Why I give? - Our Mortgage

This is part of a series originally published in November 2004. The timeline reflects our circumstances of that time.





Well, it’s been two years now since we’ve been trying to have a baby. For some reason, still unexplained, there were problems. This created quite a physical and emotional roller coaster for me. Through different doctors, tests, medications, weird side effects, and prayers, it wasn’t just the silence that was frustrating. Month after month, all we seemed to hear was No, No, No. Until just as suddenly, this spring, after 18 months, God said yes.

Then we had to figure out how we could make this work. Hubby and I were both committed to me staying home when we had children, so we had to look closely at our finances. Luckily, God had been working in our lives in a different way this whole time.

We had been very good at putting half our income toward paying off our house each month. Because we were careful with our spending, and committed to our goal, we were able to make our last payment on our house this summer.

Now that we are down to one salary, it is just enough to cover our basic monthly expenses because we don’t have a mortgage or any other debt to worry about. Looking back to where we were two years ago, I can see that we couldn’t have done that. Financially, we were still a long way from being in a position where I could stay home.

From the outside it looks like we were really smart. It looks as if we waited to have children. It looks as if we had this whole thing all planned out. Well before you give us any credit, let me remind you, this was not our plan. We were praying for something else entirely, and we weren’t very patient about it. This was God’s plan. He’s the one that had everything worked out.

Now when I look at our bills and wonder if we can do it, I get a little kick in the ribs reminding me that God has it all worked out.

This post has been linkedin with Thankful Thursdays