why now?

I guess I need to start this with a little background. I have worked in the field of physical therapy and sport medicine for 12 years - all of them as staff, not management. About 6 weeks ago, my current boss came to me and proposed that I take on a new role in the clinic - that of clinical coordinator. I thought and prayed over it and in the end accepted the new role. It has not been a drastic change - just the addtiion of some new responsibilities regarding the function of the clinic, solving problems here and there, researching ways to keep getting reimbursed from insurance companies for what we do, etc. It also came with a nice raise. Not anything that is gonna make me jump too many tax brackets or anything but enough to make a nice little difference in the bottom line. More background.....as I eluded to in a previous post, my husband and I were convicted by God about the shameful state of our finances soon after marrying, and, to make a long story short, God showed mercy on us and allowed us, through hard work, sacrifice, and his amazing blessings, to pay off our huge credit card debt recently.
So.....Friday we were sitting at Applebee's having lunch and I brought up a question that had been nagging at me for a few days. "Why do you suppose that God chose NOW to give me a promotion and pay raise and didn't do it a couple years ago when our finances were a mess?" It seemed to me that we could have used the extra money back then more than now. He thought for a moment and replied, "Maybe it's just like it says in the Bible, ' Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?' (Luke 16:11). This was one of the verses we had memorized when we were going through Crown Financial Ministries classes and I was so impressed at his ability to recall it. That was EXACTLY it! Back a couple years ago, we hadn't shown to God that we could handle correctly any more than He was already giving us. In fact, we both had handled things pretty badly up to that point. I feel like this promotion and raise are a reward from God for committing to handling the incomes God blesses us with in a manner that is pleasing to Him. We continue to pursue Godly stewardship of His blessings and are thankful that God spared us the financial ruin that we deserved - a true exhibition of His mercy. The Bible says that when we have debt was are as slaves to our lenders and I can tell you from experience that is exactly what we felt - enslaved! The sense of freedom we feel now is a beautiful thing. We still have some things to work on but we know we are following the Greatest Financial Advisor of all - Jesus Christ.
God is so good and His timing is impeccable!

Kendra

when it rains it pours...

and pour it did! today we had a HUGE thunderstorm that dumped a ton of rain on our mid-michigan town. Our street flooded to the point where my husband and a friend had to push a neightbor from the street into her driveway. The rainstorm was quite a site to watch as it poured and poured and poured. The local new channel says that 4-5 1/2 inches fell in some areas around here! That's an amazing amount of water in less than an hour. We discovered a bit later, much to our dismay, that the storm drain had backed up and a couple of inches of water had collected in our basement. So....down we went with fans and mops and the shop vac to begin the clean-up. Thankfully, the storm drains caught up fairly quickly and the water started to recede. We successfully sucked up and mopped up all the standing water but will have to go back for some more intense cleaning after the fans dry things out a bit more. Ah the joys of home ownership!
Even when the drains back up and you are cleaning up "questionable" water from your basement, God is so so so good!

Kendra

the end of project week '08

Well, here we are. project week '08 is done, D-O-N-E done! My poor husband worked his butt off every day and completed an amazing list of projects. I was not on vacation so helped some in the evening and this weekend. Some of the great things he got done were: built shelves in the basement to house storage totes, took an old stove and water heater from the basement to the scrap yard, got my windshield repaired, took a cool old church pew to the basement to serve as seating on one side of the large table we have down there, touched up the paint in one of our bathrooms, repainted the trim in the kitchen, repainted the spare room (which was the office), repainted the new office (which was the spare room), cleaned and sorted four, yes I said four, closets, fixed a sleigh bed frame and put it up in the spare room, sorted through countless piles of stuff and reassembled what we determined to be keepable in the newly painted and organized rooms, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure I've missed some things but suffice to say the work has been long and hard and I am so thankful for my husband's willingness to use some of his vacation for maintaining and improving our home. Our favorite part of the week was redoing our new office from a deep purple room with no decorations and random contents to a grayish green color with lots of awesome fishing/hunting/cabinish decorations. This room will serve as my husband's home office but also a place for me to sew, scrapbook, etc. It's got a great little reading corner that we will both enjoy. My husband posted a few pictures on his blog - www.durgsworld.blogspot.com The result of all this is that we are thrilled with the progress and now have a huge amount of items sitting in our garage waiting for a garage sale that we plan to have in a few weeks. We had a garage sale about three years ago, after I moved all my belongings into this house, and we SWORE we would never do it again because it was so much work. But, never say never, because here we are getting ready to have another one. So, thanks honey for all the trips up and down the basement stairs, for tolerating my pickiness, and for continuing to make our house our home. I love you and am praying for relief of all your aches and pain that the week left behind.
God is so good for giving us this wonderful home.

Kendra

project week??

Much to my husband's dismay, project week 2008 is almost upon us. For the past several years, my husband, who has WAY more paid vacation than I, has taken a week off in the summer or fall and worked around the house. This year that week starts on Monday. The list is long as always and includes fun things like painting trim in the kitchen, painting our spare room and office, moving all the furniture since we are flip flopping the two rooms, building shelves in the basement to hold storage totes......did I fill up the week yet? Sounds like lots of trips to Menards, ACE hardware, and many sore muscles but he takes pride in our home and even though he won't admit it, he will be glad when the project list is smaller. Thankfully, he is also planning to take a day and go fishing up north with a buddy; somethings he loves to do but gets to do only infrequently. I love that he is willing to do this to make a dent in the improvement list we (and every homeowner) have for our home. Starting tonight we are going to do some prep for project week....things like taking stuff off the wall, patching nail holes, maybe moving some of the furniture. Better stock up on ibuprophen. Go get 'em honey!
God is good all the time - put that on the list!
kendra

the blitz is on.

This weekend our city held it's annual Fireworks Festival which includes three days of celebration down at the riverfront park. Many many people camp there, a carnival is in town, various music/bands perform, and there are fireworks displays each of the three nights with the biggest and best show on the third night. The show is quite a site to behold and traditionally the city draws tens of thousands of people for the show on the last night.
This year, our church has been challenging ourselves with a summer of outreach, activites intended to push out into the community as well as pull others into our church. This weekend it was time to push ourselves out into the fireworks festival crowd. Our mission: distribute over 1,000 bottles of ice cold, absolutely free, water. Each bottle was tagged with our church logo and information on our location and services. Yesterday afternoon, we descended on the park and spend two hours wandering through the park asking the question, "Could I interest you in an ice cold bottle of water absolutely free?" People typically started to decline but then stopped when they heard the phrase "absolutely free". Most people then accepted and were grateful for the drink in the 80+ degree weather. There was no sermon, no uncomfortable confrontations, just a group of people showing the love of Jesus in a very simple but relevent way. Overall it was very well received and we got lots of positive comments. One person that struck me was what looked like a single mom with five little kids. We gave them all water and she was so grateful and her kids were so cute and polite in thanking us. To some, saving the $10 it would have cost to buy those waters could have been a big help in affording a fun day together at the festival. We were exhausted when we were done from all the walking (had to have been miles!) but energized from taking part in this random act of kindness. It felt good to leave people wondering why a stranger would be so nice to them with nothing in return. Hopefully some people will take the card attached to each bottle of water and have the courage to visit with us some Sunday. You never know when a seed planted with something as simple as a bottle of cold water will start to grow - that is our prayer.
Praising God for His goodness in providing us with beautiful weather, sturdy legs, and a receptive crowed- Kendra