January 2010

January of this year was one of the most difficult months I have ever had. The trials that we encountered was extremely humbling. Dean was laid off the beginning of December 2009, but we had been without a paycheck since the beginning of November. Christmas was also hard, but we were hopeful that a job would soon come. Surely after Christmas break when everyone returned to work, the interviews would come pouring in. Two weeks into January we discovered that they did not. We started to get that panicky, wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat feeling. Questions about how we were going to feed our family came up. We wondered how we'd pay the mortgage. Money isn't everything. But when you don't have enough money for basic needs like shelter and food, it can mean a lot. It is security. We had lost a sense of security. Here I am 7 months pregnant and we don't know what the future holds for us or even if we'll be afloat. We had to have hope. We prayed so very hard. It seemed like I was praying every minute of every day. It was exhausting. We tried really hard to shelter the children from the raw reality of our situation. They knew what was happening but we also told them everything was going to be ok. The question was did we believe it?