Signing Off

Today is Sept 12 and nearly two months since I left my full time job to stay home with my children.   The journey was long, but full of such blessings, learnings and rewards.    This experience has tested my trust in the Lord and my measure of faith beyond what I thought I was capable of.   So far He has remained faithful and I know, from experience, that He will continue to do so.... even if it doesn't always look the way I would like it to or things don't go as I have planned.    I know that His plans for me are for good (Jer 29:11).

So for now... I sign off.   I will be tracking my daily activities and experiences on my other blog, found here.   Please continue to follow my journey as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom!

What a beautiful day!

After enduring such a hot week last week, with temperatures in the 90s, it was refreshing to have a low 80s day yesterday. Personally, my favorite temperature is mid-70s, so even 80 can be too warm sometimes. Yesterday, however, there was this nice breeze and blue skies, it was gorgeous. I sat on the porch swing in the afternoon and watched the kids playing outside and watched the white puffy clouds roll by in the bright blue sky. Made me incredibly happy to be home enjoying it with the kids.

One thing I'm noticing is even with all the time in the day, it is very hard to give each child some individual attention. It's pretty easy with the big boys because we can play a board game like checkers or chess. But with the little ones, I have to be more creative. Then with having twins, it is easy to lump them together and spend time with both of them at once. One of my twins has started having accidents in his pants and I think he is looking for attention.

Every day a new learning adventure....

Week 1

The first week home has been awesome, exciting, rewarding, exhausting, overwhelming, and frustrating all at the same time. The beginning of the week, our au pair was still with us for two days. We went to Linesville, PA to see the Spillway. If you've never seen this, you should. There are so many fish. I mean SO many fish. There are so many carp that if you throw bread into the water they are literally swimming over each other to get to it. The tag line for the place is "Where ducks can walk on the fish".... and they do! Literally!

Tuesday we went to the zoo. This week we had a hot spell, so it was a roasty day with temps hitting the 90s. We rode the tram a bit to conserve energy and only stayed for a few hours. Grandma bought our au pair a ride on a camel as a special treat and then she treated all the grand kids to rides too. Grandma's are good for that kind of stuff. My older kids have been on the camel before, but it was the twins first times. Lots of photo opportunities.

Wednesday a friend called to see if I wanted to get together. After being gone for two days I was looking forward to a day at home. She said her younger children needed a nap first in the afternoon, so we wouldn't be able to go until around 4. Perfect!! Still can get stuff done around the house and hook up with friends. We went to a local sprinkle park. You mean I get to see friends outside of work too! This is great!

By Thursday, I was exhausted. First from all the running around, secondly from the heat, and thirdly from trying to accomplish a ton of housework in the midst of everything else. Even still I pushed through the day without a nap and accomplished some stuff. We moved my daughter back into her bed room which the au pair had been using so she was ecstatic.

The housework is the overwhelming part. I have cleaned our kitchen and swept the floor SO many times. Even with feeling like I'm constantly in the kitchen, the dishes have not been completely done even once. We average 5 dishwasher loads over 2 days -- almost after every meal. The kids have been helping too with putting dishes away and clearing the table etc, but still it's ALOT. And we haven't even started school work yet!! Oy!

Friday was nice. My husband is still part time. (Yes, supposed to change shortly) So he was home with us. Still feeling tired, but tried to accomplish stuff around the house. We went to a friends house to check out their garage sale and visited with our au pair. She is staying at their house for a week of vacation before going to a new family.

The older boys started swimming lessons this week too. They are daily, so I have to get everyone out of the house every morning and drag them to the pool. That's been cutting into the house work time too.

So all in all it's been a busy week, but I'm loving it! Really truly am glad to be home with them!!! Hopefully I'll make more headway on things next week!!!

Welcome Home!

When I got home from work yesterday, the kids were all sitting on the couch waiting for me to walk through the door. When I did, they yelled,

"WELCOME HOME!!"

My oldest son made this for me....

Notice the little people on the right. This is mommy homeschooling the two boys. Brings a tear to my eye :)

Never early...

... never late, always on time. Our God is faithful!

Today is my last day at work. It's hard to believe the time has finally come and this day is here. I know that God's timing in this whole journey has been perfect. While this is the end of one journey, a whole new one is beginning.

But for now, we celebrate! I bought a bowling deal from Groupon a while back, so we decided to take the kids out and go bowling this afternoon. Should be some great family time!!

<*Happy dance*>

The home stretch - Baseball pun intended :)

This week is my last week of work. Only 5 work days to go. If this were a fairy tale, the prince and princess would be getting married and we'd be about 5 minutes away from the credits rolling. However, they never show you in the movies, life after the fairy tale. That's what we're bracing for. I've been really excited the past few weeks to see this day coming. Even when I think about money, I know that God is going to provide. My faith is increasing. However, I don't expect it to be easy at all.

Even in light of getting ready to face the storm/valley, whatever would be considered a low difficult time, God has still been blessing us amazingly. My company offers a yearly summer event at the ball park for the families of employees. You are given two free tickets and are able to purchase additional tickets at half price. Even at half price, the remainder of our family would cost about $67. (Side note: Why is everything so expensive when you need a quantity of 7 ???) My father, who also works for the company, and I started asking around for anyone not using their tickets. God blessed us with enough tickets to take our whole family!!! And food/drinks are included in the event so it will be a fun night for the family that will only cost us the price of parking!!!

Secondly, another thing my company offers is to volunteer at a baseball game during some of the kids events. As a bonus for volunteering you get tickets to a future baseball game. I decided to volunteer yesterday and received vouchers for 4 Club seat tickets to any future game. These are $100 tickets that include a full buffet of food!! We decided to break up the tickets and get 2 tickets to 2 different games so that my husband and I could enjoy two "free" date nights over the next couple months. I scheduled the games about 6 weeks apart to maximize the fun and date time needed. Again, this is an evening that will only cost us the price of parking.

A good friend told me to be prepared for these kinds of blessings and I have to admit, this has been really fun to see God pouring out His gifts on us. Doing things God's way may confound the wise, but God rewards those who diligently seek Him.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11

It's Official

I submitted my letter of resignation last week. My last day at work is July 15. Kind of crazy, but there's no turning back now. I'm happy to say that I am very excited at this point. I have had tremendous peace for a few weeks now and just trusting the Lord that he will not leave us hanging.

Some of our curriculum came in the mail today and the kids are "rip raring" to go. They asked me if we could start school today. Umm... no. Not until I finish work. I've got so much going on with leaving my job that I've been pretty busy.

Who would have thought that leaving a job could be so busy? I have to worry about transferring our health insurance, making sure I have all my online accounts set up to my personal email account, and make sure all my personal files are off of my work computer.

News had started to spread around work and I've been a little surprised at some of the responses. All have been good! One manager told me she wishes she had done this when her kids were small. Now they are grown and she wishes she could have spent that time with them. Another person couldn't believe I was home schooling!! Some one else had no idea I had FIVE children, as she emphasized. Everyone by far has said good things though.

So here we are. The count down continues. Only 13 more days of work and 3 weeks until I'm home full time.

CHEO Conference

This past weekend, we attended the CHEO (Christian Home Educators of Ohio) conference in Akron, OH. On Thursday was a Family Discipleship seminar by Matthew and Maranatha Chapman. The key points I came away with, that spoke to me were:
1. Seed produces after its kind. If the parents are selfish, the kids will be selfish. Conversely if the parents are givers the kids will be givers.
2. Home environment should be a safe place.
3. God gives grace to the humble
4. Conversation should always edify, even in jesting.
5. We have to die to what we want. Life is not about you, it's about Him.
6. Don't complain, we make a place for the enemy.
7. Life is messy. Its about how we approach the spills.
8. Make sure you have the hearts of your children each morning.

Friday, my husband was able to join me for the day as well as my eldest son. We saw some more great speakers.
One of the speakers talked about homeschooling with preschoolers. My take-aways from that were:
1. Children are a blessing from the Lord
2. There is a time for everything
3. Keep a solid routine - not necessarily time-based, but routine. Morning devotions followed by breakfast, followed by .... etc.
4. Don't give up on nap time too soon. Even if it's just quiet time on their bed.
5. Keep "Activities in a bag" or a list of what the littles like to do on hand
6. Focus on the ministry (personal) to your children, less management (impersonal).

Two of the sessions we attended that day were by a sweet couple named Jenni and Matt Cox. They struck me as the type of people we would get along with great provided more time to spend with them. Here are some points I got from them:
1. A wise man chooses his destination and accepts the path. A fool chooses the path and accepts the destination.
7 Purposes of Marriage
1. Partnership
2. Power
3. Pleasure
4. Pro-creation
5. Protection
6. Picture of Christ and His church
7. Peace - place of trust and sincerity.

After attending our sessions on Friday we realized we didn't focus too much on home schooling sessions, so Saturday we tried to hit some practical home schooling sessions. We heard J. Michael Smith talk about measuring home school success. He used 1 Cor 15:58 as the standard for judging success.
Here are his 5 pre-requisites for success:
1. Be part of the 'my beloved'
2. 'this work' - the work of the Lord
3. 'be steadfast' - be excellent
4. Be immovable
5. Abounding in the work of the Lord - overflowing
And the outcome is that your work will 'not be in vain'.

Lastly we heard Steve Demme talk about strategies for understanding one another. We've had lots of sibling conflict and rivalry going on in our home lately that I was really looking for some ideas on that. Steve talked about these points:
1. Pray for your wife and family
2. Learn each others love languages
3. Communication
4. Personalities
5. Birth Order


I have some other notes taken, but that was the main stuff I walked away from the conference with. I really enjoyed the whole thing and look forward to going again in the future. We also were able to purchase the remainder of the curriculum we needed and are looking forward to packages in the mail. The boys are already asking if we can start school early.... ahh, if only that would last!

Tick tock

Well time is ticking away.... really fast actually.

I have not spoken to my manager again about the situation at hand, however, I do plan on giving my official notice within the next two weeks. Some of my co-workers know that will most likely be leaving and are sad to see me go.

I'm happy to say my husband is currently on a "probationary" period for becoming the store manager. He has had a few conversations with the owner of the shop and they are planning on moving folks around to achieve other goals I believe, but the end result may be my husband being on full time in a manager role. This also would mean on top of his salary he would be eligible for Key Performance Indicator bonuses and incentives. I have no idea what the specific details are but basically if he keeps the numbers of check-ins, warranty fixes, etc in good standing, he can get extra money. Sounds good in my book.

I really pray that this all works out and my husband does fantastically at this new role. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a word either, but it works for now.

On the other side of things, I am attending another home school convention this week. I am very excited as we only 'briefed' the other one in a kind of 'get your toes wet' fashion. We are also planning on buying the rest of our curriculum! It's always fun to spend money! We still have to get mostly consumables such as workbooks etc. I'll fill more in on that after we attend.

The past few days have been kind of hard. I'm still having some anxiety about this major transition. I keep telling myself that God's not going to leave me hanging and I need to just trust Him, but it's like this war of thoughts and emotions going on in my head. I was bumming pretty considerably yesterday and my husband was trying to cheer me up. He asked what was wrong? I told him I had so much going on in my head, he wouldn't last a minute in there. The past few days with the kids have been challenging as well. I just keep praying it will be different when I am here all the time and not trying to squeeze everything into a 3 hour window after I get home from work.

I only have 20 days left of work. Only 20 DAYS!!!

If you think of it, please pray for us and that God continues to be faithful (as I know He will) and that our family would just have peace moving into this time of change.

Closing doors that should be closed

It's amazing sometimes how much stuff can change in 24 hours. You go along months without much and then woosh, it all starts changing. Of course, some of this was probably self inflicted, but nonetheless.

While I was having a conversation with my manager yesterday, my husband was having a conversation with his (well maybe not at the exact time) to find out what is going on with that business and how much longer he will be on part time. He and the owner had a good discussion and basically an opportunity was presented to him which would involve him going back full time shortly and possibly a promotion. He needs to have additional conversations around the whole thing to nail down details, so more on that to come in the future. However, the main take away is that he may be full time within in the next month. Great news.... except for all the stuff in my post yesterday about working 20 hours, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So yesterday while I was driving home I had this little voice telling me if I continue to work part time at my company, what has really changed? What exactly has the Lord called me to do? Quit my job? Home school the kids? Sometimes it's fuzzy the exact details (cause obviously God did not speak down to me in an audible voice), so I just prayed on the way home that if I was not to stay at my current employer that the answer to my being able to work part time would be a clear 'no'. I truly want God's will in all of this, so I continually seek His face for direction. I don't ever want to be caught doing an Abraham and Sarah and taking matters into my own hands.

Today I had an all day meeting with a third party vendor. Towards the end of the day, my manager sent me an instant message asking me to stop by her office. Immediately, I thought to have an answer this quick does not look promising. I stopped by her office and my thoughts were confirmed. No opportunity for part time or contract work. They just can't justify losing hours that can't be replaced by anyone else. I was surprisingly at peace with the outcome. I don't know why I was surprised, but regardless God answered my prayer. Of course, knowing that my husband may be going back to full time surely helped the situation. Otherwise I think I would have felt despair. So there it is. I have to quit to do this.

That leaves us with still having a deficit of about $1000 monthly. Using savings, we'll be good for a few months, but will quickly need to pick up additional income. Then we received two phone calls tonight. One was from a good friend of my husband asking him to help on some construction side work that should bring in roughly $1000 over the next few weeks. The second was for another small side job that my husband will go quote on Thursday. I feel like God was saying "hey, I've got this all under control!" It's so awesome to follow such a faithful God and to recognize that He cares so intimately about all the little details of our lives. I feel so blessed.

So the Lord closed the doors at my current employer, but other doors are opening ;-)

6 Weeks and counting....

Well, today was the day. I told my employer of my plans and really started onto the "point of no return". I was so excited, that I left work at lunch time and am currently sitting at the library giving you this info. But before I get into the outcome of that, a little update.

I have been stressing a little over the financial implications of this decision for a few weeks now. Well who am I kidding, really it's been the whole time we've been thinking about this, but more specifically the past few weeks. It just feels so impossible. My husband is still working part time and we don't see the light yet at the end of that tunnel. I also felt like if I stayed at my job part time (20 hours a week) that it would be robbing me of time that I really needed to invest into homeschooling and keeping my house. However without any additional guaranteed income, we were going to be considerably short.

Many people at our church are aware of the plans and the impending mid-July date. So naturally at church yesterday people were asking if we were still on for July. With this big unknown out there, I can only say 'yes' to a point. I explained where we were with "Granny", an elderly and wise woman at our church and she said since my husband is working part time, maybe he can take care of the children on the two days he is off while I work part time (20 hours). As simple as that sounds, I had never really thought of that option. We were really hoping at this point that my husband would be back to full time work and I would only need to supplement with about 10 hours of part time. For whatever reason, that brought clarity to our situation and gave me renewed energy as a viable option. I briefly shared this with my husband and while it would prevent him from doing other "work", he agreed it is an option. Additionally, my mom would be available at times to help with schooling or even watching the kids if we really needed it.

So instead of going into work today and asking to go down to 10 hours a week as an independent contractor, I led with my option of going part time at 20 hours. In order to be an actual part time employee at our company you need to work the 20 hours. This means I would possibly continue to be eligible for benefits and profit sharing at the end of the year.

Another thing that is important to note, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before is that the size of my team has been diminishing for varying reasons. We normally have 6 full time people and 1 full time contractor as part of our team. We lost 1 person to another position within our company and 2 people are currently on leave for FMLA. I believe our full time contractor is also leaving near the end of July. So as you can imagine we are already under-staffed. I felt this could be a benefit because I at least am already trained and have expertise on the system that I test.

I met with my manager this morning and shared with her my interest in going part time, either as an employee or as an independent contractor working 20 hours a week. Of course her initial reaction was "you're killing me" because of us already being short staffed. However, she was fairly receptive. Obviously she could not offer me an answer right away, but did share a few of her immediate thoughts. She explained how our head-count is managed within our company. A person is a person whether they are full or part time.... so two part time people count as 2 head-count, not 1 full time person. This means I really would be shorting the team of available hours, without any way of getting them elsewhere. She said she believed that went for contractors as well, so even working part time as a contractor would not solve that problem. She did ask though, if the answer was no, would I resign? I explained that it was a possibility, but obviously we needed to have income to pay our bills. She said that half of me is better than none of me. She did complement me as being one of the stronger players on the team and well respected within our department. Thank you Lord, that was how I hoped she would feel. She said she would really like to work with me and make this happen.

I explained our current timeline with our au pair leaving mid-July. So the ball is in her court at the moment and we'll have to wait for an answer. Please pray for favor and that this can somehow work out.

God is good and He can make a way!

8 Weeks Left

I cannot believe how fast time is counting down. There are so many things going on around our house, school ending, and at work that I hardly have time to think about how close this is.

Two nights ago I did another budget review just to see where we were. It felt like we had been on a little spending spree lately and I wanted to see how bad we were hurting ourselves. Reviewing the budget helps keep in perspective what we purchase since we know things will be tight. And it did just that. We are still pretty good however, and will still have some money in savings going into the transition. We will be pretty set for at least the first 6 weeks.

I finally got all of my curriculum decisions squared away (thanks to friends and family who helped get us there). The boys will be doing Sonlight Core B for Science, History, Bible and Reading. Easy Grammar for grammar. Math U See for math, and ABEKA for spelling. Additionally I've already got my head spinning over what to do for music, gym and some computer lessons. Those things I will do 'off the cuff' since I have a lot of experience there and the boys play sports.

The boys are REALLY pumped about being homeschooled. Since we've been getting some curriculum books in the house, they want to start now! I bought a Mavis Beacon teaches typing CD because I think it's important for the kids to know how to type well and fast in this technology driven age. I learned when I was a child using this software and it's really good. The boys are already *gobbling* that up. They have been so excited when their WPM jumps even by 1.

So far they are really excited to learn and I hope that continues.

Boot Camp

My children have had it pretty easy thus far. We aren't really good about keeping a chore chart and having them regularly help with the house. Don't get me wrong, they have to help up when we do a big cleaning day, but I'm talking about the daily upkeep of their rooms, etc. We've had some babysitters over the years that were really good with making them do chores, but we never really followed through on the weekends or kept it up after they were gone. It just took too much time.

So, one of my first missions this summer when I am off is to send my kids through a chore boot camp. They complain pretty regularly when we ask them to do "work" now. It's going to take some "battling" to get them into gear and on a routine, but I know it will pay off after a few weeks.

I call it a boot camp because I'm hoping to make it "fun" while we go. I'm going to make them their own boot camp dog tags and everything.

Any suggestions on kids doing chores? Let me know.

Miscellaneous Update

I cannot believe how fast time is going. Here's my updates on recent activity....

We registered for another home school conference in the area. I'm excited since this is the one we get to buy stuff at :-) I'm praying that our budgeted curriculum money makes it that long. My husband is still working part time and things are getting tight. God has been faithful though. Money has come in from various sources, just when we needed it. For instance, my husband will be doing a side job of installing a floor this weekend which will make up the $400 deficit for this pay period.

Our au pair has to fulfill an educational requirement of 6 credit hours during her stay in the US. We are required to pay for $500 of that education. Because of bad planning on my part, I forgot that we still needed $250 for that. We just had to pay it on Friday, and had to use curriculum money to cover it. We still have some time to make it up, so I'm still confident we'll be able to get what we need.

Speaking of curriculum though, there is a local curriculum fair coming up this week. We know of very specific things we are looking for, so we'll see if we're able to come across it this week for a bargain.

I still haven't notified my job of my plans. It's a delicate balance between letting them know what's going on and playing the corporate 'game'. The risk is that they say "Ok go now". Then we'd really be stuck. I really don't think they'd do that, so I'm prayerfully considering when to tell them. It'd be nice to have fewer unknowns as the time approaches. The 'unknown' being whether or not they'll continue to have some part time or contractor work available for me.

We also haven't notified the school system yet. I think I'm going to wait until closer to the end of the school.

I'm really excited it's getting close. The boys are excited too... for now. I'm sure about a month into homeschooling, they'll be asking me to send them to school :-) Guess we'll see.

Stressed

Time is still ticking away and our plans are in full motion. We are still busily preparing and trying to get everything in order as much as it can be. I have to admit though, I have been quite stressed lately. I still think we are pretty crazy for moving ahead with this. I'm praying that my trust and faith in God, my father, will be stronger as the day approaches. I've been meditating on Phil. 4:6-7 which states, "Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything, with prayer and thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus."

My stress has been manifesting itself in crazy ways too. My skin is starting to resemble that of a teenager going through puberty and I'm having strange dreams. I know Satan is still on the prowl and trying every tactic to distract us from our calling and move us from the path we are on. This does give me a little encouragement since I know God must have something great ahead of us that Satan is trying to stop us.

Continue to pray for us...

Under 100 days

Can you believe it? Under 100 days and I will no longer be working full time for a corporation. It's so crazy. A few days ago an old boss sent me an email. He was wondering if I wanted to do some side work for another company we had worked with a little south of where I live. I had thought numerous times about contacting both this boss and the owner of the other company after I quit to see if they had any work available. I decided to hold off until I had actually left my company so that there would be no "conflict of interest". You can imagine my excitement when he contacted me first! I exchanged emails with my old boss and filled him in on what I'm doing. He encouraged me to get in contact with this other company as well. I called them and for this particular instance they had figured out what they needed to do. However, I was able to share with them what I will be doing mid-summer and ask them to keep me in mind for side work. I was relieved that the work didn't need me now because things are still so crazy trying to keep up with work and the kids and all. But God allowed me to plant those seeds for future work! Thank you Lord!

Sharing your trials

Do you ever wonder why you go through trials and tribulations before? I've heard people say before that you go through stuff so that you can help others that go through the same thing. Of course, my first thought is, why does anyone have to go through anything? Then I am reminded of scripture that says:


James 1:2-4 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.


I went scrapbooking last weekend with a group of girl friends. Some I have known forever and others are more on the acquaintance level. As we were scrapping and chatting, I shared with them what we feel God has called us to do and the impacts it was making on our lives and future. I had forgotten that one of my friends had gone through a similar situation a few years ago. Her husband, who was an engineer at a stable job, decided 4 years ago that God was calling him to start his own photography business. He left his job with no savings and started his business.


She was sharing how crazy things were and how they were able to survive. They both run businesses out of their home. She said month by month God kept providing enough to pay the bills and feed the family. She learned how to feed her family of 5 on $100/week! She said here it is 4 years later and they are still making it. They were able to keep their daughters in private school and everything. She shared that it was tough on their marriage to go through such hard times, but God used it to bring out issues that were buried far beneath the surface.


I am thankful that she shared her trials with me and that God can use those to remind me to pray both for our situation and for others. I believe that this friend will be a great help and a good resource for me over the next few years. So while God uses these trials to produce endurance, a side benefit is that you can help someone else too!

Mama Bird

Last weekend I went to a tea hosted by a local home school organization. It was very nice and my daughter was thrilled to get to do "girl stuff" again. The speaker, a very dear friend of mine, spoke about being in the ideal place that God meant for you and the fact that he has thoroughly equipped you to do His good work. They gave away a picture of a mother bird feeding her four babies on a branch to the attendee that had a little blue bird in their booklet. I was blessed to be the recipient of this photo. God speaks and reaffirms again. He has equipped me to do this good work.

My husband and I are attending a large home school convention this Friday in Cincinnati, OH. We're only spending the day there in order to avoid hotel costs, etc. I've got a pretty good handle on what curriculum we're going to use, but I am very interested in going through the Exhibitor hall and checking out what's available.

Next week is the week my husband starts part time. Crazily enough, I have a major peace about the whole situation. I have no idea how God is going to provide, but I really am not worrying about it. Of course, check with me again in two weeks when the first paychecks come and it might be a different story. I'll try to be strong though. I am trusting Him and learning to lean on Him more and more.

That's about all.

Unbelievable!

Seriously, unbelievable. After realizing we were only getting $1500. back on our taxes, I put them aside because, honestly, not having the money in our hands is like the best savings strategy we have. Of course, we're getting closer to tax day and therefore I pulled them out last night to finish it up, print, and send off. As I've mentioned in a previous post, my laptop died, so I had to complete them on another computer. I loaded up the file and my husband's information was not put in as I had already done on the old laptop. Therefore, I had to go find all the paperwork again so I could put the numbers in.

Organization is not one of my strong suits. I had been piling the tax papers up in a bin (with other papers/mail) as things came in and as I entered them into the computer. I went to the bin and started digging out all the tax stuff. Mind as well put it in a folder while I'm gathering it. As I was digging through the mail I came across an envelope that had the familiar "Tax Documents Enclosed" text on the outside. Oh good, I thought. I wouldn't have even realized I was missing something. The paper was for our HSA (Health Savings Account) and included the amount we had spent on medical bills last year.

I started putting in all the numbers and once again had reached the general vicinity of the $1500 mark that I was expecting. Then I got to the HSA section. Not completely understanding how all of this works, I just follow the prompts in the software and match up the box numbers with the form numbers. So I had the right form number, check! I started inputting the info. Box 1, check. Then it asked me how much of that number was spent on qualified medical bills. All of it, check. Then I clicked Done.

Holy cow. My husband even asked me if I was all the way done before he got his hopes up.

So I hope you are totally in suspense right now. We are getting over four thousand dollars back. We owe a few hundred on state, but even still, I was dumb-founded. Now this could sound like it didn't have much to do with God and was completely user error. Partially true. But if it wasn't for having to go back and find that paperwork, I don't know that I would have found the HSA documents or realized that the info needed to be entered. So I thank God for meeting me in my disorganization and blessing us with some additional funds right when we need it.

Thank you Lord!

Facing the Red Sea

Today I feel like Moses. God called him with a job to do. Moses was nervous and God provided clear signs to both Moses, Pharaoh and others that this was God's plan. Finally, Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. Now they are wandering through the desert and Pharaoh's men start chasing them, and then they hit the Red Sea. I wonder what Moses was thinking, "are you kidding, Lord?".

Actually I think in one way Moses had to know the Red Sea was coming. I would think a big body of water like that wouldn't be a big surprise. So then I think, what was Moses thinking leading up to the Red Sea? Did he have a backup plan? Or did he just know that God would provide one way or another?

So why am I facing the Red Sea? My Red Sea is that my husbands hours just got reduced to part time. Beginning in April, he will only be working 3 days a week. His performance is good, but business is slow and he is the low man on the totem pole. This obviously cuts our income in the short term as well as seems to derail our long term plans.

I kind of don't know what to think. Is this another plan of Satan's to divert us? Should I start moving forward with a backup plan?

I decided to read the story of Moses and the Israelites again today. To be honest, I was surprised to see Moses' reaction. When the Egyptians were closing in and the Israelites were panicking and getting mad at Moses, here's what Moses said:

Exodus 14:13-14 But Moses said to the people, "Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent."

Moses had complete faith that God would continue to deliver them. The whole reason God did this is so "I will be honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen. Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord... " (vs 17 - 18)

Again my faith is reassured. God is faithful and others will know that HE IS THE LORD through whatever means He chooses to remedy this situation. I have to give God complete control! He will deliver us.