Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Fresh air

It's funny what people ask God for.  It's also funny how God answers.  Sometimes it's somewhat the way we expect it to come where the miracle comes out of the blue and BAM! everything works but sometimes it's not that easy for God.  See, God has to deal with us PEOPLE and our little people ways.  He knows that too.  He knew that I was praying for some kind of answer to our financial stress.  He also knew that hitting me over the head with some answer would only knock me out cold and have me waking up a few hours later not remembering a blessed thing, thus no progress and a painful bump on the head.

It's funny in what ways the answers come.  Ours came in the form of my little brother who got his finances right 6 months ago and decided he wanted to do the same with us because he knew what a load it took off of his mind.  We thought we were ok so I didn't think too much of it until he just happened to plug in our numbers one day a few weeks ago.  What I saw made my jaw drop and brought tears to my eyes.  The only thing he was able to say was "Um, is there ANYTHING you can cut out?" and the only thing I could think was "How in the world have we survived this long?"

We got real.  We tightened our belts and got to work on what we really could live without.  We finally got the emotions out of the way and thanked God that nothing was hurt and no damage was done, we were simply living outside our means.  We had fooled ourselves into thinking we were fine because we're not lavish spenders AT ALL.  So now we are the proud owners of the car we had been leasing and are selling the truck.  We have no tv service (our pediatrician would be proud) and are learning how to really enjoy eggs and peanut butter (not at the same time.)

And it feels great.  Sad at times for giving up the truck but great that we only have a few years of this and everything will be fine.  In fact, everything is fine because we are finally where we need to be: stable.  And that's what I was praying for.