The Holding Tank

I am back sitting on a fresh new blog page as I do several days week.  I type a few words and quickly delete them, unsure of what to say.

Life is so busy. Kev and I often wonder how we can slow down and simplify our lives.  I often find myself longing for a smaller house with less things to clean, keep up with, and organize.  One thing is for sure...the hurried and cluttered life brings added stress into our home and family.

2011 has been such a different year for our family.  I feel like we are still in a holding pattern.  I am sure I have shared this before but Kev's full-time job ended on Aug. 12 of this year.  We found out they were closing his office just about a week after learning that Eli had spina bifida.  We had options for re-location and such, but at the time it just wasn't an option.  Kev had been ready to leave the sales world for a while and move towards a ministry job, so we took this as the exit we needed.  So, we are waiting, praying and looking.  The Lord continues to provide "odd" jobs such as painting, construction, and such that are keeping daddy pretty busy. 

I am so so so SO SO SO thankful that back in 2003 as a young married couple Kev got hooked on Dave Ramsey on talk radio.  Of course it didn't happen until we had tons of college debt, a new house, a brand new car and credit car debt for us to realize that we needed help.  Kev listened to Dave everyday on his drive to work.  He became passionate and zealous in the pursuit of becoming debt free.  If you know him you know what I am talking about (washing out ziplock bags...that is where I drew the line!!)  I was slower to join the bandwagon as I knew this meant us needing two salaries for longer than I might have wished and meant keeping to a detailed budget.  Throughout these years Kev worked extra jobs cleaning swimming pools and overtime and little by little we attacked our debt.  We both love to give and we determined early on that we wanted to be faithful to tithe and give as the Lord led us to do.  We saved, we gave and God blessed us in many ways.  We moved baby step by baby step and saved our emergency fund for the "what ifs" of life.

This year we are living in the "what ifs."  I am so thankful that Kev took leadership in this area of our lives because I am pretty sure I would have failed miserably.  In fact, the first month we set out to follow a very strict budget, I had to have my wisdom teeth out.  It was right at the beginning of the month and the procedure alone blew our budget for the entire month.  My thought was that we should just ditch the budget and start again the next month.  Kev didn't like my idea too much.  I cannot imagine the extra stress we would be under if we hadn't worked on this area of our lives.  I am so thankful that even though I am so ready to see what God has in store, we are experiencing God's blessing and provisions in many ways even though the process has been rough.
Eli got a good report this week on his hips and Eliza got her cast off and we are so thankful for that!  And because pictures make every post better....