My husband and I often joke about robbing a bank. Or winning the lottery. Or coming into an inheritance. We’ve been joking for years because almost from the day our children were born, we have been in debt, despite many, many plans and schemes and dreams to bob our financial heads above water.
You name it, we’ve been billed for it: therapies tried and true and sometimes new, doctor’s bills, hospital services, testing costs, counseling of every shape and size, enough meds to open a fleet of pharmacies, specialty clothing, specialty bedding, breathing apparatus, special schools, special foods and pretty much anything and everything we thought might help our two autistic sons (and their neurotypcial sister to cope in the process).
Last night, sitting down at the computer for our weekly view of the budget, we wondered how on earth we could make the numbers fit. Like trying to squeeze and twist a size 11-wide foot into a size 4 shoe, we made adjustments and ever-deeper cuts to try to meet our obligations for one more month.
It can be so depressing (and why paying bills is not recommended as a precursor to date night). Of course it doesn’t help when our child-in-a-grown-man’s body angrily declares that we do not love him because we will not buy him a 3DS gaming system. And ironic because, although he cannot understand, it is precisely because we love him that we cannot afford it.
Sometimes, in our search for a way out of the financial hole that seems to never quite fill it, we look back to the day we first pledged to love each other “for richer or for poorer” and wonder if we had just done something differently, if none of this would have happened?
But what can you do when, despite a hard-working husband’s good pay, nose-diving stock markets wipe out savings, when pension contributions or medical premiums keep rising, pay is frozen and medical care needs override mom’s intension to earn a second paycheck?
And then, looking back, we see something else. Tax returns that come in the nick of time. A check in the mail that we didn’t expect. A set of dishes from a friend who is swapping hers out for new ones. Or a creative Christmas that was so much more fun than the ones decked out with too many toys. God keeps providing. In our weakness, leaning hard against Him each day, the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills gives us reasons to marvel at His strength, at yet one more turn of events that keep us afloat, and to give Him thanks.
Whether rich or poor, we are in His debt.
Question: In what ways have you seen God provide when it didn’t seem possible?
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