Tuesday Tidbits

Well, husband isn't sold on the daycare idea.  He mentioned, for one, that he could work at McDonald's for $6.50 an hour for eight hours, making more than we would make watching two children all day long.  And, the entire family wouldn't be impacted--only husband.

Okay, he has a very good point.  If I added in the extra hours of nightly housework, and the groceries that the daycare children would consume, we would actually make quite a bit less than the going rate of $3.15/hr, per child.

He also mentioned that Beth, at nineteen months old, still needs one-on-one supervision, which would make running a daycare very difficult.

Plus, while husband was away at computer school for four hours two mornings a week, I wouldn't have his help until 1 pm.

The verdict is that husband wants us to keep praying and keep applying for everything we can, no matter how low the posted pay is.

On a positive note, we applied for five jobs today.  Rarely are that many available in one day.  Often, not even in one week.
_______________________
We have a second car, not running, in our driveway.  It needs a catalytic converter, which is very costly, and a new battery.  Apparently, people have noticed that we haven't used it for months.  Just today, three different strangers, apparently unrelated, came to the door asking if we wanted to sell it.  One offered $275 on the spot, telling us we could keep the new tires we'd put on it.

Later, a friend of the woman across the street came by, asking about the car.  Is this a conspiracy, I asked my husband later?  Who gets three people in one day asking about a car that doesn't even have a for sale sign on it?

Very strange.

Also very strange was my husband's conversation with the last inquirer.  He was a Christian--probably Pentecostal we're guessing--who suggested that maybe the reason God wasn't blessing us was because my husband stopped teaching Sunday School.

Upon hearing that my husband was underemployed, the man went into a long spiritual lecture, of sorts.  I guess husband had casually mentioned, in the course of the conversation, that he'd taught Adult Sunday School in the past.  He didn't mention the Bible College Degree or the interest in the ministry years ago.

While we have thought much about the possibility that sin in our lives could be keeping this crisis afloat, it never occurred to us that one of the sins might include not teaching Sunday School.  I'm not sure why this particular man came to our door--other than to get a good price on the car, which isn't really for sale.  I'm pretty sure God doesn't punish you for not teaching Sunday School.

My husband taught a Singles Bible Study for two years in California, starting a year after we got married.  About thirty people attended, but after many months several of them got married, and the crowd dwindled.  We had a baby and I couldn't stay involved, helping out with the clerical aspects and with event planning. I was also working part-time supervising homeschoolers and teaching three homeschool enrichment classes.

After the initial two years passed, husband thought it was time to pass the singles-group baton.  Singles ministry is very hard--specifically when it involves older singles.  Our group included people aged 25-55, including some who were widowed and a few who were divorced.

Later, in Ohio in 2006, my husband hired on to a Children's Director position at a Baptist Church about thirty minutes away from us.  After a year, the quarter-time position lost funding.  The church had a split and the Pastor moved on to another state.  My husband's ADHD symptoms made excelling at the Director position difficult.  It ended up being a discouragement to him, as it didn't make much use of his teaching gift, and required more organization and multi-tasking than he could manage.  I tried to help with the organizational part, but again, I had a new baby to care for.  Mary was born a few months after he began the position, when the boys were three and five.

Since that time, he hasn't done much ministry--just volunteering at AWANA and VBS.  He is still interested in teaching, but feels like the pace of our home life needs to settle down a bit first.

Back to the sin issue.  We have pinpointed possible areas that God wanted tightened, spiritually speaking.  We made necessary changes.  And we continue to ask God to search our hearts and show us our sin.

Joy, from the Memoria Arts blog, recently made mention of her husband's two-and-a-half year unemployment crisis.  I hadn't known that it went on that long.  My countenance fell, upon reading it.  How does one hang on that long?  It has been sixteen months for us, but my husband found part-time work within the first month, so our crisis has been more of an underemployment one.

So.  Today was a weird day, to say the least.  Not sure what to make of it.
_______________________________

VBS began this week and the children are overly excited.  The last one fell asleep at 10:00 p.m., which is not unusual for VBS weeks.  It is hard to wait that long for some quiet time around here, but I do love VBS weeks for the growth they encourage!


At closing time tonight, my Paul eagerly raised his hand to answer Pastor's question about why the shepherd forgot about the other ninety-nine sheep and went after just the one.  Matthew 18:12-14

"Because he loved him very much!"

Amen, my little Paul.  Amen!