loaves & fishes

I love those stories about people who put their trust in God and are rewarded beyond their imagination.  Listening to Dave Ramsey's radio show at my desk at work for a couple of years, I'd hear those kinds of stories once in a while: people who had either decided to give to others even though they were in need themselves, or people who were really trying to live the debt-free life, or people on whom Murphy played dirty little tricks..... and these people often told how they received an anonymous gift, or a bonus, or found money in last year's coat pocket -- you know the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Our experiences were never that dramatic, but during our most intense debt snowball periods, I often found that, after the bills and debts and monthly expenses were paid, there was somehow way more money left over to throw at a debt than I had expected.  I would check my spreadsheet and double check it... and still didn't understand how we could have $xxx in surplus.  I finally stopped asking questions and learned to consider it a testimony to the fact that we were within His will, even when our friends thought we were a little bit over-the-top.

Fast-forward 6-8 months.  We've long since pushed pause on our snowball to save up for a move and a job change.  We've just moved back to Missouri and are going through the super-fun process of changing everything: phone numbers, forwarding address, auto bill pay, utilities... and the headache goes on and on.  Included in that are, of course, our financial institutions.  We moved from a national bank to a local credit union.  We migrated our savings to a high-interest checking account.  Money got shifted all over the place, and I knew that I hadn't finished balancing our savings account, but it really wasn't all that important since the number at the bottom of my balance spreadsheet was always smaller than the number actually in the account.

Now, lest you think I am super-lazy, please allow me to explain: we keep a lot of different funds in that high-interest checking account.  We actually consider it a savings account because it houses our emergency fund and our Lump Sum Payments, but it also contains our gas fund (making it easy to meet the minimum number of debit card transactions required to qualify for high interest), our tax savings (as 1099 contractors, we have to pay quarterly), and other smaller savings funds (e.g., medical and car maintenance).  It's not a complex spreadsheet, but it's not super-simple, either.

So fast-forward another 18 months.  After we paid off the car, I decided I really should figure out what was going on in that account.  I set aside some time to go through all the lines and properly allocate some money.

And I found $1700.  WHAT?!

Without a doubt, the Lord has taken care of us over the past months.  This was just one more reminder that He can take our tiny victories and multiply them beyond what we dare to dream.

I don't know what surprises He holds for us on our journey to financial freedom -- but I can't wait to find out!