Walking Out Loud

I've felt the pull to write again. It's been an off and on endeavor over the years. It's always been hard to write whenever I quit smoking. Writers are strange and fickle creatures with peculiar habits. Whenever I would put the pack down, I would go into stalemate with words. But here I am, three years after I snubbed out my last smoke, pecking away at the keys watching the words in my spirit be birthed onto the screen. Sometimes there are more than one reason for the desert we are journeying in. Maybe, just MAYBE, this could be another one.

I've felt a call lately. A call back to this blog. A call to share this place we are sojourning through. This hard, rocky, brutal place that digs into our sandals and cuts at our feet. Testing us. Propelling us forward because to stop means certain death. A command to go back to Walking Out Loud this faith that is humbling and sometimes hard to share. A command to be transparent during the difficulty of financial poverty and the spiritual growth that comes of watching God show up. A need to be obedient. Above all things obedient so as not to get stuck permanently in a place that was only meant to be for a season.

A month ago, my husband went into work fully aware that there was some restructuring taking place in the near future. He knew it was scheduled to take place at the beginning of August. His position would change and with it would come some changes in our salary and commission percentages as well. We were looking forward to this as the past year had proven stressful as he created the Property Management Director position for a start up. We were all looking forward to him stepping into a job that he enjoyed. What we didn't expect was that the last week of July he was told that effective immediately we would no longer have a salary, but would now be straight commission. No notice. No transition time. No time to train the incoming Director. Just immediate change. As often is the case with real estate, we are at the mercy of the banks. Almost immediately, there was a bottle neck in closings leaving us with no houses to rehab and market. No houses means no commission. No notice means no time to plan for bottle necks. No time to plan means only one thing: we are leaning solely on God as our provider right now. The past year has brought with it different emergencies that depleted our savings and increased our debt. There is no back up. There is no Plan B. We have been brought to a place where we are wholly dependent on the Lord.

I believe this is part of the point. I believe this is in part a lesson on not confusing your provision with your Provider. Not equating your freedom with your finances. Leaning solely on the promises of God and accepting whatever this path might look like. He has brought us to a place where we must lay down our pride and our expectations and say, "I believe in YOU, Lord. My hope is in you. My faith is in you. My family will be fed. We will have shelter. We will have our needs met and it will be because of you and all the glory will be yours."

My husband, my handsome and faithful Big Man, has a phrase he has said to me since we met. He says, "Our faith is personal, but it's not private." There is a deep truth in this. Parts of it I have wrestled with. Namely the part I'm writing about now. I was raised that you don't talk about money. It's rude and ill-mannered and no one's business but your own. Part of it is pride. Small town upbringing drips with a Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality. Even though we've chosen to try to lead a relatively "simple" life forgoing new cars (because I despise a car payment more than anything in the world) and making most of the things we could buy out of convenience, I still struggle with wanting the appearance that we are capable of "handling our bid-niz" and not just having another child we can't seem to afford. So here I am. Stripping down nekked to walk out this faith in technicolor. Leaning in on my part of the lesson in this desert experience and gleaning the reward of seeing my words on the page.