring us closer together. And giving more than we receive to those around us will ensure that we are never without.

Petrushka

Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach