Once again, a lighter post - I think that Christmas one will last a long time....
We've started to notice some funny "coincidences" since we started this financial journey. I have a series of, so far, 5 stories, but I'm expecting more to come, that I'll share as a form of encouragement to you to show you once again how merciful God is to us and how we are already experiencing the reaping of blessings now that we've decided to sow financial obedience.
Normally, we would encounter a problem in our home with regards to storage or space issues and our way of solving the problem would be to just throw money at it to "solve" the problem. This was solving the problem in one way, but certainly creating a very negative financial pattern as well as teaching our children to not think outside the box. Now, to be completely honest, these stories I'm about to describe, were not our way of saving money, we weren't that smart yet! It was after we had gone through them that we looked and saw the hand of God, over and over again.
Story 1 - The Case of the Shrinking Family Room
We've started to struggle with space in our home, imagine that. Ten people, some growing quite quickly all at the same time - it's incredible! We all used to fit on the furniture we had, many little bottoms could sit side by side on the couch and even two on the smaller chairs, but no more. So now we've had to resort to uncomfortable piano benches when we do family worship or on the floor which is no big deal, but when it is Mommy on the floor, she's less happy.
We had two more chairs we could have brought into the family room from the garage, but they were super-oversized for the space of our little family room and quite honestly, the room was so oddly shaped, there was just no way we could make it work to even please the eye (we do have some appreciation for that kind of thing!) So we even tried to sell them, but no one was interested.
Then, right after we made the financial vows, we were sitting in that room, once again, fussing and stewing about what we could do, knowing that building a bigger house wasn't an option, when suddenly Renaissance Man's eyes got really big - "I've got it!" he said. I usually listen to him when he says things like that because he has an unusual gift for abstract thinking - he can picture things moved and imagine the space of the room without furniture in it, so I knew he was on to something good.
You have to try and picture this - a small, rectangular room, a large couch, and 4 chairs, 2 stools, a hutch, 2 shelves and a grand piano to top it off! How in the world would this all fit??
First, he moved the hutch out of the room into another sitting room we have on the other side of the house (which we were also struggling to fit in), then the brain wave - move the piano where the hutch had been - this opened up a whole bunch of space we had never noticed before and made the room more square making the furniture fit better solving both the seating problems as well as the "pleasing to the eye" problem. Suddenly, even though there is a ridiculous amount of furniture in the room, it actually seems more spacious, yet cozy (I don't think those two words normally go together, but it's true!) Anyone who has come in since we changed it notices this and always comments on how much better it is and how much larger the room seems!
The two chairs from the garage that we'd been trying to sell now fit in the other sitting room meaning now we had more seating in there as well - glad we didn't sell them after all! So now we have two new rooms with enough seating for everyone and then some!
We find ourselves in both rooms now all the time, just looking around, loving how we suddenly are more comfortable and together as a whole family and we didn't spend a dollar (or build a house).
Where is the miracle? Well, this lack of space issue is something we've tried to figure out for over two years - we've sat there, we've talked about what to do, we've felt frustrated. We've just never been able to see it, and that is with RM's ability to see things abstractly, so why now? Why was he "suddenly" able to see it? Well, I attribute it the Multiplication Effect (I just made that term up).
Did you know that wherever God is, there is multiplication? If you were to do a study on multiplication in the Bible you would see that God loves to multiply things - from the very beginning of the world, the first command was to be fruitful and multiply. Though the command is obviously talking about the multiplication of people, it is clear, as scripture continues, he is not just talking about babies! In Deuteronomy, he tells the Israelites he will make them "plenteous in every work of your hand" as well (Deut. 30:9). Where you see God's blessing on the Israelites, even in slavery, there was multiplication so much so that their numbers of people or flocks of animals could not be counted. Multiplication is a sign of God's blessing and he is still in the business of multiplication, in my life and yours.
As I sat there, in my new cozy, small, but large family room, I said to RM, "God did this. He multiplied our space! Don't you see?!" It was yet another way he was showing us his pleasure in a very tangible way. That's just story 1 - stay tuned for more......
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