Well I went to check my Facebook this morning and there it was. A look back at all the things I posted on this day in the years past. Sometimes looking through my memories can be very sobering. I can see who I was before I came to Christ and who He has transformed me to be since I said YES to His will for my life. Some days looking back at my memories can make me cringe. The things I used to say about myself, my husband, my kids, life in general were all so negative and sometimes hateful.
But today was different. As I was scrolling down through my memories I saw this beautiful reminder of how faithful God is. 5 years ago today Cary and I were finalizing our first major leap of faith for God. At this time in our lives we were brand spanking new baby Christians. I was working over night shifts as a cna and was making peanuts in comparison to our financial commitments. Cary was the main breadwinner with a good and stable job. About 3 months or so before this day we felt God saying to us that He wanted to show Himself to us as our provider. He was asking Cary to step away from his job and walk with Him. He didn’t give Cary another job to go to, He simply asked if we would step away from our main source of provision at the time. We prayed for months, friends prayed, our church family prayed. We had an abundance of confirmation that this is what the Lord’s will is for this season. So we did it, we said YES. Cary gave is resignation and we waited.
So now here we were, it was Friday February 4, 2012 and Cary was working his last day. We had no idea what we were doing, Cary couldn’t find a job at all. For a short period of time he was able to work as a temp for a distribution warehouse but it didn’t last but a couple months. By December that year we had lost our home and our only vehicle. We saw God provide for us like never before, we had people bring us bags of groceries, financial blessings and loads of prayer. I’ve never experienced the LOVE of GOD like I did during this season of my life. A friend from church ended up letting us rent her basement and we got a good deal on a van that had a load of issues but it got us from point A to point B most of the time.
During this time though God birthed 2 businesses through us. We started our laundry service and Cary started working on websites. Each one of our clients for the laundry business came from God, we didn’t have any money to advertise and so it grew by word of mouth and random google searches. Cary had no experience making websites, he didn’t go to school or take a class. He did however build our website for the laundry service. Then while we were in the basement of Miss Donna’s he gets 2 emails in one week from 2 complete strangers on opposite ends of the US. They wanted to hire Cary as a contractor for some web work. Cary had forgotten that months ago he had made a profile on a site where people can hire out web work to contractors. I guess the way it usually goes is a person with a need posts their need to the site and hundreds of people submit their application to the job post. Well then the person with the need can use a series of filters and interview their top candidates via phone or email. Well Cary had made a simple profile that basically had his name and contact info. No resume saying he can do anything relating to web development, no past work experience in the field, no hours logged on this site showing that he’s done jobs through this company before. So somehow 2 different people found Cary in the same week and emailed him personally asking if he’d like to do some work for them. He knew he didn’t know how to do the work, but he was willing to teach himself. So he took the jobs and spent 30+ hours learning how and billed for 10 hrs. That went on for weeks. He’s still working for one of those companies that took a chance on him. I still can’t get over how they even found Cary. I know it was God showing Himself as our provider. We literally had nothing to do with any of it.
God is faithful y’all. I just wanted to encourage you today and let you know that He is worthy of our trust. He loves you, and He longs to be God in your life. He doesn’t want to beat you up about all the ways you do wrong, He want’s to embrace you. He wants to show you His love, His mercy and His grace. He wants to cultivate a relationship with YOU! If you need prayer or encouragement just let me know and I would love to pray with you and tell you more about this Jesus that I’m so crazy about. He is REAL, He’s ALIVE, and He’s LOVES YOU!!!!