FEAR, FAITH, FOOD, AND THE NON-ALLITERATIVE EMPLOYMENT

I have a friend who I do my financial freakouts on. It only happens a couple times a year, but she's been in similar situations and understands how I feel, won't let me wallow in fear or self-pity, and never takes me sharing the nitty gritty details as any sort of manipulation. So, what generally happens is that I dump all my thoughts about the situation on her, she agrees that it stinks, gives some practical suggestions and some spiritual encouragement, and then I feel better and we both move on with our day. I'm thankful for her!

Two days ago I was feeling a little bit panicky and discouraged about the job and money situation around here, so I vented to this particular friend. There's no current financial crisis, but, with the exception of a handful of basketball games to officiate, Tim hasn't worked in three weeks and that's going to catch up to us. I was getting worried about how summer was going to play out and wondering how to handle a particular financial situation.

Our basic needs have always been met, some lesser needs have also been met, and we've often been blessed with the fluff of life. I should have faith that God can handle this particular season, but I sometimes struggle with knowing when faith in God becomes plain old irresponsibility on my part. I should be responsible with the resources I have available to me, but I can't be so focused on the future that I'm afraid to deal with the present. I don't want to be so faith-filled that I'm irresponsible, but I also don't want to be fearful and call it responsibility.

Anyway, I crunched numbers after the conversation with my friend. All of our expenses for July were already taken care of. We have enough money for our August expenses. We have enough money for another expense. We have money to put toward our September expenses. How cool is that?! By the time September ends Tim will either have a job or sub money will start trickling in.

Then, because I like lists and charts and plans, I broke down the amount of money we still need in order to get through September into weekly and daily (weekdays, actually) amounts. Seeing how that amount can be paced over eight weeks or 40 days helped me to relax a little. It felt much more manageable. That's the responsibility part.

The faith part is that I'm choosing to trust that God will provide work and/or give us creative ideas for cutting back expenses and/or help us figure out creative ways of generating income. Why? Because he always has. I'm writing down all the ways the summer money comes in because it helps me to keep trusting.

That was two days ago. Yesterday morning I discovered I had a small credit that could be applied to the random expense we had. Yesterday afternoon a friend offered up a coupon on Facebook that I was able to apply to the random expense. I'd forgotten to apply a discount I qualify for to all parts of the expense when I was crunching numbers. So, despite the fact that I forgot to add one small portion of that expense when I working on our budget (Oops!), the discount, credit, and coupon made my final bill about $25 less than I had planned on!! Thank you, Lord!

This morning Tim, who is on day three of working a four day tournament, woke up with two games on the calendar. Then he got called in for an extra game on the front end of his day with just enough time to get to the game before it started. Again ... thank you, Lord!

In related news, do you remember when we went off food stamps in the spring? Unfortunately that was short-lived. We had one glorious month of buying our own groceries and it went well. I spent a grand total of $200, started couponing again, and was able to afford razors (which meant I got to shave my legs) for the first time in seven months. It was fantastic!

Then we had a reality check. If we continued paying for our own groceries, then we were going to run out of money sooner and have to get back on food stamps within a couple months. If we chose to keep using food stamps, as our caseworker had never taken back the ones we asked her to and said we should just use them up because they'd already been applied to our account, then we'd probably be able to pay all of our other bills through the summer. Ugh. I hate those choices. While I'm so grateful for the help we've received from the state, I'm waaaaay ready to be fully supporting ourselves.

We chose to use the remaining balance of food stamps and the goal is to not apply for them again once the balance is gone. Hopefully Tim's income will be enough to live on once fall rolls around. If not, then we'll figure out some other solution. We just need to be done with food stamps. We haven't had new money applied to our account in four months, but we had a big balance when we thought we were done. So I stocked up on some non-perishables and things that could be frozen, an now we're just using food stamps for some fresh produce, eggs, and dairy products. It's not ideal, but the stockpile and some food from friends have meant I've only had to spend about $60 on groceries to feed our family for two weeks. Not too shabby!

And in more related news, here's a non-update on the job hunt. Tim has applied for countless jobs, some he's totally qualified for and others that would be a little stretch. No response from any of them. The charter that's been talking to him since the spring said they couldn't hire an administrator after all, but that they were definitely interested in him, then thought they could and started looking at applicants, and now we're in the middle of a two week period they said they'd call in to schedule interviews. He's also registered online with two temp agencies for summer work, but nothing has come of either registration. He visited a third one on Thursday, but they didn't have work that day, were closed for a long holiday weekend, and he's busy officiating through tomorrow. So, he'll check back there on Wednesday.

That's probably more than you wanted to know all at once, but I get asked frequently about the job situation and a little less often about the financial situation, so I wanted to give one big update.