What was your budget in 2010,Are u- n the red

The sutuation of this economy has really sucked the life from so many. Yet are you sure it has sucked the life or just your air and desire to breath. The great difference to life and air is the breath and your personl choice to breath : to live is the diffrence in survival and dying.


You may be facing the economy and realizing you have been in a job for 20 years and now see that a potential threat of your career being gone is your reality. What will you do or how will you react?


Grace is easy under some terms but when we think about the fact that God controls every thing it really makes it difficult to overcome some issues for new belivers and the fact is "I would find this hard to over come and even yes outloud "why me God". Listing behind that so many tributes and reasons for his grace to be over me beause" I Sandy did these things for him after all" so why me?


Simple yet complex. he doesn't give me a reason nor does he always put the resolution in bold before my days of double vision. It was as if I speak of God but he did not speak of me. It took me years to figure why that was. I just needed to see clear. God does not have a shadow nor a haze he is vivid, he is that "master of clarity".


Look at Job: come on is really the fact that you need to give up Starbucks,Wendys or Ryans Steak house a big deal. A small sacrifice when we look at Job. His loss, his tragic sense of abondonment by loved ones, his mental anguish, his slowly to pass days filled with all of these things were more than a testament to God; GOD BE THE GLORY, BECAUSE HE WAS AND IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE.


How many times was he in the Red and his budget at the end did not matter ,all that did was GOD.


I firmly know that what is allowed by GOD is for GOD.


Example in 2002 I was truly sick and at times questioned if I would live into the year 2003

Out of work unemployed and unable to work. Living in a home where we had no heat but the fireplace, with no air, but a window fan (for one long summer);until we got a window unit. this home was built in 1912 and not insulated.

The first year the water pipes burst. So, I learned to be a patchy plumber, the stove pipes blew off the house, so I learned to climb the ladder and put the pipes back together, the floor was caving in so I crawled under the house and jacked it up, so we could replace a support beam. I know this home was not ideal nor was it the best times in my life emotionally, physically, the one thing for certain is that I was disconnected spirtually.


Being disconnected it takes alot to get your attention at times and it got mine finally. From living very comfortable to living very hard, from good health to facing fear of death with bad health,from having a son menatlly stable and independent to having one fall so far, I still can't rescue him. Defeated in so many areas of my life was raw and it made me angry.

So when I questioned God he gave me his answers; what the crap, did they mean? As I looked @ filing my taxes earlier this year I reviewd my income over the past few years and consumed it was very interesting in that I had years of greater income and greater controversy in my life. It seemed to flow together, and years of poverty followed by the grace of God, when I was @ my lowest God was @ his peak. I learned to be a plumber, fix pipes, replace support beams, love nature, became more and more intense about writing, and more spiritual. Learned to love life even with the hardships. I vowed to be the parent God wanted and then he said now you must be the wife I am making,(endurance).

I became passionate about the flowers in nature, and was so perplexed about the vast array of different species of animals. To see a deer @ my front door, chilling @ their comfort level in thier own atmosphere, where I was welcomed into. The year to year prance of the wild turkeys, as the "Tom" would drag his beautiful vibriant beard across the sand , and grass. To watch seemingly a trooper blind armadilla enter my yard to be chased away by our guarding minuture collie, over and over the chase would continue.

Surrounded by wild berries, sitting on a porch listening ,in the stillness of the rapid flutter of a humingbird as they fight over my "sugar red dyed filled homemade feeder". I would sit for hours watching this remarkable creation, filled with almost a sense of becoming their advocate to see whom would win the feeder. I knew them by colors and by their personality.

Watched my husband fill the summer evening's by gathering berries to make Jelly from brier berries to blue berries. He was filled with a great sense of accomplishment when he poured the mason jars and listened for the intense heated click of the 'poppong lid", it echoed through the massive kitchen, into our bedroom at the oddest of hours a sign his jelly was set. He supplemented our income one summer by selling the berries. I must say I miss those times in my marriage.

God gave me times to grow, to learn to love his power and to surrender all my fears during those years.

The blessing would come by the form of a young pastor whom entered my life by the path God set him on. He was not sent to rescue me from anything but to give me a true glimpse of what God will do for you. I never thought I did not know God nor that he did not know me. I just always thought I had the southern baptist right to question "why".

I now look into the remainer of 2010 and can see the times I questioned him only prolonged his answer. I enjoy reading the Bible and even have come to understand it more and more.

I reminence @ the old home and the old me and the youth of this pastor whom God gave so much wisdom to and know God tested me to see how much of the red I would purge through to see his colors of the rainbow.

My budget is not about the dollar or the huge home or the comfort of central heat and air. It is more and more about God and filling the corners of my defective personality, defective ailing body, growing spirit, seeking soul with his son Jesus Christ.

I welcome you to find those things that are obstacles as an advantage and a chance for growth. Plan the next budget with the view God is giving you and just sacrifice it will be surfice.

God you loved me in the beginning and I am learing to love you finally in the end.

Thank you for sending someone from the city to view the country. "James Ross " thanks for your support and sharing your wife and family with me and my growing spirit.