Remember last week I talked about how the encouragement and love and support of my friends while walking through the desert of testing has been like chocolate ice cream with a peanut butter swirl?
Well, this past week life has been more like my favorite dark chocolate ice cream with a peanut butter swirl packed into a fudge-dipped waffle cone with nuts sprinkled on top!
Two of my best writing friends contacted me a week ago to ask if I could join them in a writing week in Vegas. We used to do this all the time when I lived in California because Vegas is sort of the center of the triangle from where we all live. Then I moved to Sydney and couldn’t go anymore. I was all excited about coming back and getting together again, but the longer John and I go between jobs, the fewer plans we’re making. (At least until we invent the bottomless checking account. We’re working on it.)
But when they contacted me, they said, just get to Vegas or to one of our houses, and we’ll take care of the rest! SWEET!
But…
We don’t have a bottomless checking account. In fact, I wasn’t sure we could even afford to keep going to our old Bible study in L.A. It’s a nearly 200-mile roundtrip. An awesome friend loaned us his Ford Explorer, for which we are immensely grateful, but that trip costs $42 every time we make it. Ouch.
So I started praying about Bible study and the writing retreat. This time I wanted to be the girl who was willing to say, sorry, we can’t afford it, rather than, sure, we have a credit card. The more I worked on our budget, the more little things I found to make things work. Some money came in that was exactly the amount we’d need to buy gas to get to Bible study through Easter.
I went through our expenses and realized that there were a few things we wouldn’t need money for if I were gone this week. A commercial came on TV about a university that not only has an online program, but they’re looking to hire adjunct online faculty in my field. (Getting some outside-writing work that doesn’t require me to buy a corporate wardrobe would be a double-bonus!)
It seemed to me that God was showing me that yes, indeed, I could take this trip. YAY!!!!!
In addition to it being just plain FUN, by the end of this week I should be able to have another draft of my next book. That would put me nearly a month ahead of schedule, which means the book will be published about a month sooner, bringing in money that much sooner. That’s a huge blessing.
Yes, I have to say, in spite of the unemployment woes, I’ve got a double-chocolate kind of blessed life. 🙂 And the cherry on top – lying in the sun in the backyard for an hour Friday while John napped on my lap. Ahh, God is so good, even when he makes us wait.
