Faith in the Face of Fearsome Financial Frustration

Right, so, that post title simply got out of control. Oh well.

And… story time!

So you probably remember that month ago, the Beau and I were robbed. yes – robbed, as in someone broke into our apartment (gasp!), rooted around in our stuff (ick!), and decided to take both of our computers, the power cables to our cell phones, a $5 wooden box, and 70 cents off the dresser (eeek!).

That is a disconcerting event. Particularly since it’s the second time this apartment was robbed (last time it was just a wallet, and it happened during the 3 minutes the Beau left the door unlocked to get a package). So, clearly, it was time to move.

Home-hunting is never a fun experience. It’s stressful. It’s costly. And it’s physically exhausting. But in the end, when you don’t even feel safe in your own home and the slightest creak or bang from outside keeps you up at night, it’s worth it. Except for the fact the Beau has expensive taste and I was sick of worrying about him whenever I wasn’t home with him because I didn’t trust the building, the neighbors, or the local dog catcher. So we found a place to live that was very nice, full of lots of nice amenities, quite safe, and not in the same neighborhood as the last two places we’ve lived.

Except to live there means the Beau has to get a new job – one that pays him regularly. And we thought we had that one in the bag as well… since my office had a cushy administrative assistant position open*, and such a job would give the Beau time to continue working on his writing, and my boss loves the Beau, we thought everything would be hunky dory. Until, that is, HR recognized his name from my benefits paperwork and pulled out the Super Secret Unpublished Make It Up as You Go Along Handbook and said that two people in the same family cannot work for the same boss (the normal manual just says they can’t work for each other). Well, I supposed, at least someone recognizes us as family for once.

Except that now we didn’t have that second income we needed. Of course that’s the day we find out our rental application is approved and we need to sign leases. So on a whim, without any level of guarantee that the Beau would find an adequate job and income, we decided to go ahead and go for the new apartment, hoping and praying we weren’t about to screw ourselves.

As it turns out, the day before our lease began, the Beau began his first day of work in a well-paying temp-to-perm job at a women’s advocacy group (gonna piss his parents off something fierce, lemme tell you – and not even deliberately). This past weekend, we moved in.

Finances are scary. I’ve talked on here before, somewhere, about financial responsibility and such, but it’s still scary. The Beau and I have some debt (not a lot, and no school loans) to work off and this whole theivery and new apartment debacle was very much not in our plans for financial stability. As it stands we should have everything cleans up by the end of the year.

But throughout all this, I re-learned something else … or at least, I should have learned something else. I am a control freak. (That’s not what I learned – I know that quite well about myself (mostly from my best friend who’s quick to remind me )). But the problem is, this was a situation not only did I have no control over, but I had very little recourse for influencing the outcome. I couldn’t hire the Beau, I couldn’t flex the power of my staffing firm to find him a job since I don’t work there anymore, I don’t have a vast network of people who need to hire administrative people, and I didn’t have the money or the time to make the money to replace the missing income.

So I had to give up control, or at least try to. And that was tough. Most of the time Christians talk about ‘giving up control’ and all that jazz; but for me that’s pretty much repeating a little mantra that goes something like, “I can’t do anything about this, but I’m screwed if nothing happens. So God, um, it’s up to you? I guess? Maybe?” Eventually, as they tend to do, things worked out, God helped out, a friend’s connection to an excellent recruiter played out, and we’re all moved in.

So now we are about to be on our way home (the Beau now works just a couple blocks away from me), to a great apartment where we feel safe and secure. We don’t have our Internet up yet (I’ll do my best to update more often this week), and our life is neatly stuffed into cardboard boxes still, but it all worked out.

Thank God.

*we’re still looking for an admin, if you know anyone.

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Filed under Daily-Life
09/19/06 06:57 PM
by The Blogger

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