Thursday Afternoon on a Cold Spring Day

I've been railing against a cold all week. Not my cold--one the twins are sharing. They cough and hack at night and get up and sneeze and cough and hack--and then get on with the day. It's a kind of ordinary cold in that it doesn't have any fever and the kids feel otherwise fine, but with these two you have to watch these ordinary colds carefully or the next thing you know you're up half the night with nebulizer treatments, trying to decide at what point to call and beg for the steroids.

So we kept them home on Monday to try to improve our odds, and while that didn't make anything better, it didn't make anything worse. So we let them go to swim lessons (indoor therapy pool, heated to just shy of boiling, and then into the showers and use the hair dryer and clean underwear and everything so they're perfectly clean and dry when they hit the outdoors again) on Tuesday and to preschool on Wednesday, but Ben seemed to be taking a turn for the worst last night, so he missed swimming this morning and by the end of swimming Milo was uncharacteristically tired and leaking mucus badly, so I bundled him up and took him home and canceled afternoon piano lessons.

Which means here I am with a quieter Thursday than normal. At this moment, it's raining.

My own faith has been shaky lately. I have questioned everything. Am I supposed to see this lack of work as a sign that it's time to do something else? (Well, I applied for other jobs and got not a nibble.) Do I need to work harder at finding new clients? (I found many and sent them my resume and cover letter and I got back some interest in working with me--but no actual projects.) But as this week becomes the fifth week without work, I can see that maybe it's just part of the ebb and flo of this business and it doesn't have much deeper meaning beyond that. Nothing horrible has happened so far. Chris has steady work and between that and our emergency funds, it looks like we'll make it to my next pay check in better shape than I thought. I was mulling it all over this morning, especially my worries about taxes and tithing and everything, and then . . . I could practically hear His voice in my head saying simply, "Prove me herewith . . ." and I remembered that the words came from a line that included something about pouring out more blessings than you can handle. And I felt that peace that soothes ALL the worries.

I can't see the solution to all of our financial issues right now, but I guess I've lived long enough at this point to know that as long as you disengage your pride and try to deal with everyone honestly, these things do eventually get resolved.

Because I don't have really ANY scriptures memorized, I had to google it when I got home (I knew kind of where the quote was from, but I wanted to know the rest). It's from Malachi and the quote is "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." And he goes on to promise to "rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall the vine cast her fruit before the time in the field."

And what I heard in that was a promise that the tremendous progress we made last year in paying down debt will not be lost (a huge fear for me during this time of "inactivity" and especially at seeing how far I still have to go in catching up with taxes) and that progress and its fruits will occur at the time that it is supposed to occur.

When we put our trust in God to find us the Right Place to settle, He led us to this town where we have been safe, and welcomed, and able to improve our financial situation. So I feel I was reminded today to that He will be just as wise and merciful and generous in helping us as we continue to settle our past debts and work--hard--towards a debt-free future.

Anyway it was the outpouring of rain that inspired me to sit down at the computer to blog. I thought about rain and the spring and the very, very gradual warming of the earth this year (not the other kind of Global Warming, that's for another post) and so I put some google-fu to the gospel library again and found this Psalm:

PSALM 147
1 Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely.
2 The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. 3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names
5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
6 The LORD lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.
7 Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God:
8 Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.
9 He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
10 He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.
11 The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.
12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.
13 For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.
14 He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.
15 He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth very swiftly.
16 He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.
17 He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?
18 He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.
19 He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
20 He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD.

I don't understand all of it, but it still makes me feel better. Now Ben wants to read me "Put Me In The Zoo," and I'm going to run with that.