The Gift of the Lesser Pains

 

Over the years when sharing painful situations I’ve had people make comments like: “I don’t know how you do it,” “You are so strong,” “God must have known I could never handle xyz,” and many other such comments. I always find it a little awkward to hear things like that. Any resiliency or strength that I posses is not because I’m awesome; it is because of God’s mercy and faithfulness. I am not anything special. The only tangible thing I have is smaller painful experiences. I was talking to my sister today and was reminded of how so many smaller inconveniences, frustrations, and pains have contributed to the faith and hope that I now possess. God has proven Himself faithful over and over again in the “little” hardships of life. Through the years of trials my faith has grown little by little. As odd as it may seem, I can now see that so many of those lesser pains were beautiful gifts from the Lord. Without them I’m not sure I would have been able to handle the more painful things that were to come.

Something that many of my newer friends probably don’t know is that my husband didn’t have a full time job for the first seven years of our marriage. When we first got married he was a contractor for the Navy and worked two days a week. The pay was good enough that he didn’t need to be full time for us to live comfortably. It wasn’t a lot compared to most of our friends and family, but it was plenty for the two of us. Two years after our wedding, a week before our first child was born, his boss told him he was letting him go in a short while (I believe it was a couple of weeks or a month notice). My husband asked if he could have his hours cut instead of being laid off. His boss agreed and we were “safe” for a while. With less hours he made just enough for us to pay our bills. About a year and a half later things with his job seemed to be getting rocky again. The instability was a bit nerve wracking, but we were confident that the Lord would provide another job before things got worse. Luke started revamping his resume and looking for a full time job.

 A little less than six months later, his boss told him that his hours would be cut again. That cut would not be sustainable for our family. With an almost two year old and a three month old we were cutting every expense we could and trying to figure out how we were going to make ends meet. By God’s amazing grace we never missed a bill, but we could not buy groceries for three months. We lived off of our pantry and freezer until he was able to get another part time job.

I’m not sure if you caught this a couple paragraphs ago, but we were confident that God would provide a job in time. This series of experiences started a pretty big shift in the way that I thought about God’s plan and my expectations. I thought that the loving, caring thing for God to do would be to provide a job so that we could buy the things we needed.  I mean Matthew 6:25 -???says: Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” That verse clearly says that God is going to provide a job, right?!? Until then I never considered the fact that the verse never says how God will provide; it simply says that He will. I expected His provision to look like a job, but that is not how God chose to provide…at least not right away.

I need more than a single blog post to share all of the “mini” miracles that God used to provide for us for the next several years. Money continued to be really tight for a lot of years…and by a lot of years I mean up until maybe a year ago. We still need to be strategic with our finances, but we are the closest to financial freedom than we have ever been! I will end this post with the story I shared with my sister today. It was toward the end of the three months of not buying groceries. We didn’t have anything with protein left in our house. I was standing in my kitchen looking in our fridge and cabinets to see what I could make. I found a package of noodles and something else that I can’t remember. I just remember that it was going to be a weird combination and was not going to be very filling. I stood in front of my stove feeling sad that that all I could cook for my husband was this weird meatless meal. After a few minutes of feeling sad, I started to make peace with where were in life and thanked God that we would not be hungry that night. It wasn’t going to be a great meal, but we were fed for another night. Thirty minutes later as I was back in the kitchen about to start cooking, my friend sent me a text that said something like: “Hey! I know it is last minute, but do you guys want to come over for dinner?” I immediately burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it! When we got there I was even more blown away. For dinner she had made several pans full of pesto chicken! I want to say she also had broccoli, but the main part of the meal was the thing I was so sad that I couldn’t provide. I still tear up thinking of how amazing that blessing was. God didn’t have to put us on my friend’s mind that night, but I believe He most certainly did. He used a friend who had no clue how hard things were to alleviate a hard moment. It is moments like that that have taught me not to sell God short. He is way more creative in His provision than I could ever imagine and He is more faithful than I could ever imagine.