The last 18 months or so have kicked our butts financially. Before Kenson came home, we were a two income family who essentially lived on one income. We had little debt not counting our mortage. We had a nice nest egg that was a portion of my mother in law's life insurance policy plus some savings we had accumulated. We also had enough extra to pay out of pocket for one master's degree and one and a half Haitian adoptions.
Since Kenson came home we have lost half of our monthly income as I stayed home. (A deliberate choice and one that is not so much about money as it is about being where God desires for me to be but one that does have financial consequences.) As I said before, we essentially lived on one income previously but we knew it would be tight if I stayed home. Once I felt like I was ready to head back to work part time, I worked a few months and we were blessed with Conleigh's surprise arrival so in the last 18 months or so I have maybe been able to work for about 5 months.
Last fall, we were lambasted by a bunch of bills. Plumbing bills, car repairs, then replacing our furnace. After another set of car repairs, we decided to replace my husband's aging pickup truck with a newer truck and lost a big chunk of our savings by doing so. As many of you know, for the last 16 months, we've also been trying to sell our house. We finally decided that our decrepit chimneys were not going to make it anymore and had them fixed last week as they were leaning and losing all sort of pieces of bricks and mortar. Our air conditioning has not been working either so we need to have someone come look at it and I have a non functional corn stove sitting in my living room because it needs repaired but I just haven't had the guts (or the money) to find out what's wrong and have it fixed.
Making repairs on a house you are trying to sell is not very much fun because as your asking prices lowers and then you have to make repairs, you feel like you are just watching your money sprint right out of your bank account. It's also been frustrating to feel like you can't refinance (which might help you save money) because of this "we might sell our house" issue. (ie is it worth the headache and time spent investigating it when it really might only affect us for a few months, also with any fees associated with a refinancing project, would we really even be able to save any money) And it's been frustrating to know that our commute results in money being lost as we pay extra in gas money.
The trip to pick up Conleigh was a completely unexpected expense in the sense that we thought we were at least a year away from such a date. It required airfare and hotels and a car rental plus eating expenses. Then Conleigh's orphanage decided to collect the remainder of the fees for her adoption which were originally supposed to be paid once your file exited IBESR. Which our file never did so we were not sure what type of monies would be requested. Add to that the cost of finalizing Conleigh's adoption stateside which I've been slowly chipping away at.
We've also started tackling Conleigh's sleep issues and had a few other health related issues so tack the doctor bills onto our already busted budget. Thankfully we have pretty decent insurance so we shouldn't have too much to pay.
I don't know really where I'm going with this. Actually maybe the better way to word it would be "I don't know where God is going with this." There's been a part of me that wonders if part of this has been about us feeling like we were in a very stable spot with our finances, especially due to having a nest egg, and that God has been reminding us that a great nest egg should not be a source of security and that He has been stripping that nest egg away. Part of me wonders if it's about remembering that God is the supplier of every need. Part of me wonders if it's about having to rest my anxieties in a God who will meet the needs we have and that He will help us define what are true needs.
I find finances to be one of those challenging areas of fellowship. The Bible commands us to share the burdens of others, including financial burdens. But when do you share your worries with others and when do you stay silent? When is it whining and when is it communciating a real need? And while I recognize that my needs may be an opportunity for someone else to serve God by blessing us with some type of gift, I then am faced with the conundrum that there are many people who don't view finances from this viewpoint and instead are offput or angry or indignant that someone who is not on their last dollar would even consider accepting help from others.
It's one of those things that is an almost daily part of my thought process: what's going on with our budget and what does God want us to do. And it's one of those things where I haven't yet gotten a strong sense of what it is God wants from me in the middle of this season of our lives. Ironically, one thing I have seen is God's provision for us. Last fall we were presented with an unusual offer from a family in our church to finance a home for us while we sold our current home. We did agree to do this, believing that we had enough in savings to float two payments for a year or so, believing that there was no way that our current house would still be on the market after that time frame. Since this was such and unusual circumstance, we weren't exactly sure what to do so we trusted that God would work the plan He had in mind for us and if this wasn't it, that He would protect us as we proceeded. And that He did. Our offer was not accepted by the seller and we did not end up with two payments. Obviously, all of the financial hard stuff came almost immediately after this offer fell through. And if we had been faced with all of those bills plus two payments with no sale of our current home despite the 12 month time frame coming and going, we would have really been in a stressful situation. And when we left to get Conleigh, we didn't even have a bed for her to sleep on. Church members took care of that. I also didn't have any clothes for her as I was not expecting her to be just barely 3. We received several large boxes of appropriately sized clothing shortly after her homecoming.
So at minimum, I see God at work in those things. But still, I'm looking for a bit more. Not sure what the Lord is up to, wishing I knew...
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