The Truth About Money - 3

Part Three - God's Provision and a $300,000 Debt

I counted the cars we have owned in our 31 years of marriage - 21. That's a lot of cars. What's interesting is how the cars we have owned kind of show our progress financially and changes as a family.

The lime-green Datsun 510 Wagon we had when we headed off for more schooling in Missouri was an indicator of how God was providing. On the trip out there we nearly lost it over a cliff in Wyoming. The bumper was a little mangled from then on but God provided a man who repaired our trailer hitch so that we could continue on in the next town, while we ate breakfast, for way less than he could have charged.

People think of prosperity as having lots of money and the stuff they really want but in the Bible prosperity is always the ability and means to get where God wants you to go. We were on our way to Missouri, to a town where the unemployment rate was around 20% with no job promise, a 10 year old car with a recently mangled bumper, to live the next 3 years in a 12X50 mobile home (trailer) with a noisy window air conditioner, and just enough money to get there. That sounds crazy but it was where God wanted us and it was enough!

I got a job selling Office Supplies on a route which provided a second car. The money I made in wages and commissions, along with WIC and some government surplus food stretched so that we had everything we needed for the time we were there. One entire semester was paid for from an insurance settlement when hail the size of small limes bombarded our car, producing dozens of small dents to go with the mangled bumper. I worked during the day and went to school at night. Walmart was not just the place Marla shopped. It was a recreational outing for our two-year old daughter.

Needless to say, you are only getting a few highlights of God's provision during the Missouri (we sometimes called it misery) chapter of our marriage - just like the Bible only hits some highlights. The bottom line is this: God's provision was always enough to get us where He wanted us to go. When our oldest daughter had tears in her eyes after trying liver for dinner we decided that God was able to provide something (anything) better. We have not eaten liver since!

The trip back was interesting. Before we left, some people at our "House Church" meeting gave Marla a word that God was going to give her the house of her desire. God had provided for three years of school and now (1983) he was providing for us to return to Vancouver, Washington. Once again, I had no promised job. We had a church family we would be joining with but it was not a paid staff position. Another family was moving west to Joseph, Oregon so we rented an extra large moving van. They had agreed to pay their part of the move but were never able to. God's provision was enough for us AND for them. If you have never been to Joseph, Oregon, it's worth the trip. I can still remember the excitement as we came down the Columbia Gorge on a beautiful afternoon, watching windsurfers by the hundreds skim across the water at unbelievable speeds. Thank God we were back among evergreens.

We found that house Marla was desiring - complete with the fenced yard, fireplace, and everything else on her long list that I had thought impossible to meet. God was building our confidence in his unmistakable faithfulness. We were going to need it for the next chapter in our lives.

Our second daughter was born a few months after our return to the area. I had a job by then but we didn't have health insurance so we worked with a Birth Center rather than a hospital. Minutes after she was born, we were getting signals that something was wrong. Forty-five minutes later we were in the ER at OHSU, in shock, and trying to comprehend what was going on. Marla spent the next month living at the hospital and I darted back and forth across the bridge between work and church commitments. Grandparents took care or our oldest. And we waited to see whether life or death was in store for our newborn. Day after day we saw heartache and the same kind of shock on the faces of parents and families as people came and went in the Ped ICU unit. Marla made quite an impression as she showed her stamina and ability to do the same tasks nurses were doing. Finally, after two open heart surgeries, dozens of "procedures," lots of sleepless nights and the prayers of hundreds of people, we took her home. Relief - yes, but mixed with a medical regimen and follow-up schedule that was taxing on Marla most of all. Then the bills started coming.

Having a child cared for so well by so many professionals, we learned, is expensive. We knew it was adding up because every time a nurse opened up a gauze package or put new tape over something a "little yellow sticker" was attached to the file. By the time Hannah left the hospital her file was literally bigger than she was. That's a lot of yellow stickers. Ka-ching! And the grand total is...? $300,000 and change! I watched Marla's face turn white and I laughed. People react in different ways when overwhelmed by some new reality in their lives. It's not that I thought it was funny. I just thought it might as well have been $1,000,000 (probably would be by today's standard).

One day while driving back to Vancouver in our Datsun 510 Wagon with the dents and mangled bumper, wondering whether my daughter would survive the night, it hit me. I have no choice but to trust God. He had already shown Himself so faithful in so many hundreds, maybe thousands of unique, creative, even humorous ways that making a decision NOT to trust Him made no sense at all. It would be like wondering if the sun would rise today. The pattern of its behavior tells you that the sun will rise today - just like it has every day of your life. Clouds block it, and a very occasional eclipse hides it all together for a few minutes. But you know it is still there. That's pretty much where I was. In a sense I felt stuck with my conviction that God had and always will provide. But it was a happy kind of stuck.

By the way, Marla and I ended up paying only for the ambulance trip from the Birth Center to the hospital and maybe a couple of other things totaling a little over $500 but that's another story of God's faithfulness.

Next up - Living On Nothing but Elephant Ears