Stop doubting and believe!: An update on how God provided

I posted not too long ago about quitting my job to be a stay-at-home mom. I confessed that this caused me anxiety for a few reasons, including all the financial struggles that will come and the sacrifices we will have to make to allow me to stay home.

Now, under most circumstances, I would not be specific about our finances in such a public way, but I want to go into a little bit of detail here, just so I can show you all how amazingly God has provided for our family. I don't boast in myself, or my husband, or my former job, or his current job, or our money, or our lack of money--I boast in Jesus Christ, who has blessed us abundantly, both for His own glory and because, despite our failings and selfishness and greed, He loves us abundantly.

When I left my job, I left behind about $4000 a month. I was the primary breadwinner in our family. Because of my paycheck, we were able to save up a bit--until I became severely ill with hyperemesis last year and unexpectedly could not work for 10 months. We had huge expenses and only a fraction of our usual income. In a year with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, it is amazing that we were not crippled by debt. (Let me just say here, I am so freaking thankful for health insurance. It was incredible to get bills in the mail weekly which read, "Total due: $14,680.00. Patient owes: $0.00.")

But by the end of the year, our savings were depleted and our debt came to $19,890.

Tragically, while I was still in the hospital after giving birth to our son, my husband's dearly loved grandmother died. It was heartbreaking to experience such a great loss after our son's birth, knowing that our beautiful Grandmom would never meet Arlo. (She would have adored him, and I know it would have been more than mutual.) When Arlo was about 2 months old, we received a piece of certified mail, and opened it to find a check. To say it was unexpected is a gross understatement. Grandmom had left us $20,000. (Though this is a considerable amount, you should know that this is only a small example of the generosity that exuded from this beautiful, smart, and encouraging woman, every day of her life.)

As I mentioned earlier, our debt was only about one hundred dollars shy of $20,000. Her gift wiped out all of our debt (except our house) in one day.

We see this as a gift from God. He used Jamie's faithful Grandmom in many, many ways throughout her exceptional life to touch so many lives, and we praised God that He was still using her to bless us and others after she had gone to live with Him. We believe that she would be overjoyed to know that her gift is the reason I was able to stay home with Arlo.

Though our debt was wiped out, we knew we still had a deficit of about $200-400 every month without my job. We talked about selling our house, selling a car, selling our kidneys (just kidding :) ). As of January 1st, the logical thing seemed to be for me to return to work. What would we do to cover that gap every month?

Still not knowing if we could financially support my staying at home, I quit my job. It was scary. But it was only scary because I'm stupid and don't really trust our trustworthy Lord. God had shown me in just the past year that He is bigger than $20,000, bigger than hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, bigger than a potentially fatal illness; and yet, I doubted that He could come up with a couple hundred dollars a month for us. (Yeah, like I said, stupid.)

I told Jamie that I wanted to have the faith Jesus spoke of to Thomas after He was resurrected. In John 20, we read about how Thomas saw Jesus after Jesus had died, and Thomas did not believe that it was really Him. The poor guy's been dubbed "Doubting Thomas" for centuries because of this account. If you ask me, we should all have "Doubting" before our names. I know I doubted that God could provide, even after a year of Him providing BIG TIME, in very tangible ways. And it was only a couple of weeks after He gifted us with twenty grand that I was questioning His ability to cover two hundred bucks! Anyway... back to Jesus. :) He told Thomas to put his finger into His flesh, to actually feel Him, to know that He was indeed alive again. Jesus said, "Stop doubting and believe!" (John 20:27). After Thomas confesses that Jesus is Lord and God, Jesus tells him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (v. 29). I told Jamie that I wanted that faith--to not see how God was going to provide, and yet to believe that He would. I prayed for that faith. We prayed for God's provision. We prayed for trust that He would cover our $200-400 monthly deficit.

It was only a couple of days later that God gave us $900 more each month. 


I am truly overwhelmed by God's goodness and His blessings to us. But let me say, even if we still found ourselves in debt, with an increasing chasm between what we owed and what we made, I would still be able to say that God has blessed us beyond what we deserve. Because the chasm between our sinfulness and God's holiness was much, much more vast than a few hundred dollars, and He filled it once and for all through Jesus. Thank you, Lord.