Raises & Praises

I love simple things.  Picture this.  You are driving down the road with a red stoplight ahead.  As you slide your foot off the gas pedal to apply to the brake pedal the light suddenly turns green and you can coast on through.  You never applied the brake, you didn't really have to slow down.  You just kept on going.  I love it even more when there's a car waiting in the other lane at the stoplight (going the same direction) and you get to fly by him.  I guess that's my competitive side coming out. There's just something about that incident that I love.  I told you I love simple things.

Leaving out the competitiveness, we had something like that happen in our life.  As many of you know, I plan to be a stay at home mom after we adopt.  No more small paycheck coming in every other week for us!  Although I work part time and the money is not a huge amount, we appreciate and use the money that is brought in.  But we were willing to make the sacrifice of that money and learn to live differently.  I appreciate the times when God meets our needs ahead of time.  Up ahead I saw a red stoplight of income no longer coming in.  Put the brakes on folks, the budget is in for a rude awakening! Although I know this doesn't happen all the time, I want to give credit where credit is due.  On Friday, God blessed Josh with a promotion at work, effective November 11th! (It was cute how he told me.  He surprised me at work and took me out to a Chick-fil-A lunch.  After we got our food he handed me a post-it note folded in half.  On one side it said "Senior Analyst 11/11/13" the other side had a new salary amount.) He's been looking to have management experience and this will give him a new title, management experience and a higher salary.  I've been mentally impatient with the amount of hours/work he's been putting in lately and as a wife, I'm glad his hard work has some tangible benefits.  It's nice to see his hard work is appreciated.  Although it's not matching what we make together, it WILL be a nice increase to his paycheck.  No putting on the brakes. Just sail on through the green light.  Will we have to make some adjustments?  Sure.  Will we have other financial issues in the future?  Probably. But it was so sweet to me to see how this detail, this step in our journey was fulfilled by One who cares about even the sparrows.

Yes, I love simple things.  Those simple blessings are many times what increase our faith and carry us through difficult times.