We have lived on a very tight budget since we had our first child. There were complications with the delivery and I was unable to return to work for 6 months. Going from two incomes to one took a bit of time to figure out and adjust to, but once we did, we felt that the benefits to our son outweighed the income potential after the cost of childcare, so I officially became a stay at home mom.
We went through seasons of abundance and seasons of lack. There was a time when we supported our family of 4 on $10/hr., a time when we had a good income and savings to pull from, there were periods of unemployment after layoffs when we had no idea how we would pay bills or feed our kids, and the season we are in now of "just enough" but no extra to spare. Through all of it, God has met our needs and even blessed us with extras.
This year has been an incredible season of stretching and growing our faith and a time of miraculous provision. Our year began with a trip to Disneyland. If you have been following my blog, you know that we drove all the way to California in faith that God would provide the money for our hotel and park tickets when we got down there. Why did we do that? Because our "plans" to fund our trip took a detour and our back up plan wasn't coming through. Still, we were encouraged to go and put our faith in God, in His timing and His ability to sort out the details and provide. It was crazy. It felt absolutely insane. It was terrifying. We could have abandoned our plans and stayed home, but we didn't we went anyway. You know what? God came through. BIG TIME. Not only did He make a way for us to have a place to stay AND go to the park for 4 days, but He blessed us with fun little extras along the way.
When we got back we expected to go back to life as normal, but God just kept bringing miracle after miracle as answers to what felt like mountains in our way.
When we signed up for this mission trip, with a $2,000/month budget and no savings we knew we were going to have to do some serious fund raising to be able to meet the $5,000 cost. We did bake sales, started a Go Fund Me account, asked businesses for donations and got to work looking for ways to earn the money we needed. God faithfully met our initial deposit of $400 through our amazing friends and family within the first couple days of starting our Go Fund Me account. We felt so blessed and encouraged that we really were supposed to be going. We were able to raise enough money to get our passports in just enough time, so we really felt like everything was falling into place!
Then we ran into the potholes in the road. One after another plan and attempt to raise money fell short. We were a month out and still needed to raise $4,000. We began to doubt. We wondered what we were going to do. We talked about maybe just sending my husband since he was the one who we were sure was supposed to go. We were starting to consider that we may not be going and then something stopped us... Disneyland. God reminded us of how He was faithful and blessed us with something that we wanted for our family. How much more faithful would He be to provide for something He had called us to?!
So, we waited. We prayed and we gave it to Him. We put the burden of provision in His very capable hands. A couple days later an anonymous donation came in for us that would cover the majority of what we still needed! A few donations and a bake sale later and the cost of the trip was paid for. :) God faithfully provides, y'all.
Two weeks before we were to leave for the trip my husband got a job offer. He went to his employer to notify them and ask if they could offer anything comparable so he could stay with them, but they declined. So, a week and a half into his new job we were off for our mission trip. Naturally, being at a new job means no vacation pay. So, he would be taking the full trip unpaid. Like I said before, we don't have savings... yet. So, this also meant trusting God to provide for our needs. We really believed that after all that He had done for us to be able to go on this trip, He had a plan to take care of the rest. So we put that too in His hands and prepared to go.
At the same time our plans for childcare for our children had a sudden change and we found ourselves praying for God to show us what to do. We had less than two weeks to organize childcare for our 3 kids and transportation to their sports/dance events, church, etc. God brought all of the pieces together so that we were able to leave with all of the loose ends handled.
So, with a teary "goodbye" we set off on our grand adventure!
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