I mentioned before in my post Faith Over Fear: 10 Ways to be a Stay at Home Mom that if you’re in God’s will, He’ll take care of you. Trusting that God will take care of you is easier said than done. I used to constantly check our bank account and would have little anxiety attacks if I didn’t think we would have enough money to cover our bills. I remember thinking that we had reached the point where we would no longer be able to pay our bills and I had no idea what we were going to do. And you know what? Every single month we had enough. Even when I had little faith, God provided. We would get unexpected checks in the mail or something wouldn’t cost as much as we expected it to. God always provided. And that was when I worked part-time. You can imagine how worried I was when I thought about not bringing in an income at all. When I was in the very beginning of my second trimester, I left my part-time job to work full time. It was great! I had gone from an hour work commute to 15 minutes, doubled my income, and worked in an office that was excited about my pregnancy! All I could think was that God’s timing was perfect and that I had gotten a job that helped me provide for my growing family at the perfect time. As the months went by, we started discussing the possibility of me staying home more and more. We had plenty of money with me working and I was worried that if I quit, we wouldn’t have the money to cover our bills. We had experienced God providing for us before and decided to take a leap of faith that He would do it again. I cannot begin to describe how much better life is when you let go and let God work. There is such a feeling of freedom when you surrender!
My last day of work was two days before I was induced with Wylder. I was nervous because this meant that we were losing a good bit of our income. I knew that if we followed God’s plan for our life, we would be fine, but that didn’t make the coming months easy necessarily. We had one last paycheck for me after Wylder was born and then soon everything would be dependent on my husband’s income. We had our usual bills come in, but then the hospital and doctor bills started rolling in. I started to worry about our finances and thought surely I would have to return to work for us to stay afloat. I never told my husband this, but for a while there when these thoughts crept into my mind, I would cry every time I looked at my son. All I could think when I looked at him was that my time being home with him was about to end. But you know what? It didn’t. It has been 6 months since I last went to a 9 to 5 job and we are still surviving. Every month we are able to pay our rent, utilities, and other bills and we have never gone hungry. Someone did our budget on paper and we are supposed to be at least $800 short every month, but we never are. God always provides.
During my time of doubt, I had started a new devotion reading plan on my Bible app which God used to reassure me of his provision. On January 1, my devotion included this verse from Matthew 6:31 NIV, “Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” This verse really spoke to me because I had been worrying about our finances and how we were going to survive. I decided to delve deeper and read more from Matthew 6. I highly recommend that you read Matthew 6:25-34 for encouragement. While reading these verses one has stuck out to me and helped me whenever I may start to worry again:
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” – Matthew 6:26 NIV
How encouraging it is to know that I am more important than the birds that God provided for so He will certainly provide for me! Any time I start to worry, I just think, “I am more important than the birds.” Having this mind set isn’t always easy, but it is so freeing! I no longer daily check our bank account or stress about how bills are going to be paid. This does not mean that I blindly write checks or pay bills, but I trust that God will provide what we need when we need it.
If you are in need of some encouragement, spend time with the Father and read His word. If you don’t know where to start, Matthew 6 is a good place. Just remember that you are more important than the birds and God knows what you need!
