No words

can adequately express how I am feeling right now.

Two weeks ago J lost his job with UPS that he has had for the past 6 years. We knew it would not be a forever job due to him continuing school to teach. We knew that. We knew eventually we would be preparing for him to leave that job to pursue his teaching career. But we had time to prepare.

Not anymore. Now we are forced into making prompt decisions of what are we to do next and where do we go from here. We were not prepared for no income for several weeks if not months. Who ever is?

I have not expressed this before now basically because we felt that J would be getting his job back pretty quickly. It is not looking like that is the case any longer. He still has a good chance of getting his job back; but it may take a lot longer than desired or anticipated. OR he may not even get his job back, period. Nobody knows right now.

I felt, this is part of our journey, part of our struggle and I should share with you all what is happening in our lives. Good and bad. I ask that you would please pray if you feel led. We need a miracle. We need people to have a change of heart and not just be out to harm our family.

In the pit of my being I KNOW that God will cover us. I KNOW that HE will provide for us. He has never let us down yet. Crummy things have happened time and time again in our marriage over these past 6 years. But HE always comes through with a light of hope and PROMISE! Not a promise to give us anything but a promise to hold us through the rough waters. A promise that we will not be harmed in the midst of the trials. I hold fast to HIS promises and that is what gets me through.

It is hard, and it hurts something awful. I can't even think straight right now for lack of vision. But I do know that I can rest in my Father's arms while I am hurting and while I am worn out from all the responsibilities.

I had to inform our foster agency of the current circumstances and I got a reply stating that they were going to have to get together to go over the financial part. I am not sure what that means and I am almost scared. I replied and asked what they were talking about and I begged them not to take "our" kids from us. That would be excruciating! You can take everything from us but please do not take our children. Blood or not... they are ours and we LOVE them.

If it were just us and Bear, I would not be so "scared" about what is to come. He is ours now. We can live just about anywhere, J and I already have. We can make anything work until life takes a turn for the better. But when you foster you are so tied to rules and regulations and homestudies. They have to make sure EVERYTHING is okay and there is enough DECENT space for your family to live in. Not to mention the 101 other obligations you have when you are fostering. Will we still qualify to keep our babies if we lose our home?

I am not sure how that would look if we lost our home and had to move. Would they take our kids until we get another decent place to live for them? I am not claiming that we are going to lose our home. I am just functioning in panic mode right now. Forgive me. It just takes on a whole new sense of survival when you are taking care of children that do not belong to you. They can pull them for any reason. Especially if you cannot provide for them financially.

J went and applied for unemployment as well as food stamps (wow this is totally humbling) just to keep us afloat while he is in the process of finding another job. We don't qualify for food stamps b.c of the unemployment money that he SHOULD be getting. We have not seen anything yet. Even if so, our mortgage takes half of the weekly allowance which leaves not enough to pay the rest of the bills. Why don't they take all that into consideration. We have a 5 person household. HOW in the world really do they expect 5 people to live on $400 a week? Really $200 a week after mortgage? That is NOT even counting the monthly bills. AAAHHHH!

I am just so tired of getting a bit ahead and then watching it get ripped out from under us yet again. The sad thing is, we take care of children whom the STATE has custody of but yet the state will not take care of the family taking care of their children! hmmm, makes sense to me! :/

Now for the good news :).

This Saturday is J and my 6 year anniversary. We had made reservations about an hour and a half from here to go away for 2 nights but we called to cancel so we could save that money. J's mom is going to take the boys tomorrow after their nap and we will have the rest of the evening to ourselves, where we will finish all outstanding projects on our house and go through and find all the things that we can sell. We will have all day Sat too until the boys' bedtime when they will be returning home. Doesn't seem like enough time but it will get done. In my mind it is anyway :).

Just another day in Paradise!