Lentil Burgers & Gratitude

I had a lentil burger for lunch.  And I thought while I ate it, how very deeply grateful I was for it.

A friend from church shares her copies of Guideposts magazines with me.  Maybe we don't always think about the length to which sharing goes or the chain of circumstances they set in motion.  I know that when I give something away, I immediately forget about it; maybe she doesn't think too hard about it either.  But one of those copies Guideposts made a huge difference because there was a recipe in it for lentil burgers.

When I decided to make those lentil burgers back in October, I did it on a whim. The recipe was supposed to make 6 to 8 burgers.  It didn't.  It really didn't.  It made 20, and I packed them away in the freezer wondering what on earth I would do with all of them.  20 was just way too many.....or so I thought.

In the following weeks, I began battling a variety of difficulties.  Problems with eBay customers.  Sales that dried up completely before the Christmas rush.  Extra expenses.  It was hard going.  I wasn't exactly doing without anything but I still had to get creative with some stuff and I had trim the budget to the bone; that meant using up anything in the freezer.  There was plenty of soup and some casseroles on hand, and I also had those lentil burgers.

I bought a few fresh tomatoes, and my friend gave me a loaf of the surplus bread she shares with us at church.  Every day for a couple of weeks, I had a lentil burger with tomato on wholegrain bread for lunch.  I don't know how that loaf lasted as long as it did; it shouldn't have.  But I had bread enough until some extra money came in so that I could go shopping.  Everything lasted just long enough.  

Every day I looked forward to those lentil burger sandwiches; they seemed so warm and cozy that they made me really happy during a time when I was boxing with the world.  They were a true comfort.  

There are just two lentil burgers remaining in the freezer, so I'm planning to make more.  Although I said I wouldn't make the entire recipe again, I definitely will because experience has taught me that 20 is surely not too many.

And I'm going to remember to thank my friend again on Sunday for the wonderfully kind thing that she probably doesn't even know that she did.