Blessed

When Justin and I first married, he wanted to handle the finances. Then he nearly puked when he looked at the checkbook. I took over. It was daunting those first several months. We were barely scraping by and bills sometimes had to be juggled until a pay check, which was still before they were due, but the check couldn't be written the day the bill was received either. Soon after, Justin got a better paying job and check writing got a lot less stressful.

We were blessed that between our parents and scholarship money we both left school without any debt. Justin went to grad school on a stipend and we've only had to pay a little each year to keep him current, if you count $800 a credit hour as little, anyway! We have carefully stayed out of debt beyond housing and sometimes one car payment.

Last year, however, we went in to pretty major debt. We bought a house in Kansas a few years back. One we planned to raise our expanding family in. It was so close to campus that Justin could ride his bike, and I wasn't sure that we would ever move. After we settled in, we realized that we missed being close to our families. The people he worked with were wonderful, but we had some fiscal concerns about the school. We found the job here and put the house on the market.

Then we found out just how badly the market had collapsed. The house we bought to raise our family in was no longer worth what we had agreed to pay for it. Or even what we owed on it, despite the fact I dutifly wrote checks for more than the minimum payment each month. It was an awful sinking reality. The bank mentioned short sale, but we decided that ethically, we should pay what we owed, even if it was $20,000 more than we would get in the end. Check writing suddenly made me ill too. I even wondered if we should have stayed with the old position.

Last night as I sat running numbers of our tax return and some overload that we're expecting to get from Justin's work, and it looked like it will pay the last of our remaining debt. God has provided exactly what we needed, despite what seemed like a ridiculous sum of money to owe for a one income family. We emptied or savings, cashed out a retirement account, and scrimped where we can, but we were not in this alone--we have had friends come along side us to help, family who lent us money and actually asked to be paid back last, so we can get rid of our line of credit that charges interest first. And you know what, assuming Justin gets to teach the summer class that's on the schedule, it won't just be the debt from the loss on the house--it's also what we still owe on the van, thankfully not too much, so we can be 100% debt free, until we buy a house anyway, with with $103.75 to spare (assuming I guessed right on taxes). What I expected to pay on for five years, may well be paid off in one.

We truly felt led to pay what we owed. And we believe that God has been faithful to provide abundantly.