Does anyone else tell themselves “As soon as I get through this difficult (stressful, busy, etc.) situation, THEN I’ll have some relief for a while”, only to literally not have any relief? Or is that just me?
Even though I’ve been feeling quite exasperated, I saw this gorgeous rainbow a few days ago. It brings me comfort to be reminded that God’s promises will always be kept. 🌈
I’m actually a very optimistic person, despite how it may seem when I’m describing the plethora of problems that life has been pummeling me with. In fact, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate my wins.
Lexi’s sweet 16 party was a big success. She made some wonderful memories, she got quite a lot of presents, and she felt celebrated (which is most important to me as her mom). Here are some pictures from her birthday. I’m so proud of her and so thankful God chose to make me her mama. Here are some pictures we took at her party and birthday dinner.
I also managed to pull off Joseph’s graduation party, which I may have already mentioned but dangit I’m counting every win.
I survived the stress of a new litter of puppies being born. There have been some health problems with some of the puppies, and not all of them survived. That has been terribly difficult to deal with, and yet we’ve survived that as well. I will refrain from giving any updates on the puppies until everything feels a little less tumultuous on that front, but Penelope (mama doggo) is in good health and has a thriving milk production.
With those three wins in my book, now I just need about forty more before our life isn’t being rocked quite so hard.
I found out a couple weeks ago that my dad has cancer. I am very upset about it. He began chemo and I immediately started trying to plan our trip this summer to Texas so we can see him as well as our other family. My son is in the midst of enlisting to the Marines, and we haven’t been home to visit in several years. This summer I promised the kids that we would go, and then after finding out daddy has cancer, it became even more important.
As determined as I am to get us there, life seems determined to beat me down and bleed me dry of money. My husband lost his job, and despite two extremely promising leads getting our hopes up, has not been given a job offer. He does free lance work designing websites & doing credit repair, but it’s not enough to pay the bills. I have an eBay resale business called Happy People Shoppe, but again it’s not enough for us to pay the bills, let alone take this trip.
I do a lot of volunteer work on top of my resale business. I am the full time content creator, researcher, and writer for Ezer Rising, which is not a position I am paid for. Ezer Rising is a community, but consists of a FB page, group, & Instagram that totals approximately 30K followers across all platforms. I spend a lot of time writing, researching, & creating content that teaches and empowers women to use their God given talents, gifts, and abilities to lead within the Body of Christ. I feel very passionate about this, so I create room for it in my busy life as a labor of love.
I’ve decided to ask for help from this wonderful community that I’ve grown to love so much. I literally hate it, with every fiber of my being, but if I’m going to make it through this summer, I’m going to need help.
I am working very hard right now because I need an influx of income for the trip to Texas, and to cover all bills while I’m away. There are also some other random expenses such as an oil change and a tire repair before we can go. That’s not even taking into account the fact that we have our mortgage due, and an electric bill. We’re expecting a job offer any day now, but our emergency funds (though weren’t abundant), have already been exhausted.
This is me asking for help. I don’t like it, but I know that as the body of Christ sometimes we need one another. I am constantly telling other women to learn how to ask for help and actually let people help them, so now I get to once again practice what I preach. 🤦🏻♀️
If you’re not in a position to help, please do not feel pressured. If anyone understands, I do. If you’d like to say a prayer for provision, that would be greatly appreciated. But if you are able to help, and you feel so inclined, here are the ways you can help.
Firstly, you can shop my eBay store.
Secondly, you could make a monetary gift towards the travel expenses for my family of five to go to Texas to visit my dad, who has cancer.
Every one of those are links that will take you directly to where you can give safely through those apps.
I will be shipping orders right up to the 21st of July. At that point I will be setting my storefront to vacation mode (though I can’t think of anything less like a vacation), which allows people to place orders, with the understanding that your order won’t be shipped until I return.
Thank you for the love and the support that is so palpable in our little community we’ve built here in our little corner of the internet. I will never cease to feel grateful and proud of the kindness and true generosity I’ve seen between beautiful strangers on social media.
Nobody will be able to ever convince me that my online friends aren’t real friends. Thank you for being one of those beautiful souls that God has crossed my path with.
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