For months now I’ve been singing the third verse of Amazing Grace. “The Lord has promised good to me. His Word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.”
In this crazy time of life when my husband Tom and I felt the Lord calling me out of my tenured teaching position in a public school to volunteer for a non-profit Christian school board, we have been more abundantly blessed than ever.
The fear of stepping out onto the water, to be without the safety net of worldly financial security, kept me from following the Lord’s calling for many years. I am grateful that He answered my prayers to call me loudly. He didn’t let me alone until we made the decision.
With the decision to leave work, the Lord sent comfort and direction through His scripture. He prompted me to read and re-read and re-read and re-read Joshua 1 from the Old Testament where He is directing the inexperienced Joshua to lead the people into the Promised Land after the death of their leader, Moses. He tells Joshua again and again to be strong and courageous. He tells him that he will be successful if he meditates on the Word night and day and that he must not look to the right or to the left, but keep his mind fixed on the promise that God will stay with him. This has been my guiding scripture over the past 18 months. And, it’s all remarkably true. The Lord has stayed with me. “His Word my hope secures”
He has taught us that our provision does not come from ourselves or our hard work. Our provision is a gift. Over this past year and a half, when my full time teaching salary has no longer been part of our household income, you’d think that our finances would have fallen apart. Not so. “The Lord has promised good to me”.
We did have some hard moments where, without God’s comfort, we would have been in despair. For example, closing our pool last year wasn’t possible without borrowing money. Two of our children started their freshman year of college this year without help from us at all. Our daughter got married last October and accepted an IOU as her wedding gift. Though we needed to replace an aging car, we were turned down for an auto loan because our credit has suffered with the loss of my salary. Those things have been humbling and difficult. We are both goal-setters and hard workers. We are used to accomplishing and to getting ahead through our hard work, but God allowed us to learn something through our sacrifices. It’s remarkable how much easier it is to rely on God when you no longer have any other choice!
So, Tom and I learned to manage a budget with much less, and that’s been a difficult adjustment, but we have noticed the opposite principle than what you’d expect is true. We have been devoting ourselves to praying for guidance and wisdom and provision while increasing our giving and ministry time. Back in November, at one of our lower points emotionally and financially, we stopped to pray together to wait for a specific answer from God. Tom prayed. I listened. We waited. God spoke. He only gave us one single word: EXPECT. What’s been happening since then has been overwhelmingly wonderful. Our income has not increased and won’t increase at all until next month, but look at all of the blessings raining down on us!
First, we bought a new (not new) car …one that I have always wanted. Loan approved; payment almost the same. Then, we paid off debt we have been carrying since we got married. Then, Chance of Rain was finally published. It’s being read and well-received. On top of that, I was offered a part-time teaching position at Suffolk Community College, a job I have wanted for almost twenty years. And to add a little humor to the word EXPECT, our oldest daughter announced she is expecting our first grandchild. All of these blessings come when our two freshmen both made the Dean’s List despite our inability to support them financially. They both had to hold down jobs all semester, but still they did well. And we noticed, too, that we have not been sick over these eighteen months. Even though Tom hasn’t had any vacation time in years, opting to give back days off so he could work to meet our expenses, he’s been sustained through it all, lifted and carried even. God has made him able. Both of us have been more energized than ever. We have increased our ministry work without detriment to our home life …and wildly blessed in the process. How does God do that?
When He called me out of public school work, I was terrified. I was afraid that losing the paycheck meant losing my car and my house and our comfort. I assumed that the sacrifices we were making would be too hard for me to maintain, so much so that I spent most of the whole first year interviewing for other positions. I was showing my lack of trust in God’s provision by hunting for a different full-time job. I had my name on lists for public school teaching positions all over Suffolk County. I interviewed many times. Nothing ever seemed right, though. God never gave us peace about me going back to work as a public school teacher. Instead, He told me to keep working on developing East End Christian Academy. God showed us that I was called to be volunteering for EECA so they could open. He reminded us both that my job was on the mission field of Christian education.
When the full time jobs didn’t come through, I had my name put on sub lists so I could at least work per diem. I was called to sub often. In fact, I got called every single school day. I still have my name on those lists just in case. However, I have only had peace about going in to sub twice in all of these months. Truly, God wants me to remain at the work He called me to. All the while, He keeps reminding us of scripture that instructs us to trust Him. He promised to stay with us. He has. We are blessed.
Welcome to the first day of this website and blog, to the day before my first radio interview, to the week before my first TV appearance. I am looking very forward to using every means available to me to sing the praises of God’s faithfulness. “He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.”
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT. I’D LOVE TO HAVE THE FEEDBACK.
Want to keep reading? More blog posts are available through the links on the home page. Be blessed.
Congratulations on your new website and your first blog post!
Catherine thank you for directing me to read this because it has rekindled the Sense of the Spirit within me today. At my age I’m experiencing what I coined sometime ago and I often speak to others: The older you get the longer it takes to live! From your testimony, you at your age are experiencing more than I am at 92 with much better and abundant results.
May the Lord continue to guide and empower you and Tom.
Love,
George
George, allow me to paraphrase the sentiment of my dear friend Regina: our lives are like a beautiful work of embroidery. On the front, each stitch is precisely in place creating a work of beauty, but flip it over and there’s a mess of stitches going every which way, evidence of the mistakes that were made on the way to beautiful. To me, that means that when it’s time for blessing-counting, it’s important to count even the trials and hard times. I believe that, though it may look like a mess to us, God knows the plans for us. He knows that when He turns us around, we will be gorgeous.
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