Conflicted

We've been in something of a financial quandary for awhile now. We need a larger capacity vehicle, we need to pay off the loan for J-Man's adoption, and we need to fund a new treatment for him. All of these things require roughly the same amount of money, give or take a couple thousand dollars. If you'll notice, I listed three things. We've accumulated enough money to pay for one of them. Therefore the quandary.

So I mentioned in my last post that we had decided to buy a used minivan instead of a new Traverse. While this is a blow to my vanity, it does free up the money earmarked for the monthly car payment to pay for that treatment for J-Man. So now we can afford two things.

And then my parents told us that they are giving us their used minivan as a Christmas present. And while this is a complete answer to our prayers (because now we can afford all three of the aforementioned things) and I'm totally grateful to my parents, my pride has now joined my vanity in loser-ville. I never, ever thought, back when we were filling out adoption paperwork, that I would turn into a charity case. A humbling experience, to say the least.

It's become a constant struggle within myself to not blame J-Man for our financial difficulties. Intellectually, I know that I made the decision to take out that loan for the adoption, and I made the choice to make him part of our family. And yet, he's the one standing in front of me, sucking down every available penny we have (and quite a few that we don't...good-bye 401K, it was nice knowing you) and then telling me how much better the orphanage was because they had more toys. (Can you say fairytale? I sure can.) It's hard to sacrifice so much for so little. It goes against human nature.

But back to the part about God answering prayer. He did indeed. In a way that I never expected. (I was secretly hoping that a winning lottery ticket would magically appear in my mailbox. I suppose that would have been too easy.) I'm working to climb back out of the pit of self-pity and focus on the blessing. And stay hopeful that this treatment for J-Man (that we can now afford) will be the breakthrough that we're looking for.