Money:Weakness to Strength - Installment 1

Over the next several weeks I will be sharing the experience Jay and I have had as Heavenly Father has helped us begin to make a weakness into a strength. This process isn't over yet for us but much progress has been made. The story is very personal but with Jay's permission I share it in the hope that it might bring courage to someone else who is struggling with a weakness and wonders if the Lord has power to heal.  He does.

Money:Weakness to Strength - Installment 1

Just over 10 years ago my husband Jay and I decided we wanted to work together and be on the same page with regard to the care and use of our money. We wanted to know when to spend it and when to save it and have the discipline to stick with our decisions. We wanted to develop the generosity to give enough that it required some measure of sacrifice from us - not so much that we ruined our temporal future and not so little that we ruined our spiritual future. We had tried to do this on our own during the first ten years of our marriage but continued to feel week in this area.

As we talked together over the course of several weeks we knew that we needed the Lord's help to make these changes together. Don't misunderstand – we had been praying during the previous ten years – but we didn't seem to have made much progress and we certainly weren't united in our thinking about money. One evening, referring to Ether 12:27 where the Lord promises that “... if [men] humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” I asked my husband, “Do you believe, after all this time and all these prayers, that the Lord really will make a weakness a strength as he promises?” After careful consideration he replied, “Yes.” Shortly thereafter we knelt in prayer and told Heavenly Father that we surrendered ourselves completely to His judgment and care in this matter and together we asked Him to make us mighty in the area of finances within our marriage. Almost immediately, all “heaven” broke loose in answer to this prayer. Now, ten years later, we wonder if we would have the courage to offer the same prayer if we had known what the path would be that led us to what finally, would be a gift and a blessing. In my naivete, I believed that Heavenly Father would answer that prayer swiftly, that our transformation would take place in six months (a year at most) and we would be made strong just for the asking with perhaps, a little tutoring. I had no idea that surrendering our will to His in this matter would be a very lengthy process, that there would be extreme mental and spiritual anguish and many, many tears before He was able to strip away the old and make us “new creatures in Christ”. Unexpectedly, his tutoring also helped us address some of the other weaknesses we shared as a couple. Pride, for example, was addressed (and neither one of us thought we had any real problems with that!). We began to realize that we each had multiple weaknesses that in one way or another, were connected with our use or misuse of money. Heavenly Father was not content healing one little part of our weakness. He was intent on healing us completely. I have just one word to describe this process: Ouch. And two words to describe the outcome which is still not complete but seems close: Worth it! This is the story of our ten years of tutoring, what he taught us and how he is transforming us.

Within weeks of our prayer it became clear that Jay's job was at stake. What had been a promising small company when we had hired on three years previously suddenly started laying off employees until they were down to one third of their original workforce. Miraculously, Jay was not laid off but it looked inevitable that the company would eventually close its doors. We began to formulate plans A, B, and C. Ultimately, plan C became plan A and we made the decision to go back to school to pursue a graduate degree with the intent that Jay would be a professor of Graphic Design. This would give him more time with us and greater flexibility. We felt great peace over this decision and made the necessary preparations which included leaving the home we were buying in a good neighborhood close to family in Idaho and moving back into an apartment in Salt Lake City near the U where my husband could attend school. I remember driving away from our home and shedding the first of many tears. I shed the next when we pulled into our new home, a second floor apartment in an old house. It was close to midnight and I was tired. I had three little children including a two month old baby who were all asleep in the car. We had made arrangements to stay the night with friends. My mother, who had accompanied us, suggested that she and I go to the home of our friends and put the children to bed. Jay's mother, who had also come to help, said she would stay with Jay and help direct traffic at our new home as the men who had assembled to help us unloaded our truck. I was so grateful to these two women. As we drove I cried quietly. My mother encouraged me. I had great confidence in my mother's words because she, too, had sold her home and gone back to school with my father except, in her case, she had seven children and together they had driven away from family and halfway across the country to a new home and life. I remembered that their sacrifice had brought great blessings to our family and I was heartened.