The year was 2003 and I had just come through a major surgery.  I was home recovering when I received a call from my boss who was checking on my recovery.  “How wonderful,” I thought.    But no more than a few sentences later, she cautiously informed me that my job had been eliminated and I could take my time recovering.  Before she hung up the phone, she said, “Everything will work out.“  “Goodbye.”  And so I moved on.  It took me two years to complete my bachelor’s degree and find my next job.

In 2005, I landed a position that segue my career to what I thought would be a more stable profession.  The tides were still turning on the career front and a year later, my job was eliminated.  This was my second job loss.   The words from the person announcing the layoff still reverberate in my ears, “We appreciate all your hard work.  If we ever restore this function in the company, you are welcome to reapply.”  And of course, the proverbial statement came with closure, “Everything will work out.”  I wasn’t too devastated this time because I had been through a layoff before.  I was prepared emotionally this time.  Plus, I was in the middle of my master’s program and was enjoying the extra time to focus on my studies.

In 2006, my husband decided to accept a job in Houston, TX.  The timing was fortuitous because I didn’t work and my graduate program was nearly complete.  He moved to Houston and 4 months later I joined him.  It took me 4 months to find a job.  In December 2006, I started working again in a profession that was all new to me.  The job was offered to me because I asked the manager to give me a chance.  In exchange for on-the-job training, I offered some great transferable skills and experiences that would be valuable to the job. She agreed and hired me.  It was 6 months into the job that I completed my master’s program.  However, 6 months later, I voluntarily left the position for an opportunity of my first love and passion.

It is now 2007 and I am working on a job of my first love and passion.  The job is going fabulous until 4 months into the position when I learned the group had to produce a business case to justify its existence.  Justification of our group was easy, getting it approved was daunting.  During my seventh month on the job, it was quite clear that our work had come to a halt and our jobs were soon to be eradicated.  I heard that troubling statement again, “Everything will work out.”  This time my response was, “Will it?”  Fortunately for me, I found a different job just in the nick of time.

In 2008, I began working on my 5th job within a 6-year time period.  “Unbelievable,” I said.  “Five jobs in 6 years.”  The job transiency was not over because after 9 months, I learned again that my job would be eliminated.  And it was!  I celebrated my 10th month of employment with a raise, bonus, and the “pink slip.”  My job was eliminated after 10 months at this company.  “This is a set-up,” I thought.  “Who would ever believe my story?”  And to add insult to injury, my boss felt compelled to tell me that, “Everything will work out.”

In November 2009, my husband and I launched a ministry called Disgrace To His Grace.  The ministry focuses on a journey we believe people take in life, those who walk with JESUS CHRIST and those who will walk with HIM experiences.  We were given an opportunity to share it in November 2009 and again in December 2009.

In March 2010, I was enjoying a leisurely Saturday evening when out of nowhere, I was in severe pain that would not go away.  Five days later, I was in the emergency room going through a battery of tests.  After several tests in the emergency room and subsequent more through my 2 doctors, my prognosis landed me facing the “C” disease and recommendations from 4 doctors to have surgery immediately.  There were many prayers offered on my behalf and many good people reminding me that “Everything will work out.”  What a struggle it was hearing those words.  I’ll be honest and say, “I battle hearing them on a regular basis.”  I had to cancel all of my speaking engagements due to my health.

Today, May 2010, my world is dramatically different from what it was in 2003.  I am still unemployed and have been for over a year.  My time is spent in the house 5 of 7 days a week; I go to church twice a week. I don’t have transportation so I rely on my mom and husband to assist me with errands. My health has improved as it turns out I didn’t have cancer.  I have resumed working on the ministry from my home and landed 2 speaking engagements.

Will everything work out?  That is what I’ve been hearing for 7 years.  “Everything will work out.“  Here’s my response to this troubling statement, “I can’t be certain whether everything will work out because my expectations for a favorable outcome has proven to be different from God’s will.  And therefore, I am not certain everything will work out through my eyes and my desires.  But I am most certain that ‘everything will work out’ according to God’s perfect will.  His will is good.  It is holy.  It is righteous.”  Romans 8:28 states, “All things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.”  Track the emphasis in this verse, “things work out according to His purpose”.  Again, “things work out according to His purpose” and not according to our purpose or desire.  I’m a living witness that everything will not always work out from our perspective.  “Things” work out according to God’s purpose for our life.  He’s in control.

Next time, let’s talk about Trusting God.

Why Say, “Everything Will Work Out?” is a post from: Christian Women Blogging - Women By Grace

I don’t hear a loud booming voice shouting out my name as I cower in fear,

It is in the whirlwind of my every day life of wife, mom and aspiring writer that I hear that “still, small voice” speaking to me…

I heard it again today so very clearly.

A sweet Christian friend – an online Christian friend – and I have been mulling the idea of an online partnership – a venture in faith as it were – for several weeks now.  We had a serious discussion one afternoon and it appeared that all lights were green and we were “GO” on the project.

She later emailed me to say that she felt like God was telling her to wait.  That she had other priorities and needed to hear from Him more on the subject.

In the meantime, I began dreaming (literally) and having a vision placed in my heart about this project in a way that surprised me, really.  I was surprised by the continuous dreams at night that would awaken me at 2:00 a.m. with an overwhelming desire to write out lists and begin mapping out these plans.

Even during the day, I began having more conscious thoughts and ideas, and started recording them and outlining several thoughts.

And again, she and I met for a discussion online and began moving in a more purposeful direction towards that goal.  I was THRILLED to be visiting the idea with her again and praising God for the way He was bringing it back into my life.

And then I heard it.  That still, small voice saying, “STOP!”

“What?  Are you talking to me, God?”

I was just mulling over some of the specifics of our conversation, preparing to make a new list when I heard the voice.

“Stop!”

Okay.  So I’ll wait to write my list, I thought.

As I sat quietly I heard, “No.  I said Stop.”

“Okay, Lord – I don’t get this.  She & I would make the perfect team.  She & I have these amazing ideas together and feel like You have had a hand in this.  I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with my mind spinning out ideas and having clarity during the day putting them onto paper! We have each prayed over this individually, and now that we’ve come together and discussed some details, you’re telling me to stop?”

Silence.

So, now I am waiting.

Not for God to change His mind.  But for Him to speak to me again.  Clearly.  Show me the purpose for my dreams. Reveal my next step.

Maybe He just wants me to dream bigger dreams for myself, for my family – and not use them in a ministry online.

Maybe timing isn’t right and we’d be biting off more than we could chew.

Maybe He just doesn’t want us to do this project together.

I don’t  know.  I’m perplexed a bit.

God knows.  So even though I am perplexed, I am “not in despair” (2. Cor. 4:8).

I am just waiting.

And while I am waiting, I will still serve Him.

Debbie is a believer in Jesus, wife to the love of her life, and mom of 2 amazing, energetic princesses. She is an avid coffee and tea lover, enjoys Christian fellowship in person or online, and is the editor of the women’s ministry newsletter at her church.  She can be found blogging at The Queen Mommy’s Cafe, often with a full cup in hand…

While I’m Waiting… is a post from: Christian Women Blogging - Women By Grace

Well this Tuesday I am tackling my taxes. Yeah I know talk about last minute, right? I have actually been working on my taxes for the past week, and it really has been a big reminder that being organized really does pay off. I just keep thinking about all the time I would have saved this past week if I were disciplined enough to keep my tax receipts organized throughout last year.

So this year I plan to get organized in the tax department and I just wanted to share a few tips of mine on how I plan to do this:

Organizing Receipts – I don’t know about you but I am addicted to itemizing everything, and getting every deduction I am entitled to. One of the best tips I have received on getting those receipts organized is to buy one of those expanding file folders and reserve one pocket for each month of the year. Whenever you get a receipt for something that is tax deductible you just place it in the pocket for that month.

Organizing Online Receipts – Last year I started a receipts folder in my email, but honestly that wasn’t specific enough because this year I had to sort through the 2008 and 2009 business receipts. So I got more specific with my folder labels and started a 2009 business receipts and a 2008 business receipts folder. This year I also plan to print up all my online receipts at the end of the month so I don’t spend an entire day printing up receipts for my records.

Tracking Donations – Goodwill is like my favorite place in the whole world. Well not really, but I know our family goes up there to make donations quite a bit. When you are an organizing mom you usually end up with a pile of stuff you simply don’t need. I know with us we donate a lot of clothes, I have three kids, and well ya’ll know how that is! So we donate a lot of stuff to Goodwill and they always ask me if I want a receipt and for some reason I always say NO!

Well this year I plan to take them up on their offer and start counting my donations to Goodwill. I have also found this awesome little tool offered by Turbo Tax called It’s Deductible. With “It’s Deductible” online software you can easily track your donations year round for free. It accurately values your donated items that meeets IRS guidelines, and when it’s tax time you can just import everything to Turbo Tax.

So those are my plans for getting organized for next years taxes. I am always looking for more tips, please feel free to share in the comments below!

Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father,
Lord I just want to say thank you for your constant provision in my life. Not only that but you are always so gracious even when I certainly don’t deserve it. Lord I just pray for your help to be more disciplined in every area of my life. Asking for the ability to be more disciplined scares me, because it truly is something I personally struggle with, but I know with Your help and guidance we will succeed. I love YOU, and Thank YOU for EVERYthing. My life would be nothing without YOU. I pray this all in your might Son Jesus’ name. – Amen!

***
Heather is a Christian Stay at Home Mom of three and happily married to her loving Firefighter husband, Shaun. Her hobbies consist of blog design and blogging. Heather is the author of the “Christian Moms Guide to Organizing Your Home.” She also keeps herself busy homeschooling her three children and shopping at Target.

Taxes is a post from: Christian Women Blogging - Women By Grace

First I would like to introduce myself, my name is Heather and I am a Christian Stay at Home Homeschooling Mom of three beautiful children, and I am also married to the love of my life, Shaun. I love blogging and doing web design in my spare time. As a mother of three I have learned that an organized house is an efficient house. Just ask my husband, I am all about being efficient.

Efficient: Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.

As a wife, mom, teacher, and online business owner I need to be able to accomplish my household tasks in the least amount of time possible so I can have time for what really matters – spending time and developing meaningful relationships with those around me. Being organized helps me achieve this goal by keeping things in order and in it’s place.

One of my greatest pet peeves is searching for something that is not in the right place. I’m not a fan of clutter – although after you see the pictures I am going to share with you in the coming weeks you may begin to question this – even if I don’t like clutter it sure seems to have it’s way of creeping into my house.

I believe that my role as a Christian Stay at Home Mom is to keep my house in order and make it enjoyable to live in for my family. I truly believe an efficient home is a happy home.

So this week we are going to tackle the Hallway Closet – or the coat closet.

Now I will admit it’s taking a lot of courage for me to show you the before pictures. I just can’t believe how cluttered and messy the hallway closet was, and it had been like that for years. When we moved into our house about 6 years ago we just never got around to organizing the hallway closet, and it really just got worse from there. All of the sudden it turned into the catch all closet of miscellaneous things we never EVER use!

Here are the before and after pictures:

Before (ack!):

After (ahh!):

I don’t know, is it just me or do pictures make messy hallway closets look worse than they do in real life? After I took the before picture I was SHOCKED at how bad the closet actually looked. I honestly didn’t think it looked THAT bad.

So now my new thing before I start organizing a room I take a picture of the room so I can really see where the clutter is building up. Sometimes when we look at something on a daily basis it doesn’t look so bad, but when we take a picture of it we get a new perspective of the room.

Here are some tips to organizing your hallway closet in about 30 minutes or less!:

• Grab two bags – 1 for trash and one for Goodwill.
• Put all the coats, clothes, and any other items you don’t use or that don’t fit anymore into the Goodwill bag.
• Throw away all the empty boxes, and trash that you can’t donate to Goodwill and that you don’t use anymore. I can’t even tell you how many shoe boxes were just hanging around the top of my closet. If you plan to use the shoe boxes to store items around the house then implement them RIGHT AWAY, if you can’t – throw them away.
• My Little Green Bin – If you look at the after picture you will notice my cute little green bin. I bought this at Target for $7.99 and I now use it to store items like gloves, scarves, etc.. It really is a handy little bin and it is reasonably priced.
• Hangers – Take all the empty hangers out of the hallway closet and hang them up in the laundry room.

It’s amazing how little time, effort, and money it took to organize the hallway closet, not to mention I did find a few things I plan to sell on craigslist!

Organizing your house can truly be a blessing, sometimes we just need to stop procrastinating and just get it done. Committing to 30 minutes a week to organizing a specific room or corner of the house can truly pay off.

Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for your provision in this world and giving me a home to take care of and live in. Lord help me to stop procrastinating and do the tasks required by me as a homemaker with love and joy. Help me to have the heart of a servant in everything I do. Help me to keep my priorities and heart straight, it can be tough at times to juggle them all in the correct order. Thank you for your love, guidance, and your grace. I pray this all in your might son Jesus’ name – Amen!

I hope you will check back with us next Tuesday for more tips on organizing your home.

Organizing the Hallway Closet is a post from: Christian Women Blogging - Women By Grace