Faithfulness

We're on a budget. Not a "save for a down payment" or "Florida vacation" budget. Like a "our income just covers our rent and loan payments" budget. This has been challenging for me, especially at this time of the year when I really want to buy Christmas presents and throw a party every weekend. Not to mention two of my best friends are getting married in December, and there is nothing I'd rather do than shower them right.
It has also been a struggle to keep tithing when I know that, on paper at least, we can't afford to. That said, I have to share how God has been faithful to us over the past couple of months. I cannot begin to explain how we are still doing fine even though at the start of this year I was certain that I would have to get a job and leave Henry with someone else all day. (Not a judgment of anyone else, I just really want to be home with him right now).
My husband has a very prestigious legal job. When our friends hear about it, when other lawyers hear about it, they are very impressed. Unfortunately for us this prestigious job does not pay as much as a family of three needs to live in NJ.
Despite the fact that we cannot pay our bills on paper, in real life God has provided for us and blessed us beyond anything that we could have imagined. Sometimes it's a refund of a deposit we gave to the utility company when we first moved in. Another time the ultrasound place returned some copays I had given them when I was pregnant. It was a mistake, they said. Yeah right! Most recently our NJ tax refund was direct deposited into our bank account, an amount greater than my husband's pay check.
We found a way to consolidate many of our student loans into two loans, and chose a payment plan that is income-based and that forgives the balance of any unpaid educational loans after 25 years. With this plan, we are free to take jobs that we want, instead of being enslaved to the loan payments. I had no idea this was even an option until recently.
While we need to be responsible with the money that God has given us, it is also possible, I think, to limit ourselves by what we see on paper. Who knows what God will do with the money that we tithed this month? I don't mean to make this too legalistic, and I know that I do have a tendency to view giving in that way, but what if we had limited ourselves to the budget without any room for God to work? We would have been secure financially, but we might have never seen God's faithfulness in answering our prayers.