Tag: Luke

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Adoption

Following the Call #2 – My Control, His Plan

Have you ever gone on a zip line? People love those things! They want to ride zip lines in the jungle, at the beach, and anywhere in-between and I CANNOT understand that for the life of me. I hate zip lines. HATE THEM.

The summer of 2008, I decided I would be “brave” and pack up and move to Sugar Pine Christian Camps to be a camp counselor for the summer. I wanted to find out what my true character was and what better way to find out than to stick myself somewhere I’d never been, with people I’d never met, in the middle of the woods. I hadn’t ever been to a summer camp or any kind of camp for that matter and I don’t think I had ever even gone camping before.

Well one of the things we had to do for team building was the rope course, ya know the rope things way high in the trees? I didn’t think it would be that bad. I’m not afraid of heights and I’m tough I like to think I’m tough. So I go through the whole ropes course without too much trouble or fear and then I get to the end. The STUPID end is a zip line and until this moment I had no idea I didn’t like zip lines or that I was under no circumstances going to willingly throw myself off of a tall tree. Mind you I am extremely competitive and there may have been a boy there that I was dating at the time, whom I wanted to impress and yet I could not jump. This was a team building activity and people were starting to pass me. I was NOT embarrassed and I was NOT throwing myself down. Finally my boss, with my permission, pushed me off the tree, thank the Lord she agreed because I would still be up there now.

I did find out some stuff about myself that summer, namely, I don’t like to feel out of control. Zip lines = no control. Once you let go at the top of a zip line you can’t stop until you hit the ground. Why that is appealing to people I do not know or understand, Luke tried to explain several times. It was and still is all lost on me. God used that summer to show me that I really really don’t like to be out of control and on a completely different note I am super indecisive, those two go great together in case you were wondering. That has led to some good things like never getting drunk or wanting to, but it doesn’t exactly put God in His proper place in my life.

Waiting, is another thing that we have no control over, at least when you are waiting for God’s go ahead. During the last 10 years of waiting to adopt, I felt very out of control of my life. I hated waiting and not knowing when or if it would ever happen. Sometimes I felt it was taking so long that I might forget about the calling and drift into a life that didn’t have adoption in it. At times I even doubted if I had even been called at all.

God, of course never faltered in His plan, despite my struggle for control. See I am one of those people that have always (almost always) wanted to have lots of children. I am also a self-proclaimed realist, Luke calls it being negative or something. So I knew we needed to wait to have kids and to adopt. That was the practical thing to do since we didn’t have any money or a house. So I tried to plan everything out. We would pay off student loans, buy a house, start trying to get pregnant the summer of 2016, the next summer we would get prego again, and then within a year or so of that, start the adoption process. Don’t be fooled folks, the plan was WAY more detailed than that, but I will not bore you with the insane plans of a crazy detail-oriented control freak.  Let’s just say God did not determine our my plans, let’s be real Luke only knew like a third of the craziness going on in my heart, the way I planned them. In August 2015, God decided to start changing my heart and my plans, leaving me feeling less in control <insert horrified, ear-splitting scream here> and much more excited for what God was doing in our lives. His plan is ALWAYS so much better than mine, hopefully I remember that someday.

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Categories
Adoption

Following the Call #1

I heard the call as if it was spoken aloud to me. It was direct and clear. My heart, unflinchingly and whole-heartedly said YES! I remember this moment like it was mere seconds ago. It was one of those moments when obedience to what God is calling you to almost seems too easy and I can honestly say that though I have always strived for obedience, it doesn’t always rarely comes easily for me. This wasn’t one of those times in my faith where the Lord and I were on a mountain top, lest you believe His callings come only at the best of times. During this time in my life my faith was growing, changing, and it was scary, sharp, pointy and difficult. My faith was becoming my own, a relationship with the Lord. It was wonderful and terrible, beautiful and terrifying. This calling can at the perfect time, something to hang on to and make Romans 8:23 all the more real and tangible to me. I clung to Romans 8 at this time in my life, nothing could separate me from His love.

I was 19, driving through Fresno and listening to Focus on the Family or something like it, on adoption. I’m not sure if the point was to encourage people to adopt or if adoption was just a piece of someone’s story, but in that moment I heard,  “You are meant to adopt”. To love someone, who may not have felt love otherwise, yes Lord! My heart soared! I want to love like you have loved me, well at least to the best of my ability and He called so I believed He would provide the love.

I dove in. I researched, I went to classes on the different types of adoption. I majored in psychology and I wrote research papers on attachment theory for adopted children. I knew the time wasn’t quite right, but I wanted to prepare. When I met Luke at 21, I remember one of my most important make or break our relationship questions was how do you feel about adoption. He was more than favorable to the idea. We got married when I was 23 and years went by, sometimes I wondered did you really call Lord. Why is it taking so long? When will it be our time to adopt? To have children? It hurt to wait, to have a calling and not be able to act on it. But my heart would never let go and Luke carried that calling in his heart with me, never letting me lose hope. The Lord was and still is preparing the way to our children.

Ten years have passed since that day in my car.

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Blog

Stress, Sadness, Celebration, and Blessing

A quarter of a year has past since I sat down to write to you. That seems so weird to say, a fourth of a year has come and gone. I didn’t intend to go so long without writing about the journey of trusting the Lord that I have been on, but the writing just did not come. The end of September, October, November, and December brought about many joys and many sadnesses and now I am ready to share it with you.

Five days after my last post, Allison, the friend fighting cancer whom I asked many of you to pray for, passed on to be with the Lord. My heart broke. While I had not been close to Allison in life, I felt an intense call from the Lord at the beginning of her journey to be a prayer warrior for her, her husband, and their sweet baby Judah. God called me to pray at all hours, while I ran I prayed, while I worked I prayed, in the middle of the night I would wake up and pray, and I begged many others to pray with me. Only one other time in my life have I ever felt so desperately compelled to pray unceasingly (some may know her as a sweet little miracle named Maybre). I was sure that the Lord would save Judah and heal Allison. I believed so strongly that He had an amazing tale for Allison to tell and would draw so many to Himself with her story.

I was right in believing those things. They just didn’t unfold the way that I thought they should…the Lord calling me to trust Him more.  Judah is full of life and healthy, a sweet little baby boy. Allison is healed of all that ever ailed her on earth and now lives with her Heavenly Father. On October 17th, 2015 at Allison’s Celebration of Life, I watched in tears and in awe at what the Lord is doing with her story and how He continues to use her to draw people to Himself. I felt personally stirred by Allison’s young life to seek the Lord more deeply and to more strongly pursue the things He has placed on my heart. The Lord whispered to my heart that Allison was much more needed with Him and He would use her life to bring so much glory to Himself and to Allison. It was a gift to watch how many people were and are touched by Allison’s faithfulness, see some of it here.

Also in September, I began a journey at school that has repeatedly broken my heart and my heart continues to bleed for many of the children at my school. I had my first of several encounters with needing the police and CPS to intervene. So many of the children I serve, teach, and love everyday do not live the life you and I plan to or do give our children. My heart has not yet learned to live in the tangle of caring about my students/my children, trying to help and love them, and still giving these cares to the Lord for Him to carry. This has been an on going struggle for the past 4 months. I clearly cannot share much of their stories so please pray for my students and their families, their safety, that the Lord reveals Himself to them, how I can help them, and how my heart should respond to these situations and how my heart should respond to the Lord.

I don’t think I can think of a time where I have felt at the same time so much pain and joy at the same time, which I might add is very uncomfortable. While Allison was going to be with the Lord and school had become a very sorrowful place, the Lambert’s were adopting their beautiful baby girl, they had been awaiting her arrival for years (read more here and here). I was and am ecstatic for them. Another couple, we love dearly was also getting their bundle of joy through adoption. It was so confusing, painful, and beautiful to watch the Lord work in so many different ways.

During all of this, we were preparing for our new home and getting ready to move. We watched prayerfully and joyfully as the Lord and the construction workers built our home. It was a beautiful time, we wrote verses and prayers on the frame and foundation of our house, family came and wrote well wishes, proverbs, verses and prayers for us, as well. We visited frequently praying for the house, the people that worked on it, the ministry we would have in and through it, and we prayed above all else that it would be dedicated to the Lord and His work and that we would not forget that. The Lord planted beautiful things in mine and Luke’s hearts, the seeds of what He has next for us and what He would use our house for.

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My heart constantly was and is skipping from joy to sorrow. At times I felt and still feel overcome by the sadness and grief in my heart and then in an instant joyous over the many amazing gifts that the Lord has brought: babies (adopted and birthed) of friends, marriages, debt reduced by over $40,000, a beautiful new home, a job that gives me my husband back, friends completely giving themselves over to the Lord, engagements, pregnant friends, myself growing so much in trust and faith, and whispers of joys, ministries, and service to the Lord yet to come.

These three months have been amazingly and awfully difficult and yet amazingly beautiful and joyful. I have learned that I cannot save the world, the people and children I love, or even myself, that job is reserved only for the Lord. I feel here and now, I begin to embark on a new journey of trusting even deeper and in new ways our awesome Lord. Won’t you come too?

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Blog

August Celebrations

I just wanted to do a quick update on what has happened in August in the land of paying off student loans. Since we paid off a student loan in June, we saved up and made a $5,000 payment and with the government APLE program I am in (teaching at a low-income school) another $3,000 payment was made…such a huge blessing! So overall last month we paid over $8,500, including our monthly payments.

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!

Just to clarify a little, we have two loans left. One is a private student loan that now totals, after our August payments, about $28,000 and then we have a federal student loan totaling about $28,000, as well. We are focusing on paying off the private student loan because the APLE program I am enrolled in and most government loan forgiveness programs only pay on federal loans. So each year that I teach I can receive more loan forgiveness on the federal loan, hence why we are focusing on the private loan.  The $5,000 went to the private loan and the $3,000 went to the federal loan.

Anyway I have to say, since we moved forward with building a house, are preparing to make the down payment, and made the list of things we actually need…kind’ve need…might be necessary… maybe we just really want to buy for the house (a refrigerator is actually necessary right?), I was certainly worried that we would slow down in paying down this debt. But I am so thankful to say that God has kept us on the right track and helped us to stay focused mostly on continuing to pay down the debt. We are using our Apple stock and a couple other investments to make our down payment and we are so grateful that the money we have from these investments almost perfectly covers what we need to make the payment. God has also sent some other jobs for Luke (poor guy…he works hard to provide for us!) that have made it possible to do the couple of things we have deemed necessary to move into our house. So we have had to use very little of our money that would go to paying down student loans for anything house related! 

We are continually amazed, surprised, and ultimately grateful at what God is doing in our lives and how faithful He has been in paying off this debt, providing a house, a new job for Luke, and more importantly growing my faith and trust in Him. My heart has started to turn from a constant need to be reminded that God is faithful, to a slow steady thought process that speaks of His faithfulness. It has been a beautiful melody to my soul and a soothing salve over the anxiety, fear, and doubt that can cloud my heart. I looked forward to what He will do next in my heart and with this debt.

On a totally separate note, please let me encourage you to be a prayer warrior for yourself,  your family and friends, and anyone around you. In my life I have noticed more and more lately that there are so many people around me that are struggling, hurting, and just in need of prayer. Please look for those people in your life and lift them up. My heart is so heavy seeing the illnesses, hurt, and pain of all those around me, so let’s be a community that lifts each other up in prayer to the One who can bring healing, peace, and joy.

Categories
Finance

The Day, The Name

My post titles are starting to have a pattern to them…I’m not sure I like it…but hey that’s what is in my head right now. PS I wanted to let you know, I did not write a blog post last week, but I did however write the About Me page and that’s basically the same thing…right? Anyway I thought I would tell you a little bit more about the day I decided to write this blog and where it’s name came from.

I have to admit, I should have written this sooner because the day or days that I decided to start writing this blog have become a bit foggy. It was a special day though because I got to spend my whole day chatting with some very special ladies that I don’t spend nearly enough time with.

First, I went to lunch with a dear friend, Alyssa, who is preggo, which is inspiring in and of itself. (For those of you who don’t know me, I am on this journey to pay off debt because I desperately can’t wait to have kids and really want to/feel called to stay home with them…which is something I can’t do with all this DEBT.) Talking and just being so overjoyed and excited with her renewed my resolve. I just LOVE time with her! And now I can’t get enough of her little baby bump too!

Then I got to have pastry with another dear friend, Jane and her sweet little one Felicity. Jane is super inspiring to begin with, her and her husband along with their two little ones have worked to pay off all of their debt (we went to Fresno Pacific University together) and they have just succeed in becoming debt free!!!!! They were just one payment away from debt free on the day we got pastry! And she gave me a novel idea…pray for the money to pay off the debt…hmm well as a Christ-follower you may be thinking…DUH!!! Don’t get me wrong I have prayed a lot about student loan debt… A LOT.. I prayed that we would be disciplined enough to payoff the debt, I prayed that we would make enough money to pay it off, I prayed that I would not make paying off debt my idol, and other things like that. I would often wonder, can I win the lottery or win the money off of HGTV (my favorite channel) or the dream house, all with the only thought being to pay off the debt, BUT I never just asked God to provide the means. AND that people was the exact moment, with Jane’s words, that I began to think maybe the Lord was asking me to trust Him to payoff this debt.

This thought only continued to be confirmed as I then went to visit my friend Alex to celebrate her birthday! We sat and talked about debt, teaching, marriage, and life in general. Throughout this conversation we kept coming to the consensus that trusting God was the answer, the answer to EVERYTHING. He would get us through. As we were talking, my mind was drawn back to Jane’s statement of praying for the money over and over.

The next day…New Year’s Eve, Luke and I were spending a much needed lazy day at home together. We were watching either The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, well Luke was sleeping and I was contemplating the conversations from the day before, living with my in-laws, paying off debt, and what the Lord was trying to tell me. I decided to take a shower…my best thinking, praying, contemplating, and such always happen in there…plus I needed to get ready for our New Year’s Eve dinner. Clarity aka the Holy Spirit, struck me then and there. Like I’ve mentioned before, I struggle with faith and trust, but in that moment and only in that moment so far, I felt sure and ready to go on this journey. See we plan to move out of my in-laws in or around December and house payments/rent and other responsibilities will come, especially financially (my in-laws are blessing us so much!). So we won’t have the ability to pay on the loans like we do now. And I just felt the Lord asking, will you trust me to make it happen. I thought Yeah! Yeah! Yeaaaah! the Lord can do it and so I shared my thoughts with Luke. He immediately was on board and really got this blog up and running… he may have thought the details were a little crazy ($54,000 in one year is a LOT of money), but here we are :).

The name of the blog picks up right where this story left off. Maybe a minute after I agreed to trust the Lord and shared the news with Luke, I began to doubt…did the Lord REALLY say He would make it happen? Did He really mean $54,000? Is this all in my head? Wishful thinking? Does the Lord really tell us such specific things? Oh NO!!! What if I just thought this all up and God is up there thinking…this girl??? And they just kept coming…all the doubts over and over. I began to preach the gospel to myself and to pray about my word and trust just kept coming up, at least as much as the doubts. (See what I’m talking about preaching the gospel to myself and my word for the year here). And that is how the name Trusting in the Dark was born. It’s sometimes dark here…I don’t know everything the Lord is calling me to do, I don’t know if He has specifically asked me to trust Him for $54,000, but I DO know He has called me to TRUST HIM this year and He has asked me to ask Him to provide. So I am here, little ‘ole me, trusting in the dark, not able to see all the details, yet trying and learning how to trust through His amazing grace.

Please pray for my trust and faith to abound.

PPS hoping for some exciting debt news next week! Stay tuned!!!

 

Categories
Finance

The Plan, The Purpose

So my original plan was to write a post at least once a week and well, as you can see, that resolution went down the drain in week two…oops! Well…here I am trying to pick that goal back up. (If you are reading this, for the love of Pete, please keep me accountable ;).

Anyhow I would like to share the details of our plan and the purpose or at least my current purpose for this blog. I started to write, God feel free to change up the purpose as you see fit and then I remembered I’m kind’ve a recovering control-freak and realized that scared the poop out of me. Fear aside, Lord let the purpose always be yours over mine (just in case you were wondering that’s the trusting part I’m working on/struggling with). Since we’re talking about it, let’s start with the purpose. I need a record of this journey and that is the whole big grand purpose…not just the paying off of these loans, but much more importantly the journey of trusting the Lord, having faith in Him, and His will for our lives. So often, actually always…ALWAYS, He is faithful and maybe in the moment we (by we I mean me) realize He is faithful and more than worthy of our complete trust in Him. Then life continues to happen and His faithfulness slips from our mind and worse yet our hearts. At least that happens to me, a lot. I vaguely remember from the recesses of my mind that The Lord has over and over again, for no other reason than He loves me, personally and intimately shown me how faithful He is, but I can’t quite recall the details, the feeling. So this blog is to stop that ridiculousness from happening. (Who am I that the all mighty God should pursue me!?!?!) And that is my purpose everybody, all four of my friends whom read this because you love me 😉

Also if The Lord decides that someone, somewhere can benefit from this blog in someway, even better!

As for the plan, the plan…the PLAN! I guess the plan is our budget, budgeting is no joke BTW.  While Luke and I were engaged, we were very very blessed by Sequoia Community Church in Fresno. The church did a group study of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and we happened to join the group. Thankfully we started our marriage already done with baby step number one, a $1,000 emergency fund. But more than four years later we are still on baby step number two, pay off all debt. You can find all 7 baby steps here. It took us a while to get our feet off the ground with our debt snowball. We had to figure out how to work together as newlyweds to even do anything with money, make a budget and stick to it, then I went back to school, then I found a job, and most currently we moved in with my in-laws (what a blessing!). Now we have refined, cut, and trimmed our budget.

We do our budget twice a month, about the 1st and 15th. I get paid at the beginning of the month and Luke gets paid twice, around the beginning and middle of the month. With this plan we decided to make sure we sit down together and write out the budget. It is much easier for one person to do it alone, but that isn’t the best money saver or relationship builder.

Here is about what our budget looks like:

Tithe

Groceries

Gas

Car Insurance

Student Loans (principal and interest payments)

Phones

3 other small personal bills

Dog Money (food, vet, medicine, etc)

Miscellaneous (doctors appointments, hair cuts, prescriptions)

Then we have our “fun money”:

Eating Out

Date Night

Luke’s Fun Money

BaCall’s Fun Money

*If you would like to know amounts for these things feel free to email or comment below.

The list is in this order because this is the order we pay them in, I guess it is our order of importance. Our tithe, groceries, gas, dog money, miscellaneous money, and fun money are repeated on both halves of the month. The car insurance, student loans, phone bill, and the 3 other bills are split between the halves of the month. Our fun money is rather small to make sure we are putting as much as possible towards our debt, but in FPU (Financial Peace University) it suggests you do this so you are not too tempted to overspend. It has worked very well for us. The budget is flexible, if something unexpected happens we can change it, but our goal is to stick as closely as possible to the budget. With this budget we have about $2,800 extra to put towards our student loan debt.

To summarize our goal is to follow the above budget as closely as possible and pay $2,800 extra a month towards the debt and trusting The Lord for the rest. We are hoping and praying to payoff between $54,000 – $66,000 in 12 months. We move out of my in-laws in about 12 months FYI.

Just to give you and myself an idea of what that really means, I used a loan calculator to see what that looks like. With the numbers I just shared the calculator said it would take about 1 year and 6 months to pay off the $54,000 and about 1 year and 9 months to payoff the $65,000.

We are trusting the Lord!

 

Categories
Finance

A New Year and a New Adventure

Welcome to my new adventure! I say new adventure, but I’m really hoping this is more like the third part of The Hobbit, the home stretch of a journey with new adventure of it’s own. Don’t worry, I’m long winded, I’ll catch you up on parts one and two. This adventure is about faith, trusting the Lord, and debt. It seems odd or unusual to write that sentence… faith, trust, and DEBT. But that is exactly what this adventure is about…

THE CURRENT ADVENTURE aka Part 3 of The Hobbit:

December 30th is the day this leg of the adventure started, I spent some time with some godly women whom the Lord used to plant prayers, thoughts, ideas, curiosity, and most importantly faith into my heart. Henceforth was born this plan:

Luke (see part 1 & 2 for who that guy is) and I plan to spend the next 12 months working our tails off and (more so) trusting the Lord to pay off $54,000 in debt. As you might have guessed we don’t have  or make all the money it would take to pay this off, hence the faith and trust. (If you have really big faith pray for $66,000).  More on the current adventure to come.

*It is really nerve-wracking and quite vulnerable to put these numbers online. Please be kind with this knowledge.

Part 1:

This journey started in 2004, maybe even before… wanting to live for Christ was my intention, but I didn’t know how to or where to turn. There were things: hurts, abuses, and people in my life that  hindered me and some that I allowed to hinder me in my journey towards and with Christ. My seventeen year old self, with much thought and prayer, decided escape was the best route. I did well in school and maybe I should have applied to many schools, cheaper schools, but Azusa Pacific University was on my mind and in my heart. A private, Christian university sounded like the perfect place to get rid of and escape from those things and also a great place to grow. And I did!

I grew in my faith by leaps and bounds and started the lifelong journey of eradicating those things from within me. It was a long, hard, tumultuous, exciting, fun, and humbling year. Some unforeseen circumstances led me to only spend the one year at Azusa. I continued my higher education at a slightly (very very slightly) less expensive private Christian school, Fresno Pacific University. I loved my time there and continued to grow and mature in my faith, which led me to an amazing church, wonderful Christian friends, and to one of my greatest blessings, my husband Luke.

Maybe you see where this is going or maybe you already know because you’ve spent at least a minute with me… Either way the answer is a big fat student loan… student loansssssss, I should say. Tens of thousands, lots of tens of thousands of dollars. I try really hard to be smart with money…to be a good steward, to honor the Lord with my spending, saving, and such. But lots of tens of thousands of dollars in debt does not sound honoring to me. I struggle with this a lot…was I not following the Lord when I took out these loans? Did I mishear His direction? Or was this just His plan? I honestly don’t know, but here I am and I can say I’ve grown closer to the Lord through my time at both universities and He is molding me into who He wants me to be.

Apparently who He wants me to be next is someone who has stronger faith, trusts Him completely, and who has no or at the very least much less debt.

Part 2:

In 2010 I married Luke and we started dreaming of our future and what the Lord has for us to do. We decided/discovered that adoption, having children, being debt-free, and possibly having some sort of home that we care for/ invite people into make the list. So we decided in August 2014 to move in with Luke’s parents who graciously obliged. Thus far we have lived in their beautiful home and have been greatly blessed by them for five months and have paid off about $10,000 in student loans (that is not part of the $54,000 we are aiming for in the next 12 months).  As you can see much more hard work and faith are needed to make this happen and we are ready to see the faithfulness of the Lord in however he sees fit to show it.