Jehovah Jireh

"Give us today our daily bread." Matthew 6:11

The truth that the Lord will provide for me is probably the one truth my heart has the hardest time believing in. When circumstances arise in my life where I think I won't have what I need, my heart goes immediately into panic and manipulation mode. And it's taken me to evil places in the past.

Thankfully, the Lord is gracious and wants me to have a solid faith in his provision and so he keep pushing that tender place in my heart. Here's the most recent example of that.

Last Friday I took our car into Breaks Plus for an check-up and oil change because we got a coupon in the mail for $25. They first came out to tell me that the breaks were almost at a critical point, that they needed to be changed and that it would cost about $500. I called Eddie and he said that he could take care of the breaks and to just have them do the oil change. And so that's what they did. But then as they were ready to pull the car out of the garage and give it back to me, it wouldn't start and "made a clanking noise" according to the mechanic.

Long story short, after being there for 3.5 hours they determine that the timing chain probably broke and that it was going to be about $600 to fix. After calling Eddie (in tears) he told me to leave the car there for the night and that he would deal with it tomorrow. Eddie and several others were quite suspicious that our car just up and broke while at the mechanic and so he wanted to go in and get the story from them directly.

So on Saturday, Eddie and I went back to Breaks Plus and ended up having the most weird conversation with a guy that worked there who is also a youth pastor at a local church. He was clearly very excited about the Lord and even wanted him and his girlfriend to hang out with us sometime. So though we walked suspicious in ready take our car somewhere else, we left in faith trusting that this guy was genuine and really wanted to take care of us like he said he did.

And the Lord is faithful and does provide. It turns out that they weren't trying to pull a fast one over on us. There really was a problem with our timing chain and it's the Lord's good plan that it broke there. If we had been driving the car while it broke, it could have done serious damage to our engine and we might have been in an accident. Our car was fixed by Monday and they even gave us a huge discount. We are very thankful for our new friend Kevin who was a tool for God's provision in our lives. Our car runs great and is even more safe now than it was before.

Thank you, Jesus, for taking care of us. And thank you for refining my faith.

Officially an Arizonan

So, I think I can officially call us "Arizonans" now that we have an apartment and are completely unpacked. To check out our new apartment you can watch the video tour here. Yeah, it's pretty great.

The whole moving process was crazy. We finally got our proof of income from Eddie's employer on Thursday, Jan 20th (read about that story here) and we took it straight to the apartment complex. We got our application completed and were told that we could have our apartment by Saturday the 22nd. So that Thursday night at midnight we caught a Greyhound bus from Phoenix to Albuquerque. We arrived in NM at about 10am, had breakfast with Eddie's mom, picked up our truck and made it to Eddie's parents house around 1pm. We rested up for a little while and then loaded our truck. Eddie's mom graciously made us dinner, we spent the night and took off about 8am on Saturday morning. We arrived back in Mesa around 3pm, signed our lease and unloaded our truck with the help of the Pullen's and Gaudy's and spent the next three days unpacking.

So it was a whirlwind of a weekend but I am so thankful that the Lord worked it all out. He has been beyond gracious to us. We have received financial gifts from friends to help us get settled down here. We have been blessed by the Lord answering the prayers of our friends and family for protection and provision for us. And we have been hugely blessed to lock arms with a solid group of men and women down here who love Jesus Christ and yearn for him to be glorified in this city. And though I miss everyone back in Fort Collins I really believe that God has transitioned our hearts and made a home for us here in Arizona.

So Colorado, you were a great place to live and we were blessed to be Coloradoans. But our relationship with you must change and we can no longer be claimed or labeled by you. It's not you, it's us. We've been called elsewhere. Our memories of our time with you will always be with us, but we are out to make new memories. We are now Arizonans.

The Apartment Dilemma

God has been really good to us. Eddie and I both got jobs within 2 weeks of being here. (Eddie is working in the tech department at Mesa Community College.) We've also been so blessed to have the hospitality of the McGeehon family; I'm pretty sure that they would have us living here permanently if they could.

But my heart yearns for my own home. We have been "couch hopping" now for about 7 weeks and I am ready to have our own place with our own bed and our own stuff. I also really want to be able to use our place for inviting people over for meals and coffee, but I can't really do that when I am the invited guest. So although we have been truly blessed by the hospitality of our brothers and sisters in Christ, I am ready to get an apartment.

We didn't want to get an apartment before we got jobs here, since that seemed unwise, but within 48 hours of being here I had been hired at Paradise Bakery, so we started our apartment search. We looked at a couple different places and decided that we wanted to live in the same apartments as the Gaudy's (who had already signed a lease) and so we started the paperwork with The Montego Apartments. But most apartment complexes want proof of your income in order to approve you. After explaining our situation and showing a bank statement of how much we have in savings they said that we just needed income proof for one of us.

And so it began. Apparently Paradise uses a third party company to provide proof of employment and income, but because I haven't actually gotten paid yet I can get the proof we need from that company. So that has been a dead end. But thankfully Eddie was also hired and so we decided to get proof of his employment instead. And yesterday we were so close. Eddie went in and got a signed letter from his HR department and we took it over to the apartment. But we left the apartments dejected after being told that the information the apartment needed wasn't in the letter Eddie was given.

I was so disheartened. I had really thought that yesterday would be the day when we would finally be able to put in our application and hopefully have our apartment by this weekend. And I realized by the way that my heart was reacting to the situation that I needed to give this whole apartment thing up to the Lord. I wanted an apartment so badly that I was unwilling to trust in his timing for when we would actually get one. So after a little alone time with the Lord and some gospel preaching to my heart, I was able to repent of my lack of faith and put it back into my Saviors hands.

Today we plan on trying again. We'll drive back to Eddie's work and see if they can put the pertinent information into another letter for us. And by God's grace we'll be able to finally get the ball rolling on our apartment. But if it doesn't happened today, then I will praise the Lord that we are not homeless and that we have a place to stay as long as we need it. God has provided even if it isn't exactly the way I want him to.