What do you do when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, watching your world crumble around you?
When your income has shrunk so dramatically you can no longer afford swimming lessons but you have a pool in your backyard which your youngest son could easily drown in?
What do you do when you can’t afford a new school shirt for your son let alone the private school fees? Do you pull them out of the school they adore and away from the friends they love and put them into a public school where Jesus is no longer the centre?
Do you give up hope? Do you declare bankrupt and walk away from it all? Or do you keep going? Do you keep fighting? One foot in front of the other . . . keep climbing . . . forget what is behind and focus on what’s ahead?
What do you do when your friends are going off on holidays to tropical climates where they will have a break from cooking and cleaning, while you’re grinding away with no break in sight, and you haven’t had a proper holiday from all the housework in six years.
Do you give up? Do you quit? Or do you dig deeper than ever and keep going?
What do you do when the stress keeps you up half the night and then a ‘well meaning’ friend says they’re sending you brochures of the spa retreat where they’ve just spent seven glorious child and husband-free days, being pampered up to their eyeballs.
What do you do when you can’t afford the latest $500 gas bill and you have to move out of the house you’re in but you have no money to hire a removalist, let alone pay rent? What do you do? What would you do?
For starters, you look up! In the Word for Today it aptly states that you need to get up again! “Being down isn’t my problem – staying down is. I’m either up, or I’m getting up. I’ve learned not to park in between.”
It also goes on to say: “If the stress of the past few years has left you feeling fearful, do what Judah’s king did. He turned to God and prayed: “Whenever we are faced with any calamity . . . we can . . . stand in Your presence. We can cry out to You . . . and You will hear us and rescue us.”
We all face huge challenges in our lives and this is my current dilemma. It’s not all doom and gloom – there’s always people facing far worse things, like the homeless man I saw yesterday asleep on the beach under a sleeping bag. And there’s always a silver lining and things to be thankful for in the midst of it, if only we would open our eyes and look.
” . . . let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1.
Your courage and honesty is a stark reminder that suffering is always more easily endured in community than in isolation. Thank you for sharing your story; it touches me and I’m certain many, many others.
And, you look fabulous in blue, by the way. 🙂
Thank you lovely Kerri for that encouraging word. It certainly takes courage to put it out there and you are absolutely right – doing it tough in isolation is very debilitating. We all need to be loved & nurtured through the tough times. xxx
When we were in this situation I looked for any extra work that I could take on. I networked with everyone I knew – friends, acquaintances etc and kept an eye on the usual channels as well – seek.com.au etc. Although it ate in to our family time I worked at night and on weekends so we were not paying any extra childcare fees. Some of the jobs weren’t my ideal career at the time, but I figured I needed to do whatever I could to keep our family afloat. We also did a clean sweep of our whole house and sold anything we could find that was saleable – you’d be surprised what we found that we thought we couldn’t live without that we actually could and haven’t replaced now that we’re back in better financial circumstances! Good luck – I’m sure you’ll get through it.
Thanks for sharing that gem of advice and ideas Max. I know things are going to change for us and I wanted to be transparent and take you guys on the journey.