God's provision

God continues to amaze me! As if the way He provided for us while we had 2 mortgages and the way He provided my mom to buy my townhouse was not enough, He has since then continued to blow me away. Paul and I try our best to be good stewards of our money. We by no means are successful with that at all times. We definitely have more than we need, and at times desire more than I think we should. I'll be perfectly honest, on 2 teacher's salaries after we tithe, save and pay the bills, there is very little left to go around. BUT, we have all that we need and then some. This might sound weird to you, but I actually think that my salary is a picture of God's grace to me. Stay with me here. I love to shop. I mean, LOVE to shop. I love clothes and I love shoes. A lot. I am pretty sure that if I made more money, I would be living in a constant battle with always wanting and buying more stuff. Stuff that I do not need. Stuff that would never leave me feeling satisfied, rather always wanting more. Don't get me wrong, I do believe God is ok with us having some things we don't need and doing things for pleasure like taking trips and even shopping. I think He is cool with us enjoying things in life, to a certain degree. But I know myself and I can almost guarantee that if I had more money, I would be doing all the wrong things with it. So I am thankful that God protects me in that way. Having said all of that, there are still times where I wonder where the money is going to come from. Why I would ever doubt at this point is beyond me. Yet even in my doubt and lack of faith, He has an unlimited supply of grace and the ways He provides are simply amazing to me.

We are going to Disney World next month. This is a trip my family has been talking about taking for years and we are finally going. It is obviously not a trip that is a need, it's actually a huge luxury. God didn't have to provide, but He did. We got more than enough back from our tax returns to pay for the trip. We would not have been able to afford to go any other way and I consider that His blessing and provision.

One of my dear friends is getting married in Chicago this spring. I wouldn't miss it for anything. But the concern of how we'd pay for the trip, especially on top of Disney World, was immediately in our minds. We don't use credit cards and we wanted to try hard not to dig into our savings account to pay for the trip. So we knew we'd have to come up with a good bit of cash to make this happen. Guess what? God honored that and has provided in amazing ways. Paul was all of the sudden given several private soccer players to work with for extra money. We got a pretty good size check in the mail from money that was left over in my escrow account from when we sold my house. We got another check back from Paul's mortgage for something "random" that they had overcharged us for. Not a coincidence people! Then we got yet another "random" check back from our insurance company. In a matter of weeks, we already had more than enough to pay for our flights to Chicago. It's not because we did something to deserve it. God is just awesome like that.

Can I get an "AMEN"?!