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During my blogging hiatus, several of my Frugal Family posts will be covered by sweet friends. Don’t forget to click over to my link partner, Kelli’s, blog for more Frugal Family goodness — Homeschooling Adventurez.
Today, please welcome Lisa!
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We have lived as SILKS (Single Income, Lots of Kids) in a DINK (double income not many kids) world for many years. Being a stay at home, homeschooling Mom has been a sacrifice we’ve been willing to make for many reasons. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and learning how to live frugally. There are tons of tips and helps and learning to be done about creating a life of abundance, while living frugally and I wanted to highlight one of the most important; Waiting and Watching as God Provides.
God has provided for us in weird and wonderful ways for decades. I wanted to share just a few of the more dramatic stories, out of dozens, that I could share.
When we were in graduate school in the early 90’s we were gifted a Ford LTD. It had been my husband’s grandmother’s car, a literal “little old ladies car.”. We drove it for about 5 years, and its age, and the wear and tear of daily family use and several cross-country road trips were taking its toll. Not only was it a gas hog, but the 20 year old carpet was beginning to rip, the A.C. had long since died (we were now living in N.M. on military assignment) and the heat didn’t always turn off. This was not only uncomfortable, but dangerous! At this point we lived in military officer’s housing, and our fighter-pilot neighbors were driving new vans, Volvo’s and BMW’s. We were driving a huge GM beater that was 20 years old!
As I was duct taping the carpet to the metal floor one week-end I was literally begging God to give us a nicer car! We’d already gone through years of financial drought in grad school and here we were again, literally taping our car together! That very week-end we happened to see a suburban for sale in a drive-way. We called and the price was almost too good to be true. The exterior and inside were like new and we could actually afford it! We’ve had that suburban for 15 years now, it is still running on its original (20 year old) engine; in fact I drove it with a trailer attached just this morning! (of course, it’s now our beater car, but still…)
Fast forward 5 years and the transmission had just gone out in the suburban- in fact it went out when dh was pulling someone to safety from a flash flood! We couldn’t afford to get the transmission fixed at that point, so we were just driving it, being always careful not to get stuck in a situation where we needed to go into reverse! A friend called and explained that they were trying to sell their van, it wasn’t selling and they wanted to gift us the van, despite the fact that they were still paying on it! We initially said, “Oh no, find another, more worthy (read, someone more desperate than us, right?), family. We’ll we prayed about it and God said, “Take the van!” Family was on their way to see us and could actually stop by our friend’s house (several states away), get the van and bring it out to us! Serendipity, right? The van was dropped off on Friday. On Monday morning we got a call from my Dad, saying that my Mom had passed away, again several states away (in a different direction). If we hadn’t gotten the van when we did, our family could not have gone to the funeral together, because our other car, if you remember, had a faulty transmission!
Fast forward 10 years. Our oldest daughter has been abroad several years on various mission ventures. She had decided that she was called to gypsy ministry. This did not make our hearts easy. The gypsy culture is rough-and-tumble at best, and she wanted to go as a young, unmarried woman, without the protection of a ministry agency. I prayed, asking God to either send her a husband, or send her to college. We are in a unique situation when it comes to college. On paper my husband makes great money, making us practically un-eligible for scholarships and grants. In real life, we don’t have much financial slush to contribute to anyone’s college careers. So this prayer was totally one of desperation.
She was planning on going back to Eastern Europe in September and that May we took part in a regional homeschooling conference. One of the big speakers was the founder of a by-state apologetics ministry that our family had brought to our state just a few years before. Because of involvement, this gentleman knew our family, and our kids personally. He asked our daughter what her plans were. He asked her why she wasn’t going to this particular college that specialized in missions. She said she’d visited but just didn’t have the money. Out of the blue he mentioned that he had been given 3 full ride scholarships to this college to give to students he knew personally and had already promised two of them, but wanted to give her the third. She graduated a year ago with a Bachelor’s Degree in Missions, fully paid for in a way that we could never have even imagined!
Lastly, I wanted to share the story of our house. We moved into a 4 x 4 farmhouse on 10 acres in the far north 10 years ago. We were wooed by its charm, despite the fact that it had been sorely neglected. For 6 years we cleaned fields, threw away 80 years of garbage, de-bugged and de-weeded, painted, and prayed over this property. Meanwhile, the house itself felt like it was literally falling apart at the seams. The windows leaked air and dust, the kitchen counters were 6” below standard height (I’m 5’9”- can you say constant back-ache?!,) there was no dishwasher, the laundry was in the dank and dingy basement (with 2 hanging bulbs in the whole 800 square feet of it!) and finally the furnace died. We were heating with wood in the far north, during long, cold, dark winters. It was back-breaking, constant and tedious work. Then, almost 4 years ago, we had a house fire that burned us out of our house for 10 months. Because of the insurance money, we were able to completely remodel the house. We’ve worked like never before, but this old house is completely new, inside and out, again in a way we could never ask or imagine.
I share all of this to testify to the fact that God provides. God sees His faithful and makes a path for them. If you are in a desperate situation (as we have been so very many times) I hope that our struggles and God’s response will encourage you. Nothing is too big for God. He is able to provide for us and our children, longs and loves to do so. Furthermore, he is a God of redemption and delights in redeeming seemingly impossible situations. As a frugal family, prayer has often been the means of our deliverance and provision.
If you need prayer for provision, please let me know and I will pray along side of you. I know that the prayers of a friend often strengthen our own faith.
Lisa and her husband of 28 years have homeschooled their 5 kids for over 20 years (3 grads so far!). They are opinionated, Bible believing, Hebraic studying, classical educating, crunchy types. The past 4 years has been an especially challenging time in their lives. Despite life circumstances, they are convinced that God wants us to truly believe that He is good, He loves us, He has good plans for us, and we are His precious children. Lisa blogs about “Crafting the Extraordinary from the Ordinary” at: http://goldengrasses.blogspot.com
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We are thrilled to have you join us and pray Frugal Family 2013 will be a blessing to your family!
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