The Ask, and What I Learned

About a month or so before our family moved to Oklahoma we made a difficult decision. We were in a money crisis. A series of events involving job layoffs, clients leaving, etc. had us living almost solely on credit cards. We knew a job change was in the near future, but we had about two months to survive until we would be seeing a steady paycheck.

We felt like God was leading us to ask for financial help. It was a VERY hard thing to do because it was a VERY humbling thing to do. We avoided doing it for awhile. We put it off. We wrote the letter and never sent it. But God kept bringing back to the forefront. It was the next step He wanted us to take. And it was very clear, because up until that time God had provided for us. Even though we never had a secure steady paycheck during our two years in California, we always had enough. And then the provision stopped, suddenly it just dried up. We were living on credit cards and made our first ever late rent payment in the history of our marriage. God didn’t disappear though, He just was asking us to handle things in a new way. He was asking us to ask for help.

So we made the ask. We emailed friends and family a letter that had been edited and re-edited many times. We were so nervous at what people might think of us, but we knew we had to be faithful to what God was asking of us.

The purpose of this blog post is that I wanted to share with you what I learned from all of this. If you need the abridged version, just read what’s in bold:

• When God calls you to do something difficult, Satan will try and convince you that you’re out of your mind. He’ll prey on your doubts, put new doubts in your head, and discount what you were sure was God’s voice. (Some of my doubts were, The economy is bad and no one has money to give right now. People will judge us. People will think we’re wanting pity. People will think we got ourself into this mess and should get ourself out. ) Notice how much Satan made me worry about what others would think of us!
• Don’t edit, revise or cut back on what you think God is asking of you. As I was putting together the email addresses of who to send our letter to, I kept trying to edit out names. Thinking oh, this person won’t have any money right now, or this person will judge us, or this person won’t understand. It was really hard to just stick with the whole list. I realized if I started editing, I’d end up with no one to send it to. So I stuck with the full list of names.
• You will be blessed by people you least expected to be blessed by. I was amazed at the people who gave sacrificially to us. People that I knew didn’t have a lot of money to give and yet gave anyway. We were also blessed by letters of encouragement from those who couldn’t afford to give. They came along side us and let us know they were experiencing similar hard times. There was great strength in knowing we were not in it alone and that we could pray for each other.
• There will be opposition. Then of course there were those who didn’t approve of the letter we sent or were put-off by it. I will say these were few and far between, but they were hard to stomach nonetheless. Sometimes opposition will even come from the people you thought would be most supportive. This too is hard, but there are always critics in life. What I learned is that if your conviction to do something comes from God, no opposition can bring you down. If you know, that you know, that you know that God wants you to do something, you’ll have peace about it.
• It’s humbling. Every time another check or PayPal gift came in we were humbled yet again. Making the ask was humbling, but receiving the gifts was just as humbling. The realization that someone is sacrificing on your behalf and there is no way you can repay them…wow. I lost a lot of pride through this process.
• There came a revelation that God’s doing something here, and it’s bigger than us. Through this process we realized just how vast and deep the body of Christ actually is. Too often we try to be independent, self-sufficient, when what God really created us for was community. This ask ended up being less about us and more about the body of Christ in action. It was neat to feel like we were a part of a movement much bigger than ourself and our debt. We felt embraced by a community and warmly surrounded, rather than suffering alone in silence.
• We witnessed miracles. While our credit card debt was not erased through this process, it was altered. (We continue to pray for miracles on this matter. We were able to stop living on a credit card and pay our monthly utility bills. On top of that, we had the much needed immediate cash to pay our California rent and to secure a new home to rent in Oklahoma, where Tony was accepting a new job. We also saw, through the power of prayer, our home in California rented to another family, which saved us over $9000 we would have been responsible for to buy out our lease. Incredible things done, outside the realm of what we could have EVER accomplished on our own.
• People enjoy helping. For the most part, friends and family like to know about when your hurting…they also like to know what they can do to help. Giving a clear picture of what we needed allowed others to take action on our behalf. Their lives were blessed by being a blessing to us. Cool how that works.
• Our openness inspired others. This probably shocked me more than anything. I never dreamed that our “ask” would inspire others to make similar asks in their lives. A handful of people emailed us and shared with us how our openness and transparency freed them up to be transparent in their own lives. That is just so very cool. I’m so thankful our hard situation could FREE up others.
• I sooooo long to help others. Being blessed by so many has left me with this insatiable urge to want to be able to bless others. I have started including in my prayer life an ask to God to bless our family so that we may in turn be able to bless others. I so long to be able to give back to others in need as I’ve seen so many do for us. I believe, with time, when we’re ready to handle it, He’ll give our family this opportunity. I can’t wait.