In 1997, Leroy and Donna Barber followed a calling and moved their family from their hometown of Philadelphia to Atlanta to join FCS. They had no way of knowing the journey ahead would lead them through both wilderness and homecoming.
Donna reflects on those early days in Atlanta in her new book, Enough for Today: Forty Reflections for Surviving the Wilderness:
“In the midst of all that southern hospitality and sweet tea charm, I often felt isolated and alone. I felt like Dorothy in Oz. I missed the friendships and culture of my northern city and, for the first time in my life, I was far away from the place I knew as home. But obedience brought me to this strange land, and within its dry and lonely landscape family was redefined, as were many things I thought I’d previously known.”
The Barbers had been working with FCS in the East Lake neighborhood for a few years when community leaders in Historic South Atlanta invited FCS to partner with them. These leaders weren’t just looking for an organization; they were looking for neighbors. People who would put down roots, raise families, and build something together. Leroy and Donna said yes.
What followed were summer camps that crossed neighborhoods, after-school programs hosted at Slater Elementary, and relationships with children and families that began on day one and grew over decades.
“We were working with kids in the neighborhood from the very beginning,” Donna recalls. “That’s how it started—being present, showing up, building trust.”
Over the years, Donna’s work with FCS expanded beyond programs. It shaped how she understood community, justice, and God’s presence in everyday life.
Donna writes:
“We may learn of and come to know God in us in the comfort and safety of the church building. But we often come to find ourselves in God through the struggles of the wilderness.”
A Transformative Journey
After years of place-based work in Historic South Atlanta, Donna’s journey eventually led her beyond the neighborhood. In 2013, her family stepped into the unfamiliar once again as they moved across the country to Portland, Oregon.
That season expanded her world. The focus shifted from local to global, from neighborhood streets to work that spanned countries and cultures. Travel, relationships, and leadership development shaped her perspective in new ways. When Donna and Leroy moved back to South Atlanta more than a decade later, she returned to familiar streets with fresh eyes and a deeper understanding of both the wilderness and the manna that sustains us through it.
“Every place changes you,” Donna explains, “and you don’t realize it until you come back. It’s the same, but it’s new. I had to release South Atlanta from having to be what it was before.”
Atlanta, she says now, is home base—the place to go out from, and the place to return to.
Writing for the Wilderness
Returning to Atlanta also marked the final chapter in the writing of Enough for Today. While most of the book was written in Portland, it was completed in South Atlanta—anchored in a place that helped deepen and refine her faith. She shared in one of her reflections:
“Just because you are wandering it doesn’t mean you are lost. Israel wandered for forty years in their wilderness. They were not lost. They were in process.”
“The wilderness is a wild place,” Donna explains. “It’s not bound by the rules we’ve known before. Things that once felt stable don’t apply in the same way anymore. And that can be scary, but it can also be holy.”
Drawing on the story of the Israelites and God’s daily provision of manna, Enough for Today invites readers to stop searching for certainty tomorrow and instead receive what is needed today. Not abundance. Just enough. She writes:
“It was in the wilderness years that my knowledge of God moved from my head to my heart. From theory to experience, from principle to practice. Stripped down in the wilderness, I discovered what I truly believed and became more fully aware of the depth, and sometimes shallowness, of my faith. Over time I grew stronger and more certain of God’s presence and power. Again and again the truth of God’s Word was tested, and I learned that I could indeed step out on it.”
The reflections are written for those who are weary—nonprofit leaders, justice seekers, pastors, church members, and anyone who finds themselves in the wilderness. Unlike her first book, Bread for the Resistance: Forty Devotions for Justice People, which grew out of her personal journals, Enough for Today was written intentionally for the reader.
“God said to me, ‘Write to the people in the wilderness,’” Donna shares. “What do they need to survive while they’re there?”
Enough for Today
At its core, Enough for Today is a book about remembering—remembering who God is, who we are, and why we were called in the first place. It’s an invitation to return to daily rhythms of prayer, rest, and trust. To receive manna, not for the whole journey, but for this day.
For Donna, those rhythms are deeply practical: beginning each morning with Scripture and prayer, practicing Sabbath as an act of trust, stepping away to quiet places when the world feels overwhelming.
That posture—faithful presence, daily provision, and hope rooted in relationship—has shaped Donna’s life and work.
And now, through Enough for Today, she offers that same steady light to others finding their way through the wilderness. She writes:
“Perhaps rather than a place of death, the wilderness is a space for transformation. A place where we remember all that we were and discover (again?) all that we might become.”
We are grateful for Donna’s faithfulness, her voice, and the decades she has spent walking alongside families in Historic South Atlanta. Her legacy is woven into this neighborhood, and her words continue to offer light and hope to many beyond it.
We’re honored to call Donna our neighbor and invite you to support her work by purchasing a copy of Enough for Today: Forty Reflections for Surviving the Wilderness for yourself and one to share with someone who may need encouragement for the road ahead.
