That funny piece of paper

Last week we got that funny piece of paper that comes in the mail this time of the year- Glenn's Social Security Statement.

Looking at our annual income over the past 16 years the four digit numbers outnumber the five digit ones and there are a couple of zeros and it makes me shake my head in wonder. How on earth did we eat? Or pay rent? When I asked Caleb he said, "I'm gonna guess God." :)

He's right. I love looking at those numbers and chatting with Glenn about where we were when and what we were doing and how God provided for us. He has been so generous to us - through all the years of school and working and waiting.

When we headed off to Houghton pregnant with baby number three I asked God how we were going to make it in the middle of no where with no job prospects and a family with two, going on three kids to house and feed while Glenn was in school full time. He said, "Trust Me." And we did. And He provided. Seeing Him faithfully provide through those years made it much easier to look ahead at the 4 paycheck-less years of med school when they finally came. He provided through those years too.

Looking at that piece of paper I did some quick addition with the calculator and discovered that he will earn about the same amount in his first two years of residency as he did in our first 13 years of marriage. Craziness. And people say residents don't make much money. Compared to where we've been we are rich.

We aren't rich because of our amazingly large net worth- our financial net worth is actually a quite a large negative number thanks to student loans. We aren't rich because of the huge paychecks Glenn gets. We are rich because we have an amazing Provider who knows our needs and meets them and is so generous to give us above and beyond.

Everything we have is from Him and is His that He's given us to steward and it's amazing how much He stretches what's left when you give Him the first line in your budget. I think tithing and giving generously when He asks us to is part of the key to the financial freedom we enjoy.

We're going on a trip at the end of the month. It is costing far more than I ever dreamed it would. Every time I log on and check our bank account I wonder, "Why is there still money in there??" I know it is because my God continues to provide for our needs.

You brought me this far
So why would I question You now
You have provided
So why would I start to doubt
I’ve never been stranded, abandoned
Or left here to fight alone
So I’m giving You control (Lift My Life Up by Unspoken)

 He is faithful. You can trust Him.

So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide. 

And it is said to this day, On the mount of the Lord it will be provided. (Genesis 22:14)

Interesting Epiphany or When the Sky Started Falling

Yesterday the kids and I went over to the church because the community ministries that we help with is moving to a different part of the church and we were helping out. While there I got a call from Glenn asking where we were and saying that he really needed us to come home to help because part of the roof had fallen in in the back room. (At least that's what I thought he said.) I ran around gathering kids, telling them we really needed to get home and we ran home to help where we could.

As it was it turns out it was the ceiling, not the roof (Glenn probably said ceiling and I, in my panic, just heard roof).

 I guess that some animal had chewed the insulation stuff off our pipes and, with the temps under 20 the previous night, the pipes above the ceiling had frozen. It could have been horrible but here are things we're thankful for:

- Glenn's afternoon clinic had unexpectedly been cancelled so he was home at the time. (The kids and I probably wouldn't have gotten home for another half hour after we did and that would have been almost 2 hours after the pipes had burst - our house would have been flooded, tons of stuff destroyed and lots more damage would have been done to the house, etc, etc, etc.)
- Glenn had been in the room doing Wii Fit while waiting for us to get home when he heard and saw the water start flowing and was able to get some stuff moved before chunks of the ceiling started falling.
- Glenn was home and knew to and knew how to turn the water main off. I would have had no clue!! (Again, saving from a lot more damage.)
- Our landlord was close by. When Glenn called him he was actually just behind our house checking on the garage apartment back there that is vacant.
- The landlord's handyman was able to make it over and do a temporary patch job to make it so we could turn our water back on. (Hurray for being able to go potty in our own house!)

It could have been so. much. worse! We kept talking about what we are grateful for and and mentioning God's providence and how He worked things out. It took me back to our catechism book:
Q11. What is God's providence?
A. God's providence is His completely holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action.

I'm thankful that, in God's providence, Glenn's clinic was cancelled yesterday afternoon so he was home when the ceiling starting coming down in the back bedroom/ school room. Now we get to heat the outside as we wait for the remaining parts of the ceiling and insulation to dry before the handyman will come back and fix the hole in the ceiling. I'm, once again, so thankful that we don't own this house!! I'm thinking that our landlord probably wishes it wasn't his either.

Our normal tradition is to have our Magi and their entourage finally arrive at the baby Jesus, exchange gifts and eat Chinese take out (since the magi came from the East) on Epiphany so while the handy man was working on the pipes we exchanged gifts and phoned in orders to two local restaurants. We had never ordered from the Lebanese or the Chinese restaurant before so we ordered too much and ended up with tons of food. I guess we'll have leftovers for several days.

After dinner Glenn and the kids had an all out Nerf gun war and then we played another round of 10 Days in the USA. (It's our game of the week that we picked up on clearance at Hobby Lobby.) After that we did Thank Yous and read "The King of all kings" from The Jesus Storybook Bible.

It was not your typical Epiphany celebration but it was a good day. I got to spend most of it with my favorite people. God was, again, so gracious to us and I, again, wonder why He chooses to be so gracious to unworthy us.

Five Minute Friday: Tree

About 4 years ago I drove to the grocery store quick to pick up some food after Glenn got home from school and the kids were put to bed. On the way there I noticed a big Christmas tree box on the side of the road a few blocks away. When I got home I told Glenn about it and asked him if he wanted to go check it out with me. We went and grabbed it figuring we could put in on our curb if it didn't work. It was a 7.5 foot prelit tree that was in great condition except the prelit part didn't work. That was OK with us. We had lights. We had thought about buying a tree after Christmas that year when they went on clearance but God gave us one before Christmas for free (very helpful on a medical student outgo).

 The previous Christmas we had covered a pile of boxes we'd stacked in our living room to look like a tree with a green sheet and put lights on it. 

 It looked nice in the dark and it was fun to make. There wouldn't have been room in that little 600sq ft house for a 3D tree anyway.

The year before that we had to throw out our old hand me down fake tree from my aunt and uncle because it was all falling apart.

Every time I see advertisements for prelit trees I smile and thank God again for our tree. A friend wondered yesterday what to do with her tree that the prelits didn't work anymore. My suggestions: put your own lights on it or give it away and bless someone with it. I know our tree was a huge blessing to us through our med school years and it moved with us to TX so we'll get to use it again here.

Linking up with LisaJo for Five Minute Friday. 

Maybe Jesus likes Chocolate

I just want to take a minute to brag on my Jesus.

First, a bit of a back story: Halloween is this week. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with Halloween this year. We never go out and buy costumes but my kids do like to dress up. Each year we have done different things for Halloween depending on where we live, what's going on in the area, etc.

Glenn is on nights this week so I was tempted to just stay home with the lights out and watch a movie with the kids until I read a blog post. Glenn had already told me about it and had Caleb read it before I read it.

These words stuck out to me:
"This is the only night of the entire year that most of your neighbors and mine are going to come knocking on our doors. The only night."

I haven't met many of my neighbors but that post made me realize that my neighbors may be coming to my door on Thursday. I say may because I'm not sure if people actually trick or treat in my predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. I'll let you know after Thursday.

Ok, that was a lot of back story before getting to what I actually want to share. I want to have good candy to share with the people who come to my door but I didn't have any so we went to the store today. My printer is out of toner so I couldn't print any coupons but I could upload a few candy coupons to my Kroger card so to Kroger we went.

When we got there I searched through the candy checking bags for candy count to find out which was the cheapest per item from the chocolate section. My coupons were all for Mars so that's what I was looking at mostly. I grabbed a bag of Twix to see how many were in the bag and discovered the bag was popped open. I put it back to grab another one and it was open too. It didn't look like the bags sealed properly from the factory because all of the bags were popped open and wrapped Twix bars filled the box. Two of my girls ran off together to find a store employee to tell them about it. The ladies in floral told them that they didn't know what to tell the girls to do but that the girls should make sure they each took at least one. When they told me my girls were offended... We can't take candy we haven't paid for!!

I found a man stocking shelves and pointed out the box of open candy bags and I explained that I'd found the box and just wanted the store to know so that it could be taken care of and not just sit there like that tempting people. The man seemed surprised and asked me if I would like to buy them for a discount. I wasn't expecting that question but I said, "Sure. I guess. Maybe." He went off to talk to the store manager and I went back to the candy aisle in my quest to figure out which candy was the best price per item. The manager came to talk to me. He told me that it was about 12 bags of Twix in there and that he would give it to me for $10. I was kind of shocked but I said sure and he proceeded to find a SKU that I could use at the checkout. The girls each ate one on the way home and then, when we got home, the guys helped count them. There were 236 Fun Size Twix bars in there that we got for $9.99. Thanks God.

 Now I just hope we get trick-or-treaters who like Twix tomorrow or I am going to have to find some other way to get rid of all the chocolate we now have in our house!

So that is why I think that Jesus may like chocolate. Or at least Twix. Or at least for some reason in His infinite wisdom He chose to bless me because I want to bless my neighbors. I don't know why He did it but I know I love Him.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17

God Provided a Fridge for us

And here's a post about the fridge God provided for us in early May before we left on our most recent road adventure:

When we moved into the house we are renting we knew we were responsible for heating and air conditioning (still not sure what we are doing for either of those yet) and providing our own fridge.

Since we moved in we've been living out of a cooler and ice we've made in the chest freezer that we got from Glenn's grandparents back when Hannah was a baby.

We've been hounding craigslist and local used and new appliance stores for fridges. We ruled out buying new because we bought a new washer in Lowville and it got damaged in our move and doesn't really work right anymore. Also, the cheapest new fridge we could find was about $500 for a really small, basic fridge.

Glenn wanted to buy a fridge newer than 2002 because that is when energy star started and all fridges got more efficient after that time.

We've gone to see more fridges than I'd like to count. Most if the used appliance places were asking $200 & up for their fridges plus $40+ for delivery. Most of them were older than 2002. The cheaper ones were less than 18 cu ft.

Sunday we went to a warehouse full of used appliances and talked with a guy about buying a fridge from him for $250 plus delivery. It was an ok fridge, nothing flashy but it was 2005, supposedly, and about 20 cu ft.

While we were in the parking lot a guy from Craigslist called back about his 5 year old 24 or 26 cu ft fridge. We arranged to go see it after the kids program at church finished up. He had it posted on Craigslist for $200 but he really just wanted it out of his garage because his wife had upgraded their kitchen to stainless steel and told us "I'll let you have it for $75 if you'll just get it out of here."

So, yesterday, we took the seats out of the van, rented an appliance dolly from uhaul, and went picked up our $75 gift from God fridge.

Bonus features of the fridge:
- filtered water dispenser inside the fridge (Glenn really didn't want a through the door dispenser but had always liked the inside the fridge dispenser idea and this fridge has it. I think it's the only one we've looked at that did.)
- the plastic drawers and bins and glass shelves are easy to remove and rearrange
- there's an ice maker. This wasn't a priority for us and I'm not sure if we'll use it but it'll be nice to have if we're having a party.
- it's pretty big. I wanted at least 18 cu ft and God gave us 24 or 26.

Thanks, God, for a new to us fridge for $75. You are so generous!

A Scribbled Cry From the Past

Can I tell you how much I love it when I have dated a note I have written and find later in a book or my Bible??

Today I was reading My Utmost for His Highest quickly while on a potty break during school. Today's was good (they usually are, that is why I keep a copy in the bathroom so I can try to read it most days. TMI? Sorry.)

The thing that prompted this post was a note I had put on yesterday's page:

'03 - Oh God, how my faith needs to grow. You brought us here. You know our needs. Please help me to go through this trial of faith believing steadfastly on You - our Jehovah Jireh

"2003? What was going on in 2003?" you may ask. Let me tell you. You see, we had just moved to Houghton, NY for Glenn to finish up his undergrad degree. If you didn't know, Houghton is kind of in the middle of nowhere so there were basically no jobs to be had. He was taking a full load of science classes to get all his science requirements done in 2 years so he didn't really have time to work anyway. It's not the cheapest college tuition wise and we had no idea how we were going to be paying for things like rent and food. We went with 2 little kids and were expecting #3 (which we didn't tell anyone before we moved there - people already thought that we were crazy for going to school with 2 kids!!). God had made it clear that we were to go there. In our plans it didn't make sense because there was no way for us to provide for ourselves. We had no idea how things were going to work out and every time we asked He would say, "Trust Me." We would take a deep breath and surrender and say, "OK, Lord, I trust You" until two seconds later when we would start freaking out again wondering how He was going to do it. Again we would hear, "Trust Me."

Would He prove Himself trustworthy?? Would He really provide for us? All 5 of us? Would we go hungry? Where would money come from to pay rent? What kind of jobs could we get? How on earth is it all going to work out??

Shortly before moving I read a book, I think it was about George Mueller. I knew that I served the same God who took care of him but I really didn't know if I wanted to have as much faith as him.

On a Sunday morning soon after we moved we heard a sermon about trusting God for our daily bread. I really didn't want to hear it. I wanted a full pantry. I didn't want to wake up every morning asking God for my daily bread and trusting Him to provide it.

But, you know what? God did provide for us!! We never went hungry. God provided 4 different places for us to live over the 3 years we lived there and He always made sure that there was enough money in our bank account to cover all of the expenses. He even gave us some amazing extras during our years there that we totally didn't deserve. I think, for some reason, He just loves to bless us.

Here are some things I underlined in My Utmost all those years ago:

* Faith must be tested because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict.
* Believe steadfastly on Him and all you come up against will develop your faith.
* Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.

I'm thankful for a glimpse at my  heart's cry from 9 years ago. It is amazing to me to look back and think of all that God has done over the years since that day 9 years ago when I'm sure I cried as I wrote out that prayer. My faith in my Jehovah Jireh sure has grown. My faith has become my own through the conflicts that He has allowed. He did know and meet every one of our needs in that place that He took us to and every place that He has taken us to since. Each successive trial that He has allowed in our lives has only made me love and trust Him more. I don't need to worry about the future because He is growing in me an "unutterable trust in God, trust that never dreams that He will not stand by us."

I am so thankful for the trials that He has allowed into our lives. I am thankful also that He will always be there with us through all of the trials that are in our future. You can trust Him. Even when trusting Him doesn't make any sense at all.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.1 Peter 1:3-9 NIV

Last Time to Fill out FAFSA

Today I did something for the last time.... I filled out Glenn's FAFSA for him. This time it was for his LAST YEAR of medical school - hurray! I never have to fill out that form again (not that it is a hard form to fill out it is just something I've filled out many times over the years!) The pin number for his FAFSA that I dig out of our lock box every year was addressed to 1707 Kirby Ave Apt C, Chattanooga, TN, our first apartment. I'm not even sure that that building even exists anymore! (Actually after looking at googlemaps maybe it still exists... not sure, if so they've done some work on it.)

The end is in sight! Only two more tuition bills to pay for medical school!! Next year at this time we will, Lord willing, know where we are going for residency as well.

As we prepare for our move to Lowville and the last 9-10 months of Glenn's medical school training we can't help but look back with thanksgiving at all that our amazingly gracious and generous God has done for us over the last 12 1/2 years. We are excited to see what He is going to do in the next year and in the years to come after that since our future after our 9-10 months in Lowville are a big unknown right now! So thankful that there is One who knows and I can trust Him!

Thinking about it I guess it'll only be about a 5 year break from filling out FAFSA but, ugh, I don't really want to think about that right now ;)

Thanks God for taking care of us and providing for us so abundantly. Thank You that You are in control of our future and that You will be faithful to guide us.

Benefits of Balancing Your Checkbook

Yesterday I was balancing my checkbook and there was an item that was too much. We were charged $43.99 for our internet after I had called and changed to RoadRunner Lite so that our bill would stay at our promotional rate of $34.99 that we'd been paying for the past year. I really hoped that by changing to "Lite" our bill would go down but at least I found out it wouldn't go up.

Anyway, while I was balancing my checkbook I noticed that we had been charged $43.99 so I called TimeWarner. The first guy I talked to was no help at all and couldn't tell me why I was charged more and said that from what he saw that our bill should be around $54 (what???). I told him that Damon, who I'd talked to on 2/7 (yay for keeping records) told me that my bill should be $34.99. He told me that it was a billing issue and he couldn't help me. I asked to talk to billing.

Marcia, who I talked to in billing, explained that the bill had already been put through before I had called previously and that my next bill (that I haven't received yet) will be $26 to make up for it. Then she held me on the line to see if she could find a better deal for me. She asked if, with my permission, she could bump us back up to high speed internet for $29.99/mo. "$5 less for faster internet? Um, yes, thank you!!" We get to have the cheaper rate for a year (provided that it transfers with us to Lowville). Yay! So glad I called!

I have been using a couple of excel spreadsheets that I found and modified to make it easy to keep track of our spending and I love it. Yesterday, besides time on the phone with Time Warner, I was able to balance our check book and close out February, complete with pretty graphs of how we spent our money in less than 10 minutes. The spreadsheets have made my life so much easier to see how off track of our budget we are and the nerd in me is very happy. If you'd like copies of my spreadsheets (based loosely on Dave Ramsey's categories) let me know.

Thanks God for cheaper internet and a quick, easy way to keep track of our finances :)