Divine Assistance

Everyone who has several children knows that God supports them in raising and caring for their children in miraculous and unforseen ways. When I was pregnant with Rachel, we had to get a minivan to fit all of our children. Minivan prices were rather astounding to us, and we were living at the very edge of our income already. John would often sigh and say, "We can't afford a $200 a month payment. We can't afford afford a $50 a month payment!" That was when I was a good 7 months pregnant. Yet, the need was there, so we persisted in looking for a minivan. We found a good van at a good price. Our payments were $155 a month and Rachel was born a month and a half after we bought the minivan. When John went to add Rachel onto the health insurance we had a big surprise. John's employer at the time, the State of Kansas, has a health insurance program for their employees under a certain income.  (This wasn't a state run program.) Once we had Rachel, our income was low enough that we qualified for this program. Our health insurance premiums went from $550 a month to $220 a month. We had the money to pay for the minivan and even a little extra. We knew this was Divine help. The minivan has also ended up being a very good and reliable car. We have been very blessed with it, because after 4 years and the car being 10 years old, we have had no expensive repairs. In fact, the new tires we just put on at $250 is the most we have spent on the car at one time. And because we were also able to make it an 8 passenger van before Anya was born.

After, Joseph was born, we outgrew our minivan. We bought a small commuter car from John's brother and just took 2 cars when we needed to go with the whole family. But John's brother needed their car back, and we needed extra money for the closing costs on the house, so we sold the car back to them for the same amount we had paid them. We were then without a car that fit our entire family, and a large mortgage. It took about 3 times of driving with the children all buckled in properly, but with one parent on the floor or squished next to the kids for us to realize that we needed a legal vehicle for our whole family. We started to look online, and we researched big vans. This week we made some appointments to look at a couple of 12 passenger vans. A few days later John received an email from his job stating the company is giving everyone a 3 to 5% raise and it will show up in the July 1st paycheck. The raise will give John the exact amount of money we are looking at for a car payment. John will have only had the job for 6 months when he gets this pay raise. The date also corresponds to the exact time we expect to make the first car payment. We are still looking for a van, but now we know how we are going to afford it. We know that this is Divine assistance. God gave us these children and He has always given us a way to take care of their every need. I know that God will continue to provide us with His help in raising how ever many children we have.