However, this challenge was different for our family. Just six weeks before this challenge Ray ended his partnership with Schultz Construction, and therefore no more regular paychecks. The same week as the challenge I ended my time at Schultz Construction. Through this lesson series I was thinking, “how do you tithe, when you have no income?” “what if someone is keeping track on a list a notices our checks have stopped?”. So each week I just listened; when I felt led to write a check, I did. When we had money in our account I wrote a check. When there wasn’t, I didn’t. And I trusted God would take care of us in the same manner as He had in the past.
And He did. As I look back on the past six months of atypical tithing I see His timing over and over. My wonderfully frugal husband’s leadership set us up for living six months without a paycheck. This allowed us to flat-out buy the truck he needed. Ray’s parents loaned us money to buy a trailer. My substitute teaching jobs usually covered our monthly grocery bill. Our federal tax refund came back at very un-government-like speed. When I was preparing to end our monthly support of the Croatia church, and cancel dentist appointments because of no insurance, my parents gave us money as a gift, because they had helped my brother in the same way 7 years ago. My sister-in-law paid me ahead of time for taking care of her girls in June. We made the hard decision to sell our 40 acres to eliminate debt – it sold in 36 hours. One construction client paid us an extra $50 for “fuel cost”. My mom arrived at our house one Saturday with groceries – gluten free food (which is extra expensive), paper products (because she knew I was stressed out about feeding our Friday night bible study), laundry detergent, etc. And, in a couple instances I “found” money I forgot we had. Over and over God slipped these blessings into our lives.
Today, six months after that Sunday, the light seems to have appeared at the end of the tunnel – and right now we think it’s growing. We continue to see God supplying us with jobs. Those three years of a near six-figure combined income sure was nice, but today I’m thankful for the nature of Ray’s job. While we have several jobs lined up in the near future, there is no guarantee beyond. We have to fully trust God will give us what we need. If we had a typical regular paycheck I think I would easily become complacent with His care for us. This way, I have to rely on Him because there is no other choice.
So whether you were the ones physically helping us, the ones challenging us to tithe, the ones who have repeatedly encouraged us through the job transitions, the ones praying for our family….we are grateful beyond what we can express.
