Abba said it best. "Money, money, money, must be sunny in a rich man's world."

The past few weeks have been rough. ROUGH. We have had a series of unfortunate events with the machines in our life. My car broke down requiring an expensive repair, Kyle's main lawn mower completely died needing a whole new engine. It was in such bad shape that after much thought and deliberation we decided not to even have it repaired and buy an entirely new one. And the kind of mowers that Kyle uses are not cheap. Commercial grade = $$$. I won't go into all of the details about our misfortunes, because really, it is just depressing. I started to type it all out, and I thought I needed to start over because people would need a Xanex by the time they got to the end. Let's just say to sum it all up that we have been stretched and financially strained after all of these mishaps.

But oh my word, how our God has taken care of us. I can't even type this with out tears filling my eyes. For those of you don't know, Kyle's main line of income is landscape maintenance. We are so thankful for all of our maintenance customers, because really we wouldn't survive month to month without them. He rarely does any installations at all. It's not that he can't do them, it is just that maintenance is a much more steady income. There is more profit in installations, but a lot of times they are few and far between. Every once in a while someone will call Kyle for a bid on an installation. For some reason this past month lots of people have been requesting quotes on major landscape installation projects. Just this week, 2 different bids were accepted and scheduled for the end of this month. There are also a couple of very promising jobs that look like will be scheduled very soon. I'm not writing about this to boast. Kyle is very talented at what he does, and he tries to be very competitive about pricing, but THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM OR ME. If you don't get anything else from this post, get that. It does have everything to do with God.

Did God make my car and Kyle's mower break down? No. Things like that just happen; it is a part of life. But God has used this situation to teach some very important lessons. He is faithful. He cares about us. He wants Kyle and I to love each other through the hard stuff. He wants us to trust Him. He wants us to realize that it is all His anyways.

Kyle called me this morning with more amazing news. One of our maintenance customers just wanted to pay us for about 6 months in advance so he doesn't have to worry about writing a check every month. This has never happened before. The total amount he is paying us will almost fully pay for my car to be repaired. This is no coincidence. God provided this for us and I will not let the opportunity pass without praising Him.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your provision. Thank you for caring about my family. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your lessons. I don't deserve any of this. But You give freely.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." Matthew 10:29-31

Oh, just you watch out.

Kyle and I headed out to dinner the other night and I was so sorry that I didn't have my camera. I mean, prime blogging material was right there in the parking lot of Chili's. We got out of the truck and the first thing I noticed on the back of an SUV was those little stick figures that are supposed to depict your family. You know, the ones. Momma stick in a cute little dress, Daddy stick in his business suit, kid sticks with the cheerleading uniform on or football in hand. Here's an example if I'm not being too clear.

Well this SUV that we encountered displayed them all. Momma, Daddy, 2 kids, and even a dog. But there was a not so subtle difference with this stick family. DADDY WAS MARKED OUT. A huge "X" was literally drawn through his entire body. I wish that I had my camera because it really was too funny. I pointed it out to Kyle and told him that he just better watch out and be on his best behavior, or... X.