Prayers and Provisions

Jehovah Jireh....The Lord who Provides....

This year has been a time of stepping out in obedience and faith for my family. Definitely NOT my strong suit! I very much like being in control of EVERYTHING!!! Our lives have been crazy chaotic and busy this year. Caroline has been at a private Christian school, Jack at a public charter school and me at a public Title 1 school. Three completely different school schedules, different vacation days, 1 1/2 hours in the car getting everyone where they need to go each day, 35 miles round trip between schools - 2 times a day. Absolute Craziness!!! Add on top of that the exhaustion that comes from working in an inner-city Title 1 school and the lack of patience I was beginning to experience with my own children at the end of each day and it came as no shock that a change was needed. James and I began to pray and seek the Lord and see what changes we should make. We decided that I would apply to each of the children's schools to see if I could get a teaching position at either of them. The lack of teaching positions available caused us to be unsure of what to expect. Jack's school didn't have any elementary openings this year for new teachers and Caroline's school was only going to have one. Got my application into both and had interviews with both. Amazingly, I was offered the one position that was available at Caroline's school - teaching the grade level that I wanted to teach. The only set-back was that I was going to have a $20,000 pay cut to take the job. Nothing like seeing what you want and then feeling like you're being sucker-punched by the lack of money. We prayed about it again and really felt like the Lord was working everything out for me to take it. Just didn't know how the funding was going to be there.

At this same time, our pastor had challenged our church to be faithful to tithe, make a budget and stick to the budget for 120 days. He talked with us about the Bible being clear that we are to tithe 10% of our salary, but that the Lord promises to provide for us. We took the challenge. I can't tell you how many times I didn't want to write the tithe check. How many times we would look at the balance sheet and know what bills had to be paid, but not where the money would come from. And at times we were aboslutely desperate and struggled greatly. But we continued to faithfully tithe.

Fast forward about a month from taking the new teaching job. James is told that he is being considered for a new position at the hospital that will include a big pay increase for him, doing financial analyst work that he loves to do. Seemed far too good to be true. We'd been down this road before and weren't sure it was going to really pan out. But he was told last week that he was going to be offered the job. And although the pay increase was good it is not as much as we had hoped. We had gotten it in our minds that the pay increase would totally make up my pay difference from my leaving my public school job. But that isn't how it worked out...exactly....

Jehovah Jireh...The Lord provides.... This term is used in the Old Testament when Abraham is given the ram to sacrifice instead of Isaac. The Lord provided for Abraham when Abraham was faithful. I think the faithful, obedient part is the kicker....

So as James and I sat down to do a projected budget for the next school year, something truly amazing happened..the Lord has worked it all out. I found out that I am being given two pay checks this August - one from each school. One of which will pay off most of the kid's discounted tuition for this upcoming school year. James' pay increase is in no way, shape or form going to make up my $20,000 pay cut... BUT, the Lord has provided an extra $400 A MONTH to our take-home pay. I don't know how it is possible, but HE has increased our money....He is Jehovah Jireh...The Lord who Provides!!!!