Perseverance

Perseverance - steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement

Over the past couple days, this is the word that keeps coming to mind. If I just persevere, then things will be good. Things will change and I/we will make it through this tough time.

I honestly think a lot of it has to do with the exceptionally long winter we have been faced with this year. It didn't start too early, but it has been filled with ice storms, snow storms, and extremely cold weather. The quote usually stated is "life is short." Right now, life is seeming extremely long with extremely short days, even though they are getting a little longer each day! Hooray!

As winter drags on, and we spend more and more time cooped up in the house with our kids and husbands, we start to get grumpy and antsy and just down right upset. We have cabin fever and are not sure what we can do to get rid of it, because there is no money to spend and it is too cold to just go outside for a long walk on gravel roads with no houses for windbreaks!

Well, perseverance has paid off for me this week. At the beginning of the week, my husband and I were not getting along very well, I was grumpy, and my daughter was just a handful. She was a handful basically because I was not in a good mood, or at least that is my conclusion! Around Wednesday, after talking to a couple of my girl friends from church, I decided that I had to make the most of these days in the house, change my attitude, and change the course of the week.

I got home on Wednesday, after working in the morning and having a visit/play date with a girlfriend, and cleaned the bathroom and made supper for my husband. My husband and I had had a few words with each other earlier in the day because our diesel truck wouldn't start, a telltale sign of how cold it is outside. Also, he didn't put the garbage out to the curb for the garbage man to pick up. All I could think about with that scenerio was the money we were "wasting" by paying for garbage pick-up and not using it. Anyway, he came home, our daughter was excited to see him as always, and I had supper ready for him on the table. After supper, I made some homemade pudding for him - something he enjoys tremendously. Then, we played with our daughter together, had an excellent conversation, and just hung out. It was a fabulous night!

Yesterday, I set out to accomplish some tasks around the house. My husband has been complaining about our bedroom, which is temporary, being hard to get around. So, I worked at putting clothes away that were in boxes from the move, organized a few other things, picked up trash, and cleaned. I did all this while my daughter was engrossed in the television. (We only have one tv in our house, and it is in the master bedroom. Therefore, our daughter doesn't spend much time around the tv. It has changed how creative and inventive she is. Even though it drives me nuts at time trying to occupy her, it has been a great change. If anybody is up for a challenge, I say go for it. It has changed our life.) Enough on the sidenote.....After working in the bedroom, Blessing colored while I worked on her scrapbook. I drained some pumpkin and worked on getting 5 loads of laundry done.

When my husband got home, he carried in 3 beautiful pink roses. If you could only smell them. They made our whole downstairs smell beautiful. So fragrant. I felt as if the last two days had paid off. I warmed up some soup, as the wind had him extremely cold. We ate supper and then spent some time with our daughter together. He then took our daughter upstairs and played with her while I worked at cleaning up my desk and paying bills. We then put her to bed for the night. I worked on pampered chef stuff and then we ordered our seeds. It was a great night together.

A little note on paying bills - many of you know our situation. We have moved and 95% of our bills are due at the beginning of the month now. This is a change from where we last lived. As a result, I have been very stressed and uptight about the 1st of the month coming. I had it in my head that we were not going to be able to pay our bills without dipping into savings. My husband brought home a pay stub on Wednesday night with an unexpected pay check. Plus, it was a free check as no insurance was taken out because it was the 3rd paycheck of the month. This was not an "extra" check, it just happened to be how the month fell. However, I didn't realize we would get an extra check. As a result, we were able to pay all of our bills, except our icky propane bill, without dipping into savings. God truly blessed us and really made me realize how much I need to trust him to bring us through. It is so easy to not trust and take finances into our own hands, when really it is God's money to begin with. I know that I needed that reminder this week.

I guess the moral of this post is to persevere, even when the winter is long and all hope seems lost. Know that Spring will be coming soon, the grass will be turning green, the seeds we plant in our gardens will germinate and grow, and the sun will shine and warm up our hearts and the temperature. Even though life is difficult right now, we just need to stay on that steady course and keep on keeping on.