Biggest Loser, Part 9 -- Major Gain: Our Insurance

By November 2009, I was beginning to accept and adjust to my reality as a “temporary single mom” with six kids, as I began to see glimmers of hope in our crisis. The Lord replaced our marriage as we knew it with the “gain” of a more God-centered one. He was giving us a “marriage makeover” as He began to guide us in how to biblically function in our (new long-distance) roles as husband and wife during this challenging season of physical separation, but one of emotional and spiritual unity.

We both knew that we deeply loved each other and wanted to honor God in our marriage. However, actually living out that marital commitment each day was and is so difficult, as our only forms of communication are very limited with short, one-way phone calls, letters in the mail and now email. Constant fears, frustrations and misunderstandings became our daily struggles with each other. I was learning that the bottom line is, if we did not live out the Gospel of repeated sacrifice, forgiveness and grace, our marriage would not survive these tenuous circumstances.

Our crisis also forced me to seek God’s will alone, and not lean on my own limited logic, past career path, or fear of financial insecurity, about the type of job I should pursue. I wanted to seek God’s true calling for my life, not just advance in the management profession I knew, regardless of the cost. I aspired to be more intentional than ever with the use of my time, talents and training to put “people over things” and “the eternal over the temporal.” My desire was to serve others by sharing the “tangible hope” that I was receiving by His grace through this journey.

I was experiencing firsthand how surprising and fun God was to reconnect me with Betsy and Entrusted Ministries after all these years! I see now in hindsight how the biblical parenting principles I first learned through Entrusted over 9 years ago in 2001 helped to prepare me for this challenging season of being a single-mom to our 6 kids. The opportunity to serve part-time in a ministry for a female Executive Director with other godly women was a true and specific answer to prayer!

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Continued from Biggest Loser -- the story of one Mom's journey of hope through devastating loss.

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However, I soon realized that I had to step out in faith to overcome the obstacles that came with accepting a part-time ministry position. Although I valued the flexibility and limited number of hours of my new job, our family had to aggressively cut costs, downsize and be creative to stick to a very limited budget. My constant struggle was, “Is this decision really faith or foolishness?”

There were none of the typical corporate benefits or perks I was accustomed to in my previous full-time management positions. I just had to trust the Lord that He was sovereign over every detail of my life and would provide as needed. It was a different way of life for me, difficult to fully follow God’s plan when I was used to being in control and self-sufficient as a natural Type-A personality. For the first time, I realized how little control and answers I truly had over my life and our circumstances. Perceived control is so different than actual control!

Over the past 2 years, I began to see how the Lord was providing for me with His own provisions of insurance, defined as “a guarantee against loss or harm,” in specific areas of my life through Entrusted:

“Spiritual Insurance” – Instead of staying stuck in despair and depression, Entrusted helped redirect me back to God alone to fill the huge voids that were left by the departure of my husband and the other losses I so suddenly experienced – my job, our insurance and benefits, our house and my identity. I immediately joined an Entrusted class in the fall of 2009 (for the 4th time) and was again encouraged every week by both the biblical principles and practical parenting steps to apply with each of our 6 kids, then ages 1-15. I needed the reminder that “In Christ, there is no hopeless situation for you ever again. You are never at a point of being so desperate that God doesn’t provide a way of truth for you, a way out.”

I was able to seek and find daily hope through reading His Word and prayer, disciplines Betsy personally shared with me when we met for one-on-one discipleship in 2001 to 2002. The simple steps I learned back then of color-coding key verses and themes in my Bible taught me to love His Word and hide it in my heart over the past 10 years. This incarceration experience also taught me that even though I could never call my husband during his 5-year prison sentence, I could “call” on the Lord, “my spiritual husband,” anytime, anywhere. I was learning how to “pray without ceasing” both in times of desperate need and times of abundant blessing.

I can see how if I did not have this “spiritual insurance” in Him and His Word, I could have easily been tempted to fill the voids in my life with a number of worldly diversions – in other words, sin.

“Social and Emotional Insurance” – Although I initially became isolated because I was worried that friends and neighbors outside our inner circle would find out about “our secret,” an interesting and amazing surprise occurred.

I began to see how the Lord had already woven a safety net of believers in the body of Christ through the friendships I had invested in over 9 years ago when took my first Entrusted class. Many of the other moms I met in my Small Groups became some of my closest friends as we “did life together” over the years and struggled through the ups and downs of parenting – new babies, adoption, marital challenges, dating, and teenage rebellion to name a few.

As I began to humbly reconnect with and confide in each of my close past and current Entrusted friends, I encountered God’s pure grace instead of worldly judgment. Their encouraging prayers, Bible verses, emails, meals, babysitting and hand-me-downs were practical blessings that lifted me up when I felt so low I thought I couldn’t go on another day. This was God’s way of reassuring me that He was constantly aware of my every need (both spoken and unspoken) and wanted to bless me as I tried to trust in Him alone.

These women were ministering to me according to Galatians 6:10 which reminds us, “So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.” I was learning up close, the definition of “opportunity” as taught in Entrusted to be “the convergence of seeing a need and the ability to meet it.” I wanted God to show me how to find opportunities to generously bless others through the grace I was receiving.

Through the incredible body of Christ, I was able to humble myself and through God’s grace, tear down the invisible prison of isolation I was building, one without physical bars or a fence.

“Financial Insurance” – Although we were able to successfully live on a much smaller monthly budget, like every family, we encountered those “unexpected, out of the ordinary expenses.” As I would quietly pray and ask the Lord if each of these surprises were needs or wants, He would directly answer our prayers. He would either provide for the need, through a variety of godly people and circumstances, or show us that it wasn’t a true need.

After witnessing God’s provisions for our family time and again in so many different situations, I no longer felt the pressure to secure a full-time management job. Although we were later blessed to obtain basic health insurance, He was teaching me to trust in Him alone, one day at a time, for all of our needs. He was graciously continuing to daily load us with all His generous benefits!

More to come...

Biggest Loser, Part 8
Biggest Loser, Part 10

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