Joy and Counting Blessings

It’s funny how when I am in the thick of the day I almost forget the new journey we are on as a family. Not just the fact that we are having another baby, but Steve pursuing the ministry and me doing SHP full time. Yes, I’m toting around an extra ten pounds in baby weight and up to my eyeballs in editing and reorganizing the house (hello, nesting!), but when I am at full speed throughout the day I don’t usually stop to count my blessings. It’s only when I am present with my family and I can focus on just the four of us that I have passing moments of feeling complete joy. This is huge for me because in many ways I once lived in a state of depression where my days consisted of wanting what other people had or leap frogging over moments of happiness to get stuck in a mucky swamp of “What ifs” and “Why can’t we have….” This feeling of complete joy that pops up in the few quiet moments of my chaotic and disorganized life is something I want to hold onto. This feeling of being content in the messy middle of the day-to-day struggles is something I want to remember deep in the crevasses of my heart. These waves of peaceful moments at the end of a stressful day are moments I want to savor for the rest of my life. The Lord has given us obvious blessings in this stage of our life right now and I would have to be completely out of my mind to not see it as His blessings. But still, the old Stacy would have been stressed out and stuck in a pity party and wanting the green grass on the other side. So today I am celebrating because those feelings have been replaced with “this is what it’s all about” kind of feelings. Be joyful. That is my phrase of the year. I don’t have to wonder what changed it for me though. In the past couple years I have dug deep into God’s word and dug deep into His will for my life. I have made decisions with Steve that have been true acts of faith and I have done so with complete trust in the Lord. Steve and I have made sacrifices – some little and some big, but in these passing moments I have had lately, I can see the reason why I feel complete, content, and at peace, is solely because we are closer to Him.

Here is a small (and silly) example of today’s joy and God’s blessing.

 Side note: I feel like anything dealing with finances is such a private issue so this was hard for me to write, but I wanted to share a very worldly example of God carrying us through this time and even blessing us on this journey as we draw closer to Him.

Steve and I have been dreaming of a vacation together. We never went on a honeymoon and haven’t been on a vacation with just the two of us in the seven years we have been married. Last year before Steve decided to start pursuing the ministry, we started saving up for a honeymoon in hopes that in a couple years we could experience a week of just reconnecting with each other. We don’t have credit cards and we have never gone into debt for our extras so we knew it would take a few years to save for the vacation we had been dreaming of. But after our financial situation changed drastically last May we decided to put all the money that we were saving for the honeymoon towards an already planned trip to Disneyland in California to visit his family who we haven’t seen in a few years. This was still a huge financial stress for us. We have been praying about it over the last couple months to figure out how we were going to fund this. We knew canceling was not an option because we feel it is incredibly important for our children to be connected to their California family and we miss them dearly. Facetime is simply not enough. We have been paying chunks of the vacation off bits at a time. First the hotel, then the Disney tickets and then the $2100 (!!!) in airline tickets we would have to pay for the four of us to get out there. Lastly, Steve has been rolling the coins from our coin jar the past couple of nights to turn in for cash so that on our trip we can have spending money for the kids and for food. Since we are taking them to Disney for the first time we really want to make this a great experience for them. When he left today to run out to the bank with the kids and I had a few quiet moments to myself, I felt the same feeling of complete joy and God’s blessing. On top of saving up for this trip for over a year and sacrificing our honeymoon funds, God has blessed us with a full photography schedule and friends and family who have provided for this trip. We had friends donate airplane mileage to us to reduce our ticket rates to $1800 instead of $2100. Our in-laws sent money to help pay for the plane tickets and we have had one couple who just decide to bless us with cash for spending while we are out there. Because of our saving and these blessings we are going on what would be around a $4000 trip debt free!!! Dave Ramsey would be proud. I can’t wait to make memories for the kids and for us. It’s almost better than a honeymoon….Well, sort of ;-)

It doesn’t go unnoticed that this was God’s doing. While I am not one to believe that if you become a Christian then God just blesses your socks off, I do believe He is so much bigger than us and in control of our lives. This is much more than being able to go on a family vacation now. It’s about feeling God’s love for us in a time when we could be stressed out of our minds. Today we gave each other a “Wahoo!” over text message when Steve turned in the rolled coins and considered our trip completely paid for. I’m going to hold onto this joyful memory for many years to come and go to bed counting my blessings.

XO!

Stacy