God's Provision....

This picture of hubby and I on the California coast was taken a couple of years ago. It was a fun trip and you can read all about it if you go here and scroll half way down. I chose this picture for today simply because with our busy teen raising season we are in at the moment....I don't have many pictures of us together. But all of that isn't even important at the moment because right now I want to simply share about God's Provision.

Hubby is a very hard worker. He is never one for keeping very still (unless there is a fun movie on t.v. that is). As a high school senior way back in the day, he balanced school and three jobs at the same time. Then he made the Air Force a whirlwind of a career, settling into the sort of job that ......well that we could never talk about because it was a secret.

14 Years ago he retired and decided to follow his dad into the world of truck driving. Boy is he good at it. He can back a 73 foot truck and trailer combo into a tight spot faster than you can say "eighteen wheeler". He works for a local long haul family type trucking company and has been with them thru good times and slow times. (What does local long haul mean? It means that he can put up to some 500 miles on his truck in a single day and be home at the end of his shift.) He has built up seniority there and above all else has definitely shown his character.

Why am I telling you this? Well the basic story goes like this.......
With the current economy, as work is getting tight and the demand for product goes down, the company has had to put the drivers on an every other day rotation roster. All the drivers that is except my husband. They have asked him to be part of a new long term project and they changed his pay style. See, for the last 14 years, he has been paid by what he does. That is the way with most trucking establishments. A paycheck will vary each week depending on the loads and mileage that each driver does. It is honest pay for honest work.......but it had made poor hubby have to always compute in his head every day how much he needs to do so that we as a family can live. That can become a pretty stressful way of thinking. Now though, his pay is going to be based off of an hourly salary and guaranteed 55 hours a week.

Do you see God's provision there? For the last 4 years we have been working hard to pay off all of our bills and become debt free. We now have 10 months left to go and we are locked into our plan. If he would have been one chosen to work every other day, oh how quickly we would have spiraled into financial oblivion.
We are so humbled and grateful for God's favor.

I don't mean it to sound like we are jumping up and down in a virtual party here. I know that others are affected in a bad way with this company shift and I do feel for them and have compassion. Do you know what I mean?

(David at Authorblog honored this post with a mention in his post of the day column. I am so glad to be able to share our blessings with everyone.)