When I was a little girl I loved watching Miracle on 34th Street at Christmas time.  Things just worked out for little Susan and her mother kind of like magic.  God uses his own brand of magic we call miracles to help His children in times of distress.  When we pray, we get one of three answers from Him: No, wait, and YES!  No is no fun to hear from God, unless you believe that His no means a BIG yes coming in the future to something better.  Wait is also no fun because very few of us have the patience necessary to endure the period of time we must wait.  But YES is a miracle!

Yes is usually the result of a prayer prayed in desperation because we cannot do whatever it is we need on our own. We call it a miracle.  There have been many miracles in my life that came from a YES in answer to prayer and some of which came as a yes answer to prayers I never prayed!  I could fill a book with all the ways in which God has answered my prayers with YES.  I’ll share that another time, but for now I’d like to share the ones that relate to my current biggest financial issue and source of stress: my dh’s job loss.

We had been reading and studying and researching real estate investment for years and several months ago we began setting the groundwork in place.  Just prior to my dh’s job loss, we filed an LLC and opened a business bank account.  We were poised and ready and already actively participating and had found our first deal.  I find it curious that the day my dh was inexplicably let go from his job, we had just found a buyer for our first real estate investment deal.  This came after we thought the deal was dead (a few times actually) for reasons that shouldn’t have been, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story.

The very first person interested called us out of the blue to ask if the house was still available because he knew an investor who wanted it.  Amazing, huh?!  And that wasn’t the last issue we had either!  There were several before and after that one incident, but we trusted in God and He found us an answer to every single one of the issues we faced.  We closed our first deal on a little house in Hobart, Indiana and made several thousand dollars profit at a time when we had ZERO income!  Further, we found a way to provide an income for our family without benefit of a job.

The average time out of work for people looking for a job like my dh is qualified for, is about 12 months.  Our funds will not last any where NEAR that long.  Further, our dd is getting married the beginning of June and our lease is up the end of June.  So from that perspective, things look pretty bleak.  But if you add a dash of God, a spoonful of hope and a WHOLE LOTTA hard work, you can see it working out pretty well.

Now, I’m not hear to tell you that everything is going smoothly.  Far from it!  We’ve run into several snags, road blocks and speed bumps.  Things that we expected to go wrong, things that are understandable could go wrong and things that had no earthly way of going wrong, but they did.

What I’m saying is that with enough prayer and hard work, we can get through this and make a living for our family…and THAT is a miracle!

“By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.” -Acts 4:30