The Learner
June 27th, 2007, 04:53 PM
I want to share my joy with my Christian brothers and sisters, and I also hope that this thread can be used to lift the spirits of those who are having a tough time at the moment.
Without being too longwinded I will summarize my situation. I injured my spine in 2004 and as a result I have been unable to work because of the pain.I still draw a salary from my job, but its at a very reduced rate. I also lost my home and everything in it to Hurricane Katrina. The only help that we got from the federal government was $14,000. We did not own the home that we lived in, and the landlord swindled us out of flood insurance money for our destroyed belongings My family had to move to the countryside where we had some land. My wife has to commute 80 miles everyday to work, and as you can imagine we pay more for gasoline than we do on our mortgage! Money was so tight that we could only afford the necessities at the grocery store. As bad as things were, God sustained us. We never went one night without food for our bellies or a roof over our heads. We also were worried about what we were going to do about educating our oldest child. The school district here is so poor, our only alternative would be an expensive private school. That was then.
Recently, within the last 4 months or so, things have really turned around. I had always felt that it would be selfish for me to ask Father for financial blessings, after all even at my worst I had a better life on Earth than Jesus did. Finally one night during prayer I told the Father how scared I was, and how much I needed His help. I knew that if it were God’s will to help us, then His will would be done. Things started to change in the days and weeks to follow.
The first blessing came to us in the form of a $4,300 tax return, our accountant was quite shocked after tallying the figures and coming up with that amount! In the blink of an eye we were given enough money to pay for an entire year of school tuition, and have money left over!
The second blessing came shortly after the first one. As I already said my wife has to drive 80 miles everyday, but what I did not say is that she had to make that commute in a gas guzzling SUV. Prior to Katrina I had a company car, and my wife only had to drive 1.5 miles to get to work. So our finances weren‘t budgeted for such a long commute.(when we evacuated for Katrina we took the biggest automobile we had so that we could save as much of our belongings as possible). Anyway we owed more than the SUV was worth, because when gas is $2.93 a gallon suddenly are not as appealing as they once were. We really needed to get out of the SUV, but it seemed impossible. However, one day I felt compelled to go to a car dealership and price a smaller car. Long story short I was able to trade in my 18mpg SUV for a 32mpg crossover vehicle. Not only was I able to save money on gas, but my monthly car note also went down. (which surprised the car saleslady)
The third blessing is a little hard to define, we just are bring more money into the house than we had previously. Obviously we are saving money on a car note and gas, but my wife is actually making more money. My wife works for tips, and even though the restaurant where she works is cutting hours because of slow business my wife is making good money! We were also able to upgrade our ventilation system in our home, and now we are saving extra money on our electric bills! We have even been able to start attending a church that we had been wanting to for some time now ,but were unable to because of work obligations! Thank you God for your provision!
I thank God for everyday, even the bad ones. In retrospect I have been able to see how God has used the hard times to bring us closer to Him. My wife and I have gone from the illusion of being self reliant to completely relying on God for everything. God has even shown us things in our lives that we had to change which has brought about blessings within our marriage.
As I write this I am not as financially secure as I was before I was hurt, and no one will confuse us with the Trumps any time soon. But material things, and comfort is not what our life on Earth is about. I am so much closer to God than I ever was before. I am living in Christian rest in complete reliance on our Father. I don’t know if the Father will ever take this pain from my body, and I do not know what tomorrow holds for me and my family. However, I do know that God is in complete control and no matter what comes our way the only thing that any of us can do is trust Him.
Without being too longwinded I will summarize my situation. I injured my spine in 2004 and as a result I have been unable to work because of the pain.I still draw a salary from my job, but its at a very reduced rate. I also lost my home and everything in it to Hurricane Katrina. The only help that we got from the federal government was $14,000. We did not own the home that we lived in, and the landlord swindled us out of flood insurance money for our destroyed belongings My family had to move to the countryside where we had some land. My wife has to commute 80 miles everyday to work, and as you can imagine we pay more for gasoline than we do on our mortgage! Money was so tight that we could only afford the necessities at the grocery store. As bad as things were, God sustained us. We never went one night without food for our bellies or a roof over our heads. We also were worried about what we were going to do about educating our oldest child. The school district here is so poor, our only alternative would be an expensive private school. That was then.
Recently, within the last 4 months or so, things have really turned around. I had always felt that it would be selfish for me to ask Father for financial blessings, after all even at my worst I had a better life on Earth than Jesus did. Finally one night during prayer I told the Father how scared I was, and how much I needed His help. I knew that if it were God’s will to help us, then His will would be done. Things started to change in the days and weeks to follow.
The first blessing came to us in the form of a $4,300 tax return, our accountant was quite shocked after tallying the figures and coming up with that amount! In the blink of an eye we were given enough money to pay for an entire year of school tuition, and have money left over!
The second blessing came shortly after the first one. As I already said my wife has to drive 80 miles everyday, but what I did not say is that she had to make that commute in a gas guzzling SUV. Prior to Katrina I had a company car, and my wife only had to drive 1.5 miles to get to work. So our finances weren‘t budgeted for such a long commute.(when we evacuated for Katrina we took the biggest automobile we had so that we could save as much of our belongings as possible). Anyway we owed more than the SUV was worth, because when gas is $2.93 a gallon suddenly are not as appealing as they once were. We really needed to get out of the SUV, but it seemed impossible. However, one day I felt compelled to go to a car dealership and price a smaller car. Long story short I was able to trade in my 18mpg SUV for a 32mpg crossover vehicle. Not only was I able to save money on gas, but my monthly car note also went down. (which surprised the car saleslady)
The third blessing is a little hard to define, we just are bring more money into the house than we had previously. Obviously we are saving money on a car note and gas, but my wife is actually making more money. My wife works for tips, and even though the restaurant where she works is cutting hours because of slow business my wife is making good money! We were also able to upgrade our ventilation system in our home, and now we are saving extra money on our electric bills! We have even been able to start attending a church that we had been wanting to for some time now ,but were unable to because of work obligations! Thank you God for your provision!
I thank God for everyday, even the bad ones. In retrospect I have been able to see how God has used the hard times to bring us closer to Him. My wife and I have gone from the illusion of being self reliant to completely relying on God for everything. God has even shown us things in our lives that we had to change which has brought about blessings within our marriage.
As I write this I am not as financially secure as I was before I was hurt, and no one will confuse us with the Trumps any time soon. But material things, and comfort is not what our life on Earth is about. I am so much closer to God than I ever was before. I am living in Christian rest in complete reliance on our Father. I don’t know if the Father will ever take this pain from my body, and I do not know what tomorrow holds for me and my family. However, I do know that God is in complete control and no matter what comes our way the only thing that any of us can do is trust Him.