Enlisting the Power of Prayer

I'm going to enlist the power of a praying blog world.


We've been pretty quiet about it, but now that it's real and set in motion, I feel like I can let it out there.  I was afraid before that I would jinx any possibility of a different outcome by mentioning it, but I think that's not going to be the case.


A few weeks ago, Josh was informed that he will be transitioned from an hourly employee to a salaried one.  While this has it's benefits, Josh was able to work a significant amount of overtime as an hourly employee.  Being salaried, we will no longer be able to get that extra income.  As you can imagine, the last few weeks have been scary in our house.  And tense.  And things being said that weren't meant, or perceived in ways not intended.


Yesterday was a particularly bad day.  I said some things that made Josh feel, well, small.  It was not my intention at all to do that.  I would never purposely condescend my husband.  But I did.  And I couldn't figure out why I kept saying things that made him hurt so much.  


I talked with my mom some last night and went to bed in a prayerful state.  Grateful for my mom's ears and knowing that she, too, would be praying for us.  This morning she asked how I was doing.  This was my response.
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I dunno.

We’re both scared.  Trying to prepare without controlling the situation.  It’s hard.

We talked a bit this morning and acknowledged that our tension is a result of being scared and unsure of what is going to happen.  Acknowledged that we aren’t trying to fight with each other, but we are both processing this differently and those ways are conflicting with each other.  I admitted that while this was HIS paycheck and HIS job and HIS situation, it’s both of our battle, but I’m not handling it well.  I am having a hard time sitting back and watch it happen and not be able to do anything about it.  Even if he could negotiate or get this policy overturned or whatever, it has to be HIM that does it, not me.  And that’s why I think we are struggling.  I want to do something, but can’t.  So I’m talking as if I’m giving marching orders to him and yet he feels stuck and can’t do anything about it.  I need to back off.

I read Titus 2 last night.  I don’t think it really was saying what I learned from it, or what God was showing me. 

Urge bondslaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative,

10  not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.

The piece about being subject to masters.  This applies to work … being subject to what the boss or whomever says.  I may not agree with the non-existent policy that HR is trying to enforce, but she’s getting away with enforcing it and I think to respect Josh’s boss and HR, we need to just suck it up and deal with it.

Then chapter 3 goes on to say:

1 Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good,

2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men. 

Kind of drives the point home.

As much as I don’t like the situation we are in, ultimately we are in this situation because we allowed ourselves to get comfortable with his overtime pay.  And while he wasn’t cheating the system like HR is (in not so many words) accusing him of doing, we did get too used to having the overtime and now need to learn to live without it.  We need to really truly trust God for our finances.  Not sure what that looks like yet.  But it’s scary.  Just by the numbers, we don’t have enough to pay all of our bills.  And there isn’t a whole lot of room to trim back.  So it’ll be interesting to see how God works, if we can truly trust him and not control the situation.

Now this doesn’t mean we continue the way we’ve been living and wait for the magic check to appear in the mailbox every month.  We still need to do our part … trim the groceries, watch our utility usage, etc.  But we can’t sit and try to manipulate the numbers every month and decide to not pay bills or LOOK for magic checks.

You said that we were under attack.  While that may be, it could also be that we’re being taught something.  That we are being stretched and such.  That God is going to grow our character.  God is allowing this to happen, whether it’s an attack of the enemy or self-induced or whatever, God is letting this happen to us and we will come out OK.  We will learn something.  We will grow.  But boy the ride is going to suck.

I guess I should remember the words of James: “Consider it all joy when you encounter trials.”  This is going to be a trial.  This will be the worst financial situation I’ve found myself in.

But when I look at the BIG picture, I realize that this isn’t the worst it could be.  We don’t have a child with brain cancer.  We haven’t lost a loved one.  We both still have jobs.  We are both healthy.  We have a roof over our heads. 

God is bigger than this.
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So I ask YOU, my blogworld friends, my praying friends, my non-praying friends, pray for us.  Pray that we will see God.  Pray that we will learn from this.  Pray that we will continue to seek God around every turn.  That we will not try to control the situation.


And if you are so inclined, pray for that magic check to appear.  Because that's never out of the realm of God's work.  ;)