Right now, life is pretty wonderful for a whole lot of different reasons. I have a brand new nephew and a niece on the way, Nathan is full-swing into seminary and loving it, and fall is creeping into my morning runs and my weekend trips to the farmers market. This season of life, as we wait to bring our little one home and settle into our 5th year of marriage, is oh so sweet.
One huge thing that has made me so grateful for where we are is our financial situation. I blogged about big job changes a few months ago, when I threw myself into photography and Nathan stepped back from a demanding and very stressful job for a new career that has given him so much more peace. We came to those conclusions separately and firmly, not knowing how much it would affect our finances.
At that point, our house had been on the market a few months and we were hopeful we would sell. When our job situations changed, we realized we needed the house to be sold, but had full confidence this would happen. Then came the summer, with dozens of showings and no offers and at the end of the summer, we took our house off the market.
We weren't naive to the financial changes coming when we made decisions in the spring, so we did sit down and do some serious budgeting in light of everything coming. What we concluded brought us concern: until we sold our house, we would be losing money every month. We do have savings, thankfully, but we knew this wouldn't be sustainable for too long.
Here's where things get crazy - because remember at the beginning of the blog post, when I said how great everything was financially? Well...I meant that. Somehow, every month we have inexplicably ended in the black, meaning we are not losing money like we just knew we would. The day Nathan started working there was a change in the insurance that helped us a lot, which we knew was no accident. And every week and month since then, we have had no worries about paying the bills.
In short, the numbers don't add up. Of course we have cut back in a lot of areas, but I can still grab a cup of coffee when I need to with no worries. We can still enjoy a dinner out on occasion and not stress about it. We are no less happy than we were when we both had much higher paychecks - in fact, our stress levels have plummeted dramatically since we both made the leap.
What I'm saying is this - God is providing for us. We should be barely scraping by, but we aren't. We should be worried about the money we need for our adoption, but that thought doesn't dwell on our minds. The numbers don't add up - and for that, I am ever so grateful.
