More than "just lucky"

So I think that sometimes when good things happen or things work out how we need them to we have a tendency to think that we are lucky. But it is so much more than that, I know that I need to do a better job as recognizing these instances as blessings, not just luck.

So I would imagine that we are like a lot of young families, sometimes money is tight, some months more than others. Especially with gas and groceries going up and the cost diapers and formula. This looked like it was going to be one of those months and as I sat down to look at our expenses I couldn't quite figure out how we would make it until the end of the month. I prayed, asking the Lord to help us, I applied for a couple of adjuct faculty jobs to supplement our income (I used to teach, but stopped when I was pregnant with Blake), but still knew this was going to be a rough month.

Friday afternoon I got home and my neighbor was outside and she told me that they were going to have a yard sale the next day and invited us to do our own if we wanted, she had already advertised and made signs. I didn't think much about it, just thanked her. I mean I have never had a yard sale, honestly I haven't even been to one. But I started thinking a bit and realized that we did have some boxes of things that we were planning on donating anyway and then I kept thinking and realized that there were qute a few things that we could try and sell. So I started gathering up some stuff. We had plans that night and didn't even get home until 10:30, we got the kids to bed and then Jeff went out to the garage and went through some things. I stayed up until 3:30 getting things together and was up again at 6:30. I thought, if we could make $200, that would help this month and sure take some pressure off. Fast forward 8 hours later, one really bad sunburn and and a grand total of $453. Wow.

It is easy to ask the Lord for help and then sit around and wait. Like I thought a check would magically appear in our mailbox, postmarked Heaven. That isn't the way it works. I worked my tail off on Friday night and Saturday, but I know that the Lord provided the opportunity for this to happen. Jeff and I were talking afterwards about how having a yard sale isn't something we would have done, or we would have thought about it and not gotten around to it. The Lord presented the opportunity but it was in our hands to do the work and make it happen. I know we weren't just lucky but that we are truly blessed.