Calming Influence

So if you saw my last blog post, you know that I was pretty scared about what's going to happen to me and my family in 2010. I'd like to tell you a little bit of how that changed on Sunday.

We go to church in a building that used to be the gym of another church before we bought it. We've retrofitted it with a nursery and Sunday School rooms. The problem we ran into on Sunday was that our heating system couldn't keep up with the coldest day in quite some time in Charleston. We were fine in the main sanctuary. We're adults, we can put up with a little bit of cold. But the kids in Children Church, and especially the nursery, would need to keep warm. On top of that the Nursery was probably the coldest part of the entire building. It wasn't a good idea to keep the kids back there any longer than necessary. So we had our normal worship time and then instead of a time of teaching, we had a short time of prayer.

We were invited to seek out an Elder if there was anything we needed to pray over. I sought out one of our Elders and told him what had happened with my wife losing her job, and how scared I was about the upcoming year. I confessed that I knew I shouldn't be scared, but that in reality I was.

This brother took me in his arms and gave me a big bear hug. He told me head knowledge wasn't going to get me through this, only a real faith, and obedience to God.

My situation didn't change one bit Sunday morning, yet, by the time service was ended I couldn't even conjure up the emotion of the paralytic fear I had been dealing with since we found out about my wife losing her job. Somehow being able to go to a brother in Christ and tell him that I was scared, that I didn't know what was going to happen to me, helped me. Somehow a big bear hug, and being assured that I was going to come out on the other side quieted the fear in my soul. I'm still uneasy about 2010 and I don't have any more answers than I did last week, but the paralytic fear and panic is largely gone.

What's crazy is this is the kind of story I would always hear from other people and be amazed at, but I was always convinced this kind of thing would never happen to me. God is already using this situation to teach me things, to show me how real he is. My situation hasn't changed, yet, my fear is gone. I still don't know how we are going to make it the rest of the year, but I no longer have a bone chilling fear thinking about.

2010 looks like it'll be a bumpy ride, but some way, somehow, we're going to come out the other side.

Rough Start to 2010

2010 hasn't gotten off to a great start for us. My wife found out that she was being laid off the first week of the New Year. She works in Real Estate as a Closing Paralegal. There simply wasn't enough work to keep her on. Her Boss promised a glowing review if a prospective employer calls her.

We both took the new pretty hard. As much as we try not to, we still need my wife's income to help make ends meet.

We can make most of the normal bills on my paycheck. The mortgage, lights, groceries, and stuff like that will be fine. It's some of the ancillary stuff like saving for Birthday Parties and Christmas that will be hard hit.

The big hole we face now is my daughter's private school tuition. I've got enough in savings to get us through the end of this school year, but sometime in March, the school will want to know if our daughter is coming back.

We've discussed different options like Home Schooling, or Magnet Schools. The Public schools in our neighborhood are not very good. We'll move before my daughter goes to one of those schools. Of course, that's not as easy as saying it. Our neighbor has had his house on the market for 4 months without much action.

I really don't want to move or for our daughter to have to change schools, especially not for 5th grade. I bounced around a bit as a kid, and I wanted to try to avoid that with my daughter.

I started looking into freelancing from the house on my off hours, and found a couple of websites that claim they help you get freelance jobs. I'm not sure why, but I'm really nervous to try that out. I'm sure most of the people they have on those sites are way more skilled than I am, and I don't have the first clue how to price out my work.

I'm scared right now. I know I'm not SUPPOSED to be scared, I'm supposed to have faith. I'm supposed to trust that God will take care of us and that everything will be okay. I know all that. So why am I still scared?

I guess I think of it a little like a skydiver. You've got faith in your parachute, but you'd have to be a little crazy not to feel some fear rise up in you as you inch your way to the open door and prepare to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I have faith in my parachute, in my God whose very name is Jehovah Jiriah (God will provide). But as I look at my situation, I think I'd be crazy not to feel a little nervous about what 2010 is going to bring.