Its been a super crazy time here at the Temporary Christian house and there is a break in the chaos – but only right now at 2:30 in the morning. 😉
First thing, THANK YOU to everyone who helped out. I had some incredibly wonderful women bless me with financial help when my family really needed it. I was able to put food in the fridge and fuel in my gas tank sooner than not at all because of their generosity.
One thing putting my situation out there for the whole world to read did was really make me get up off my butt and do something about that situation. So I had a garage sale. What I didn’t sell at the garage sale I either donated or pawned. I made $500 from that and regained 3/4 of my garage back. It was like a quadruple win because with that $500 I had the money to negotiate and extension on our car payments. It will cost us more overall (which is, no doubt, why the finance company approved it) but making the one payment on each vehicle brought us up to date. Good timing because we were about a week away from repossession on the car. I used the extra to reward my helpers with Pizza for dinner; they deserved it.
My friend Stefanie, who I attend church with, helped in many different ways like donating her left over garage sale stuff to mine, bringing us dinner one night and letting me know that the church had a benevolence fund that might be willing to help. Walking into the church office to get the paperwork out and then filling it out was incredibly hard. I am extremely grateful that I even had the option to ask and the church approved my request and paid my electric bill. Not just the past due to keep my lights on but the whole thing. That was such a relief.
Through a contact with the local news station we hd a reporter call us about our problems with the State of Florida and the child support people. We thought they would be able to help but, understandably, they didn’t want to sit on hold for an hour to try to maybe find something out. So the story died and our possible help went down the drain. Being told by yet another person that it just wasn’t really that important to help us get our $3200 back was really upsetting so what did my husband do? He emailed the governors office. Yes, he sent an email directly to the Governor of the State of Colorado about how the stet was not helping or caring that a law abiding tax paying voting citizen had basically had $3200 stolen from him because of a possible “computer error.”
If you want something done apparently you have to go over the heads of everyone and bitch to the governor because it worked. The governor’s office called us, got the details and forwarded them to the state liaison. The state liaison called us and clarified the details and called our local child support enforcement office and I am guessing told that lady how things needed to go. It was still a few more days since nothing can be super quick, but eventually they did enough digging and found out that there were 147 people who had the exact same thing happen but because they were all in varying counties they didn’t realize it was an epidemic and not just single occurrences. The state attorney general was brought into the whole thing and they took over and viola after they took over we got our money back from Florida within 10 days. Which coincidentally was right before we needed to pay rent for May which we of course didn’t have.
:GIANT SIGH OF RELIEF:
So we paid some more bills, got my over drafted checking account back in the black, bought some much needed shoes for the 2 youngest, and as a splurge (and early mother’s day present) I bought some running shoes for me. I don’t run but I am trying to be healthier and lose some extra weight. We have extra in savings right now because we are going to need it to move. I AM sure my husband will get the transfer he applied for (though he needs to go out there one more time) but even if we aren’t moving to Las Vegas we will be moving out of this house because we just cannot afford it. Which brings me to my next unexpected blessing.
Dave Ramsey. The church is sponsoring Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. They were having a drawing for a free lifetime membership and of course I entered. I didn’t win. 😦 I decided it would be worth it to pay the $70 for the class/membership and hopefully learn how to never be in this predicament again. First I was offered a scholarship so it would only cost me $35 but I didn’t have the money on me. That was ok and just take care of it at the first class. Well when I got there they told me the church decided to gift me the full cost. Maybe that is not a big deal for the church but it was wonderful for me. Anytime anyone gives you a gift it is wonderful but this is something that will truly keep giving for the rest of our lives.
The help that has been provided to me has definitely been the type of help that Jesus gave to those around him when he was alive. I know I said that God would have to prove to me his existence in a very large and tangible way but I just still cannot change my belief. What I have come to believe is that there is a good in Christianity.
There is a group of people called “Anti-theists.” They are atheists that no only don’t believe in a god but do believe that belief in one is harmful. I can see where they get these ideas from. Many atrocities have been done in the name of god. Whichever god one believes in, it doesn’t matter, horrible things have been done for that god or because of the teachings of the religion that worships that god.
What this past month did for me was make me believe in the good in Christianity. I still think there are some pretty bad things in it that I don’t agree with but there are some pretty awesome things. Things like actually helping people without expecting anything in return. Providing for the community because its the right thing to do. The argument goes that an Atheist does these things because they are right not out of fear from a vengeful god. But I think that the good parts of Christianity lead the good people to do even better and helps the people who might not have otherwise seen a reason to reach out to someone who is different actually reach out to them.
So whether it was god telling you it was the right thing to do or doing it because you’ve been there and want to pay it forward or just because you wanted to, helping other people when they need it is always a good thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Wow it took me an hour to write this post and it is really time to go to bed now.)