Last week my other daughter gave birth to a healthy little girl, Harper Leigh! She weighed in at 7 lbs even and was 19 inches long. Prior to Harper’s birth, I had been assigned the duty of watching her big sister, 2-year old Raelyn while her Mommy (my daughter) was in the hospital.

Harper Leigh 8/12/13 

When Raelyn & I arrived home after her new sister was born, I heard a gigantic noise in the house. It was so loud that I thought there was a person in my house diving for cover. I searched the house, even under the beds, and found no one there. Sadly, the next morning when I went to leave, I figured out that the noise had actually been the sound of my garage door slamming closed because the spring had broken. Here I was with my car stuck in the garage, a hungry 2-year old with no food in the house and a radio interview I had to get to later that day.Fortunately my son in law (the new Daddy) came running to my rescue and was able to get the garage door open long enough for me to get my car out of the garage. I had the garage door repaired a few days later to the tune of $200. I felt thankful that although I had quit my job, I still had the money to pay for this repair.

A few days later, I awoke at 4 a.m. sweating in a very hot house. Apparently my air conditioner had gone out in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the repair person that I called was able to come over the same day and fix it. However, that repair cost $500. So within one week’s time, I had $700 of unexpected repairs that I had to pay for. This could have been enough to shake my confidence about the decision I had made just a few months earlier to give up my financial security to step out in faith and follow the path God created for me. It didn’t though.

The secret was that I mentally I flipped it around and chose to look at it from a positive angle rather than from a negative one. Rather than focusing on the negative – that I had to spend $700 I hadn’t expected to spend, I focused on the positive – the fact that I had the $700 to pay for it. So rather than feeling like this was a “sign” that I had made the wrong choice when I gave up my financial security, I chose to look at it as a blessing.

You might be saying, how could two unexpected repairs that set you back $700 be a blessing? Well I’ll tell you how. It was a blessing that it happened now, when I still have a little bit of the money that I saved while planning to leave my full time job. If this would have happened next year, I don’t know that I would have had the money to pay for the repairs then. I felt like at least this way, we get that out of the way so I don’t have to worry about it next year.

Although I felt extremely happy about the “blessing” of the $700 worth of unexpected repairs, I had to laugh and scratch my head in amazement at what happened next – 2 days after the air conditioner went out (so we’re still within the same week here), I won $250 on a 50/50 raffle at a fair! I screamed and jumped up and down in joy when they read my ticket number. While driving home 10 minutes later I got a speeding ticket! I hadn’t even had time to figure out how I was going to spend the money and now I knew it was going to be used to pay the ticket. I could again look at this situation as a tragedy, I lost the money I had just won OR I could look at it as a blessing – that I had just won enough money to cover the ticket. I chose to look at it as a blessing. But nonetheless, it’s these kinds of things that make you go hmmmmm…