If (and when...) My Hope Account Gets Low....

I saw a white puddle on the ground....spilled milk.  It was all I could do to try and maintain some control as I looked at my 4 year old.  I saw what had happened and was frustrated how he had taken his milk and literally kept pouring it down his throat until it literally spilled over the edges of his mouth.  I could not believe what I was seeing and, of course, asked the dumb question all parents ask, “Why?????!  What were you thinking?????”  His answer has had me laughing all week....  “I was gargling my milk.”  My answer has had me laughing all week, too, as these words just don’t come out in every home, “You can’t gargle milk!!!!!”  That was how my first day of school started.

Remember all that planning and prep I had done....for weeks?  I knew even when I did it all that in some senses it was a bit of an exercise in frustration...something would happen that would change the plan and of course that is exactly what happened.  The little guy got another throat infection of some kind (gotta get to the bottom of that....) which led to no sleep again for me and Renaissance Man.  Horses, that's right, horses arrived at our door on the first day.  Not Jehovah's Witnesses, horses.  That was a fun distraction, but it sure didn't contribute to kids sitting at their desks doing work!  It ended up being one of the hottest weeks of the year...figures!  After such a cool summer, I was pretty sure September was going to be even cooler, but no, it got super hot!  So, who wants to do school when all you think about it swimming!  Alas, it was a great start to our first week - just two days of school!  No one was too upset about that. 

As for our little rendez-vous away, it was simply too short.  But that's a good sign, isn't it?  If you are enjoying being with the same person for 19 years, that says something.  One of the things we started doing when it was our first anniversary was to purposely reflect on the year before and dream and plan for the year ahead.   At first we even took notes!  This time we didn't take notes, but I did write things down that we had talked about when we got home.  We had a harder year this past year, but then again maybe it was just like all the other years except the trials were different.  

Upon reflection, I'm realizing that we have many different bank accounts besides our chequings and savings.  We also have a "faith account" and a "hope account", just to name a couple more.  Some are fuller than others.  When we reflected back on the trials, we also were amazed at all the miracles that had happened.  God was injecting faith into our "faith account" all year.  What I noticed this past year was how often I would dip into the "hope account" and nothing was there leading to tremendous discouragement, but the neat thing was there was always "money" in the "faith account", so all I needed to do was make a transfer!  My faith account transfer was then enough to keep my hope account alive for a little bit longer so that I wouldn't go bankrupt!  Just like I wish our actual dollar account was a little fuller, I wish my hope account was full to overflowing, but it only seems to be at a "barely alive" level most of the time.  Thank goodness for the ability to reflect and see what God has done - that always amazes me.  Yes, faith is believing and hoping in what we cannot see, but God knows we need more than that sometimes and it is so helpful for me to actually "see" with my own eyes His provision for me in tangible ways.  We saw that a lot this past year and our faith account was full to overflowing.  I think He must have known we would need that during those trials to get us through the dry months.

We wonder what the 20th year holds for us.  We know it'll probably be a sad year in some ways as one of RM's cousins is very sick with brain cancer and doesn't seem to have much time left, yet God is her strength so we hold on to that for her.  Every year brings these lows in some form and yet we anticipate some highs as well as there are many surrounding us expecting babies - it's that cycle of life thing.

We are almost at the year mark where we buckled down again and made some hard decisions about finances.   Last October when we first clicked back in to "gazelle" intensity, I figured it would be anywhere from 2-3 years before we saw financial freedom.  It's still looking that way as not too much has changed in our financial situation even though we've been at it for a year.  We had a lot of financial needs with the hard winter - insane heating bills, renovations needed to keep the house warm, etc.  That set us back a bit.  Then there just wasn't a lot of work until January, so that set us back a lot as we had very little to live on for almost 6 months.  Work finally came in the new year, but not enough to clear a lot of debt, just enough to sustain us and keep us alive!   More work has come since then, but again, just enough to keep us out of hot water and we've heard it's going to be another hard winter.  We didn't get all our winterizing done on the house yet and that is going to cost us some more if we want to keep our pipes from freezing!   I continue to work at our grocery bills and clothing needs as creatively and cheaply as possible.  I feel like we didn't spend too much on our homeschooling curriculum.  Gifts for others are usually done as inexpensively as possible.  I continue to butcher, I mean, cut, my childrens' hair.  We are eating our own meat birds and are gearing up to slaughter some pigs and cows soon, so that'll give us some more meat soon.  I'm so grateful for that!  We haven't eaten out at a restaurant as a family in a very long time except if we are given it as a gift, which God, in His goodness, has given us many times over this past year.  We have kept to the rule of not doing field trips (there were a couple exceptions, but mostly things we couldn't avoid) that cost and there have been no vacations (except for my anniversary and even then, it was done on the cheap).  We've tried to be reasonable and not legalistic.  We've tried to bless our kids and not exasperate them in this process.  We are learning there is no formula for how this is going to work itself out.  We make little adjustments as we go along and give ourselves grace if we fall off the wagon and spend where we said we never would or if we find ourselves out and about and are kids are starving, we'll stop and feed them (though I've tried to be a better planner and bring food whenever possible)!  Like I said, we're trying to be reasonable and not legalistic.  

We are nearly at the 6 year mark where we decided things needed to change and that took us out to Niagara where we built the home and have been living for over 5 years now.  Will we ever see the freedom we long for?  Not sure.  I don't panic about it anymore.  We are basically at peace that this may be our status right until the end of our lives.  Only God can bless us and get us out.  We are being faithful and trying to do all we can, but it may just be that God wants to keep us in a place of dependence, as I've written before.  I don't know exactly how that gives God glory, to remain in debt, but at the same time, if we can reflect an attitude of peace and a sense of trusting in Him though things aren't going as we planned, perhaps that is how He'll get the glory.  We have to completely rely on Him to bless us with either more work, an "ark", other creative ideas to kill the debt....even ideas come from Him!  We simply won't be able to do this on our own.

So that is the run-down of the past year - in some ways we are in the same financial situation as when we started, maybe even worse!  But perhaps it is one step forward, two back....then over time, it'll be two steps forward, one back....you get the idea.....Meanwhile, I thank God for our many blessings.  I really do love my life.  My kids are hysterical.  I'm in love with my husband.  I feel like I live in paradise when I look around.  See?  That is how my faith account gets filled up, looking back, reflecting, seeing what I have in the present, remembering all the blessings, talking together about all that God has done as a family, writing about the miracles...suddenly the faith account is full again, leaving lots of room to transfer into my hope account if and when it gets low again....whew!