i feel as though the past few weeks have been a time of learning to trust God in the area of finances for me and gregg. probably more for me than gregg because i have serious anxiety issues surrounding money. i think it stems from the years of seeing $.50 and negative balances in my account during college and the couple of years pre-marriage/post-college where i was surviving on my own. while we certainly have never had much of an expendable income, since getting married gregg and i have always been a little more secure than i was during my single days and i'd slowly gotten less anxious about money. that is until lately.
since moving back to austin and living in the real world again (i.e. no seminary priced housing) things have definitely been tough. to say we are stretching it by me staying home is an understatement. over the past couple of weeks i'd began to seriously consider looking into going back to work full time. as much as my heart wants to be here with abbey, i started to doubt if we were doing the responsible thing in that area. while our needs are met each month by gregg's income (food, shelter, vehicles, etc) we have absolutely no cushion room whatsoever. this is a hard adjustment for me. it sounds selfish in some ways but i'm used to being able to grab coffee with a friend, go out to dinner every now and then, or buy abbey clothes when she starts to outgrow her old ones. those options aren't there right now.
over the past couple of weeks God has shown us so much love and grace by providing the "extra" stuff for us. these are things we certainly don't need but we definitely appreciate. my parents drove up this past weekend and brought us a dining room table, gregg's mom gave us some money to buy a few things for our apartment, our complex provided free dinner to all the residence last night (that just happened to be the kind of meal gregg wanted to have for his b-day last week but we couldn't do) and then sunday our pastor "randomly" gave me a copy of the Jesus Storybook Bible that i wanted to get abbey for her birthday but couldn't do right now.
he saw me looking at in the lobby and started to tell me how awesome it was. i told him that i really had been wanting to buy it for abbey but just hadn't been able to. about 20 mins later he found me and handed me a copy for her from him. it was such a small act of kindness on the surface but so much more to me. first you should understand that this is a church of 5000+, i have never even officially met our senior pastor before so he didn't know me. i really feel like this was just another small way of God showing me how much He loves us, how He cares for us in even the smallest ways-beyond just our absolute necessities. i am SO excited to have this Bible to give to abbey on her 1st birthday and every time I read it to her and our future children i will remember where it came from and God's amazing love and provision for us.
2 comments:
girl, you're bringing on the tears in me. praise God from whom all blessings flow.
you're right! almost exactly what I wrote about. thank you for sharing! it brought tears to my eyes just remembering his faithfulness, and remembering that we're not the only ones going through changes that don't always make sense.
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