Unreal happenings in midwestern suburbia

So like I said before...I have an amazing little girl. And I always prayed that there would be a special song that God would give me to sing to her throughout life that would calm her down and be a source of comfort...a song that oozed love and that "everything will be okay" feel no matter what was going on. It just so happens, her song is an old hymn entitled, "Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus." For months, I have wondered what God might have been saying about her life. I've wondered what this song might mean for her... What is her life going to look like? What hard times will she face? How will this song impact her life? You see, this song is about trusting Jesus at His word. It's about a completely other way of life - it's about trusting when everything within you wants to live in a padded room where bouncing off the walls because of the difficult nature of your circumstances is acceptable. It's about laying aside questioning and trying to figure it all out and just resting in the fact that God WILL take care of you. And for months now I've prayed that this will be the kind of life she'll live...the kind of life that will define our family.
Too bad God decided to take me up on that prayer. (ah - the joys of life with God)
These past few months have been difficult to say the least. We've struggled to make ends meet because the cost of living up here is so high and let's just say ministry doesn't always pay the big bucks. A couple of months ago, we hit bottom financially. Long story short, Ted's car died in a cemetery (I'll explain all this another time), Hannah had taken it upon herself to get so sick that she eliminated any hope she ever had of a college fund, and we were faced with a lot of pretty papers called bills on our kitchen table that demanded we give money and no funds in the bank to pay them.
We prayed. Or something like that. We joked. We joked about how it seemed like the people who were running after money and all that stuff were smarter than us who were trying to follow God. We prayed asking God to help us, but really wondering if He could...or if He would. We tried to believe He would take care of us, but that pretty pile of bills seemed insurmountable.
Yeah...insurmountable?
My husband went to what he calls his "old man Bible study" three days later. (The guys in the Bible study are not that old...) Afterwards, one of the guys pulled him aside and told him that he had received a bonus at work. He explained that he felt like God wanted him to share part of it with us. At that point, he pulled out his checkbook and handed Ted a check for $2000.
We couldn't believe it. This meant we could actually pay our bills. We were blown away by his generosity - I mean, this guy has two kids in college and yet, he gave us this money. God came through for us when it seemed impossible.
Too bad God wasn't done answering my prayer.
This past month, we had to refinance our mortgage. Again, even though we've been budgeting pretty wisely, we didn't know how we would be able to afford the new payment. I mean - we try to save and yet with our paychecks we have nothing left over at the end of every month. That said, we found ourselves in the same predicament again. How on earth could we still live in this area? How could we afford to live here?
And then we got a phone call. A guy from our church said he had something for us he wanted to drop by. He came over and handed us a thick envelope. He said he was told to deliver this to us. When we opened it we found $2000 in cash inside the envelope. Ted fell down on his knees. I'm pretty sure neither of us had every seen that much cash in our entire lives. And again, we had enough to go ahead and refinance and be able to keep our townhouse, even though this time, we didn't even know who had helped us.
You'd think that we were set now, right? Yeah...not so much.
Our daughter has had chronic ear infections. For the past three months she has been sick and has been in a ton of pain. And now she has to have surgery. And because of the joys of insurance and a new year we are going to have to pay for her surgery out of our own pockets. (Ministry insurance isn't always the best either) Couple this with the fact that Ted's car died AGAIN and not only do we need to pay for it to be fixed...we also technically, need another car. (Which we've been praying for months about) And again, we're sitting here wondering how we can make it.
Well, last night, I started to sing Hannah's hymn and I nearly burst into tears. I realized, especially in light of the past few months, it really is sweet to trust in Jesus - even though it's hard. But then I got to the chorus - "How I've proved Him o'er and o'er" and something amazing happened - for the first time in her little life - Hannah started singing along. Granted, she wasn't exactly wordalicious with the whole deal, but she started singing beautifully and happily as only a little 2 year old can. And I realize that this is our family's song. And somehow God has communicated to my daughter that our family will be brought through all of this. That we will sing His praises forever - because it really is so sweet to trust in Jesus...just to take Him at His word, just to rest upon His promise and to know thus saith the Lord...Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I've proved Him o'er and o'er...Jesus, Jesus, Precious Jesus...O for grace to trust Him more.
And so far, He's giving us that grace...

Thanks for listening/reading...