tomorrow marks the 2 year anniversary since ben and i got married. time certainly has flown by, especially with the help of our now 7 month old daughter, adelaide (who is currently talking to herself in her crib. she likes to do this in the middle of nap time, and i really don't mind, because she is still in there and i am in here and able to stuff done). tonight we are going out to celebrate and my cousin, robin, will come here to watch adelaide. a date! what an exciting word in the world of parenthood :)
today i especially want to chronicle the Lord's hand on our finances since we got married. we have "struggled" a lot, but probably not in a sense that most people can see. ben already owned a home when we got married, a very nice one at that, and we haven't ever been without anything. but everything has been tight - very little breathing room for the past 2 years. we quickly paid off the little debt ben put on a credit card for some wedding/honeymoon expenses after we got married, and remained debt free until we moved to new jersey in march. we had to put the moving expenses on a credit card, but also paid that off last month and officially cut up and cancelled the one credit card we had. we are big Dave Ramsey listeners and have been very wise with our money since we got married, a huge blessing for a 'young' couple :) and we were hoping with ben's new job and the substantial pay increase that we would finally be able to save some money, buy life insurance, etc, just some necessary things. we don't want anything lavish or to go to broadway shows or anything, we just were hoping to be able to relax a little bit on our very tight budget.
well, that hasn't happened yet. we moved here and were unable to sell the house quickly, so we got some renters in there. it doesn't cover the mortgage which means we are back to even, much like our situation in nashville. but this is ok, in fact, it's very good. month after month we have seen the Lord work out what should have been a negative budget, and make it positive. literally - month after month. one may think i'm exaggerating here, but i have the proof as we have all of our previous budgets still online.
so at the beginning of this months budget, we were planned to come out even. again. thank you Lord, what a relief, i thought, as i saved our 'august' budget on google docs. then last week we were in the city (aka the big apple) for church and got a parking ticket. "Too close to the fire hydrant - $115." seriously, Lord? a parking ticket when we were just trying to go to church? ok, well we will have to let you figure this one out. we came home and looked back at our budget online. there was nothing to squeeze out of it. nothing. then we got the rent check from our property manager in nashville yesterday. the check was nearly $150 less than what we thought it would be, because of some utilities expenses. ok, now this is just getting humorous. my mom did give us $50 for our anniversary which was unexpected, but still not enough to send us back up to even. so this morning as i closed out of google docs, i said one more time, Lord, i give this to you. it is out of my hands.
this is just 11 days into august, and it is looking very similar to many other months for us. who knows what the rest of the month will hold! which is why in matthew 6:34 it says,
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
i will not worry about tomorrow or the end of the month. something our pastor in nashville once said is that God did not fail me yesterday, therefore, i trust him with tomorrow. can't wait to see how he takes care of us this month! :)
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