When God Lets You Fall on Your Bottom, But Then Brings You to Your Knees

**Disclaimer: What I am about to write is not done to seek pity or sympathy. It is done with a broken and hurting heart and a chance to be honest in life and share what God is teaching me.**
This month has been hard. We have not received a paycheck and Tim for the first time (besides helping out a friend with some small projects for gas money) started a job for a client this past Monday. Yes, we took the trip to Fallingwater - mainly because everything was already paid for. We paid for gas, and quite honestly, Tim's birthday money paid for that (he didn't feel bad about it since it allowed him to see something he has dreamed of) and the trip was not taken without much discussion, crying, arguing, and pouring over the bank statement first. We also ate lunch, dinner, and lunch the next day off dollar menus at fast food restaurants.
God has been throwing one lesson after another at us. First, it was to show us how stupid we have been with our finances. We have been so cocky walking around with our "We have no debt" mindset that we weren't putting aside extra money into savings. We were eating out quite a bit, buying things for Noah, buying the little things here and there for ourselves that don't cost much separately and then you add everything together and it's more than you think. We sat down with our October bank statement (since that was a really good month financially and job-related for Tim and we wondered where it all went) and threw every purchase into a category. It was embarassing, absolutely embarassing. Had we actually stuck to the budget we had made months ago, we could have put a large amount into our savings and had Step 1 for Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover ($1000 in Emergency Fund) completed. It would have been a huge help for us in this month...but we didn't do that. We now kick ourselves, yet we're keeping our categorized October sheet and have it where we can see it so that we don't make the same mistake again. God has taught us the importance of good stewardship - a hard lesson to learn when you think you already know it. Ouch.
The second lesson is more of a reminder, that God never leaves you and will provide for your needs. It's rarely in the way I think He should handle it (just send me some random checks in the mail and I can pay the bills. Has anyone else ever prayed for that long-lost distant relative to die of natural age after a happy life and miraculously have known about you and leaves you their inheritance? Or is that just my overactive imagination?) More often it is in a way that humbles us. For instance, our current situation is that since Tim is self-employed and we have the pleasure of living in a state with a down-spiral economy for his line of business, we can't afford good insurance like what most people have through employers. Instead, we have a Health Savings Account, which I think is great and I have no complaints about it, yet it doesn't cover maternity. It also costs much more to have a baby than what the rep had told us to expect. We were expecting to put aside at least $8,000 and that's only for a no-complications birth with no anesthesia. We had no idea how we would afford this. Enter God. We now qualify for Michigan's Healthy Kids program, which is a form of Medicaid. Our stress of finding money to pay for our son or daughter is now not in our lives anymore. I also automatically qualify for WIC since I'm on Healthy Kids, and since I qualify and Noah is under the age of 5, he automatically qualifies as well. That will be a help with the groceries that we have been scrimping on lately. Yes, we're eating. We're just eating creatively as we like to call it (don't worry, everything is edible and a food.)
I think that a huge lesson Tim and I have learned from being on Healthy Kids and WIC (we had to do this when I was pregnant with Noah because I was laid off during my pregnancy so we lost our insurance and Tim's job didn't provide it) is that you can't judge people on Medicaid, Food Stamps, or Wic. More often than not, and I use to think this myself, most people assume that those using these services are lazy or women who get knocked up constantly to get support from the government or not trying in life. I would say we break that stereotype. We're definitely not lazy, I don't want to spend anymore time after this pregnancy knocked up, and we are trying. It's embarassing to answer a question on a WIC form that says "How many grades of school have you completed?" and answer "College graduate with bachelor's degree" and yet I need help.
Help. What a word. That's another thing we've learned. Tim and I are prideful. We needed to fall on our butts. We have a hard time asking for help when it comes to finances. We don't want to. We don't want to admit that we don't have everything together. We can ask for help moving, we can ask for help with needing a baby-sitter to watch Noah, we can ask for help as long as it doesn't require money. We were hiding our problems from our parents until my mom recently started to put together the fact that Tim was always home during the day when she would call and when I told her we hadn't started Christmas shopping yet. You don't want to admit that you're in your mid to late twenties with a child and another on the way and you don't know how you're going to pay for gas or groceries that week. She told me that if in two weeks we don't have money for Noah's Christmas gifts, than she is giving us money for them rather than supporting the angel tree family she usually does. She said that she knows the angel tree family and, although they do never seem to have money at Christmas, she has seen them buying cigarettes and alcohol throughout the rest of the year. Now there's something that will humble you: when your own mother pretty much "adopts" you as her needy family for Christmas.
That's when you realize you have become the person you stereotyped and your judgment about them was wrong. I'm not saying that nobody ever takes advantage of "the system," but we jump to conclusions too often without knowing the circumstances. You don't want to be the name on the tree that someone picks off, you don't want to be the woman with the toddler in line at the WIC office, you don't want to show your MIHealth card when you visit the doctor. Yet this is where God has us right now. This is the way He is providing right now...and He is providing.
I love the support system God has revealed. A girlfriend of mine and her husband have been in a similar situation so I feel I can be completely honest with her and she gets me. She knows. My mom told me that for a time early in their marriage they were in the same spot and eating a lot of ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese. We were having a great conversation with Tim's parents while visiting and Tim asked what their roughest time financially ever was. They said there was a time period in which they were eating lots of oatmeal and praying that there would somehow be enough money to pay bills. A counselor friend of mine said that her mom recently revealed to her that when my friend was young, they would hold garage sales just to have money to buy groceries that week. Her mom also started sewing their own clothes. My grandma told my mom that the reason she worries so much about us is that she and my grandpa were in the same spot years ago before my mom was born. Sometimes my grandpa was only making $1 a week and they had 2 kids at the time. What I love is looking at where these people are at now. I love the strength they all show, the careful way they handle their finances because they know that at any point something could happen. I love that they truly can empathize with you because they have experienced it as well.
God is not providing with money I can hold in my hand at the moment, but he is preventing certain bills from reaching our mailbox. He is providing relief when it comes to groceries. He is providing open lines of communication between Tim and me because we have to constantly discuss these things to make sure we are always on the same page. He is drawing us closer to each other and closer to Him. Tim said the other night, "This is an adventure, not one we pictured, but I still want to travel it with you. At the end of it, I want us to stand together to see how God brings us out so we can look back and praise Him for it as well as during it."
In conclusion, I think that God lets you fall on your bottom when you have some lessons to learn. Yet He doesn't leave you there. If you're at the bottom, the only good view is up and the only place to go is up. First we have to get on our knees and spend some time there. Then He will take our hands and help us climb.