Life Happens

This week has been a pretty full week for me in terms of working. Yesterday I got to the church at 11:00 and didn't leave until 10:00 that evening. I was preparing for my Fall Children's Ministry Volunteer Training Class, and every thing that could go wrong with technology leading up to the class went wrong. It's Robyn's Law of something or another. This isn't the first time that the printer jammed, malfunctioned etc. just before a big meeting I needed to prepare for.

It gets better though. I've been working on this 23 page document for about 6 weeks now. It's a complete manual outlining our Children's Ministry vision, mission, values, policies, procedures safety recommendations, programs etc. I've been doing masses amounts of research with our insurance company, our denominational head-quarters, other churches and internet sites in order to create this document. Well, in an attempt to make a few final changes I managed to somehow totally mess up the page numbering system and various other pieces of the document. Our new youth pastor, Joel, and a friend of mine, Milly, ended up helping me out quite a bit. Every few pages one would jam in the printer, so they pieced together enough pages to make the needed amount of booklets. I wanted to set the printer on fire, after I torched my computer... but it didn't seem like the best option. We wasted several trees in the process. The worst part? I had gone into work on Wednesday to make sure that I would have everything done well before the meeting. Just before I got to work, the power went out. So much for that option!

Oh well, such is life. Tomorrow I'll work 8 hours or so shooting a wedding. Weddings are fun, but exhausting. They're a lot of work and a fair amount of stress. A wedding isn't the kind of thing you want to mess up!

The extra money will be very nice though. The addition of Titus eating real food and the car breaking down on multiple occasions drained the small financial cushion we once called our savings account. Now that the dust has settled on our move and we have a better idea how we're fairing financially in the new house with adjustments in utilities, with the addition of my job at the church and various other things--we've realized that we're short. Yes, physically we're not a tall family--but also in the money department! Money is a stressful thing. It appears at this point as if one of us will have to get an additional part-time job. Not our favorite option, but life happens. It has been good for us to re-evaluate some basic things and to consider how we can be more wise with our money. Ultimately, our money belongs to God, he's just trusting us to manage it well. I pray that we aren't letting him down in that area! I'll be curious to see what God has in mind for us. Maybe He's got a reason bigger than our finances that He wants one of us to get another job.

More than anything, I'm grateful that eventhough things are really tight right now, Rob and I continue to keep the same perspective on money. It's something that drives a lot of couples apart, but it's never been an issue of contention for us (Knock on wood). God has been so faithful to provide for us and I'm glad that we trust in Him.