(If you didn’t read Part I, click here.)

Little did I know that, in just a few short months, everything I believed about money and how to handle it was going to be tested in the fire.

Ken was called into full-time ministry, and we made plans to move back to our hometown. (More about this decision and its effects in a later post.)

Suddenly his salary was cut in half and I totally lost mine. I won’t go into detail and tell you all of the financial pitfalls we had to dig ourselves out of, or about the struggles we faced returning to one income only. I will say that it wasn’t easy, and our faith was tried more than it had ever been, financially speaking, since we’d married three years before.

And all of this on top of my feeling called to motherhood shortly after our move home? This made for even more of a permanent quizzical look on our faces. “How on earth are we going to pull this off?” we thought. Good thing we didn’t need to — God had it already.

One of Ken’s highest spiritual gifts is faith….and conveniently, it’s one of my very lowest. We’ve been able to see God move and work in our finances since 2003 in ways that we cannot explain. We took initiative…we changed daily habits, established a budget (ugh!) and took a (Dave Ramsey) Financial Peace University class through our church.

We modified our lifestyle and it paid off exceedingly: I am excited to say that as soon as my car is fully paid off, we are debt free.

(Stay tuned for Part III, where I’ll share some of the ways I amended our lifestyle and how I have learned to release money’s control of us over these past few years.)

I have such a torrid past when it comes to my relationship with money. My feelings towards money have bounced back and forth between lack of respect, utter fear, complete adoration, and apathy. I’ve hoarded it, spent it, ignored it, worried about it, obsessed about it, and feared having it (or not having it). Money caused way, way too much drama in my life for many years.

Growing up, I never really was a saver. I had a piggy bank that never got all the way full. I sure did envy and respect friends who could save up for coveted things, though I never believed I could do the same thing myself. A high school job at a department store that required a credit card in order to obtain an employee discount guaranteed my entry into the world of debt. College came, and with it living on my own and making more of my own choices. I’m sad to say that much of my extra spending money during those four years went towards things like veggie burgers, PopTarts, coffee drinks, CDs, concert and movie tickets.

I married Ken and was in utter bliss…for many reasons, of course, but one of them this: I was marrying a chemical engineer! His start-out salary was outstanding….and the ladder only had one way to go: Up. The first six months we were married, I happily spent the money he brought home. After all, our apartment needed interior decoration and our table needed decadent meals on it every evening.

We bought our first house ten months later — a modest, starter home that needed minimal fix-ups. Things were perfect. That is…until, just six months later, we were forced to move two hours away from family and friends due to a plant closure and job relocation.

I was distraught. No…I was crushed. It wasn’t what we wanted to do, but it was what we felt we had to do. A job away from “home” was better in our eyes than no job at all, so we moved away. We bought a brand new home this time, and I found a job that paid well.

But our house was just a shell. It was empty. It needed something. What did it need? More furniture? More electronic gadgets? More clothes in my closet? Paycheck after paycheck went to obtaining these fixtures…yet the void within me was never filled. I felt no guilt purchasing whatever my heart desired. After all, we had no children yet. We both had secure jobs. We were bored. And it made me….happy.

I had fallen head over heels in to the trap of “retail therapy.” What my job, my husband, my house, my health, my wardrobe couldn’t give me, I tried to write a check for, tried to charge to a plastic card.

I remember one particularly bad day at work that left me distraught and frustrated. Instead of going straight home, my car seemed to drive itself right over to the shopping mall nearest my workplace. Within moments I was standing in a glossy aisle, staring straight at an endcap display of brand new handbags put out for spring. White. Linen. Leather straps. Houndstooth interior. Gorgeous. And only $79.50.

“I have never, ever bought something right off of a season’s new line before. It’s so pretty. It’s so NEW. It looks like it was made for me. It smells good. It’s shiny. And after all….I did have a horrible day. This will be my salve, the little gift that makes it all better.”

And with that justification held as tightly in my grasp as the handles of the Macy’s shopping bag, I walked out of that store that night with a new handbag, wondering why I didn’t feel better. Not in the slightest.

Stay tuned for Part II….

In case you’ve been wondering,I haven’t abandoned The Real Me Challenge. I have been planning and brainstorming the future posts to go in it, with plans to publish them after the Christmas holidays. Any I post before then will be a bit, well, lighter.

And here is the first installment of that, where I let you see rare and candid glimpses of my early childhood, where my quirkiness blossomed in full form and my insatiable love for the camera was obvious to all.

An unfortunate cowlick derails the perfect Mary Lou Rhetton/Dorothy Hamill haircut.

The hot pink Strawberry Shortcake swimsuit undermines my hefty attempts to look ferocious.

You’d be hard-pressed to get me this excited about riding on the log flume nowadays.

It was all fine and well when I asked to wear these get-ups on Halloween….quite another thing, however, when I asked to also wear them to school.

A very rare look into my after-school job as a cat seamstress and set designer.

I don’t exactly know whether I’m more embarrassed about playing with Barbies at the age of 10…or my HAIR.

No words.

When they say your wedding day will be a blur, they weren’t kidding. Yet what I didn’t hear as much about is how the birth of your first child (and the two to three subsequent days thereafter) would be just as much of a blur.

While still in the hospital, I experienced an euphoric feeling that can only be explained by 1) the lingering effects of the anesthesia and other meds, 2) the surrealism of being a patient in a hospital for the first time in a long, long time, and 3) the complete and utter consumption with a new little person who measures just 19-1/2″ long.

I had prepared in many ways for the birth and the coming home for the first time. The carseat had been securely fastened into the Jeep for over a month. I had meals prepared ahead and frozen. I had sent home from the hospital one of G’s swaddling blankets for our two cats to smell and become familiar with (since they were, in essence, the “older siblings,” so to speak).

The coming home was glorious. It was a bright, sunny day, three days after G’s arrival, and the weather was just beginning to show the slight crisp snap of autumn. I don’t think I turned around and looked at the road one time as Ken drove us home….I craned my neck and watched G’s tiny feet, all I could see of him in his teeny tiny carseat/carrier contraption.

Recovering from a c-section, physically, was a bit more painful than I’d expected. I was glad we only had one stair in our whole house, a step-down into our bedroom. I gladly let family help with laundry loads and lifting. I enjoyed the five or six consecutive suppers cooked and brought to our doorstep by loving friends and family.

Breastfeeding was going exceedingly well, which pleased me so much. I didn’t dislike getting up for 2am and 5am feedings. In fact, I relished it. I got to snuggle with my little son AND watch all of the fantastic re-runs of 80s sitcoms that are never, ever on television during the daytime.

Yet little by little, the sleep deprivation that all parents do face did catch up with me. By the time G was 5 weeks old, most of the photos taken of me show dark circles under my tired eyes. Being sleepy tends to put a hazy fog over you, and I feel that fog clouded many of the sweet memories of day to day life with Little G that I might have held onto otherwise.

Days and nights became somewhat hard to distinguish between. Drained, I began to feel as if time was painfully slow at moving forward, yet at the same time, felt a sense of panic that it was all flying by too quickly. Quite the unexpected paradox.

Stay tuned for Part II…

People like me….the type-A, love to plan sort….can be idealistic about things in life. Though I’m a staunch realist in so many areas, in regards to things I plan for and strive for personally, I set high goals and see no reason why those goals can’t (and shouldn’t) be obtained. I form a rosy, sunlit picture in my mind of “how things should be,” and I dream and dwell on that image regularly.

So after I was blessed with the news of my first pregnancy, this idealistic planner (read: controlling) part of me kicked into overdrive.

I had every pregnancy book. I abstained from every frowned upon food deemed unsafe for pregnancy. I stressed about what I ate. I stressed about what I didn’t eat. I drank lots of water. I bounced on the big ball. I only slept on my left side. I exercised. I rested. I signed up for birthing classes. I watched every episode of pregnancy and birth related shows on Discovery Health. I interviewed obstetricians, pediatricians. I toured hospitals. I kept a pregnancy journal. I stayed out of the sun and heat. I ate organic produce. I read books to the baby. I bought a body pillow. I put earphones on my belly and let our baby listen to classical music. I let Ken empty the cat litter box. I was early to all of my prenatal checkups. One ultrasound wasn’t enough, so I drove 40 minutes to let students at a technical college give me another one for training purposes. I cleaned. I sanitized. I laundered, folded, and organized.

And I made up a birth plan.

The way I figured is this. In almost all areas of life, you work hard, follow the rules, and stick to the instructions….and your “project” turns out well. You adhere to the assembly manual and you don’t leave out any bolts or screws. You follow the recipe exactly and you pull a perfect cake out of the oven. You handle your money right and you get to enjoy a comfortable retirement.

The only problem? Pregnancy and birth are uncertain and unpredictable. And babies? They don’t know (or care) what the term “birth plan” even means.

You want to know how really sure I was about this “birth plan?” I skipped over every single c-section chapter in my pregnancy books. I didn’t need it. No one in my family had to have a c-section — why would I? I watched them being performed on medical shows and thought, “That poor girl. Glad that won’t be me.” I was seriously that detached from reality. Floating on a dream cloud. Ignorant and naive!

So imagine my shock and utter unbelief when, lying in the OB triage room on a cloudy morning three days before my due date, I heard the doctor say, “His heartrate is in de-cel. It’s looking sort of spooky. We have to get this baby out now. We are going to head to the OR.”

OR? OR? Certainly he meant the Great State of Oregon, because the “operating room” was written nowhere on that birth plan of mine.

I cannot even begin to describe the insanity that ensued. The flurry of activity with doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, and insurance specialists. Sign here. We have to take off your nail polish. We have to do a catheter (sorry). I’m here to shave your stomach. What’s the last thing you ate and when? I’m here to draw blood. Put this on. Take this off. Sit still. Lie down. This shouldn’t hurt. You’re in good hands. Hurry up! Breathe deep. Tell me if you can feel this?

Before I knew it, before I even fully realized exactly what was happening, I was draped in blue fabric and my abdomen was cut open. Our son was born at 11:52am on a Tuesday, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and also in a tight knot. His cry was loud and angry. And my eyes were suddenly filled with tears. Before I’d fully prepared to meet him, he was here. He was safe. He was breathing. He was okay. He was ours, and he was beautiful.

He got here just as he was meant to get here….whether the “plans” lined up to mine or not.