When we met in 2009, my wife was working as a research nurse in the Emergency Department at the hospital. I was working part time at Starbucks and part time at a community college evaluating transcripts. We got engaged after five months of dating, and married a year later.
I moved into her rowhouse in the city after the wedding. It only took one trip--everything I owned fit in my Honda Civic. I don't know what we did with all the time we had back then--we went to the movies, had coffee and breakfast on the back porch, took bike rides. By then I had gotten a job in admissions at a small local college, and was making $30,000 a year, and Debbie was promoted to supervisor and eventually manager of the research department. We were DINKs (dual income-no kids) for about a year before our first child was born, and then we were, I guess, DIOKs.
We were happy in our little house. We had great neighbors, but the surrounding area was getting a little rough with the violence and drugs. When Deb's maternity leave was up, our boy went to daycare at the local Catholic community center in Little Italy. Then number two came, and we continued to do the "daycare shuffle," with every intention to stay in our house and send the kids to the local Catholic schools for elementary through high school. This was what people did, and we just thought it was what we would do too.
After a couple years we crunched some numbers and figured it might make more sense to move to the next state over. My wife had gone to Catholic school her whole life, and I had gone to public school. The cost of private Catholic school in the state we were in did not seem to offset what we would spend in higher property taxes in the next state over, and I felt the kids would get a better education in the public school system. We put our house on the market in January of 2015 when the kids were three and two years old, respectively. By the grace of God (and a good relator), we said goodbye to our old house and moved into a new house that Spring. We had more bedrooms, half an acre of land and room for a garden, could leave our cars unlocked in our driveway, and were situated between our two places of employment. The schools were good in the area, so the plan was to start our son in Kindergarten the following year, and our daughter the year after that.
My income had bumped up a little, and my wife was moving up as well. But the daycare shuffle was starting to wear on her. She hated being away from the kids during the day, was bringing work and stress home with her regularly, and it was hard to keep up with the pace of things. In an attempt to alleviate the constant driving and daycare expenses, we had a live-in au pair from Italy to take care of the kids while we worked, since it wasn't much more than daycare for the two. It was nice not having to shuttle constantly, but as relatively private people having a live-in childcare worker was an adjustment.
We eventually found out we were pregnant with our third in May of 2017. It was around this time we experienced a conversion thanks to finding a Miraculous Medal down at the beach and wearing it. The Blessed Mother was reorienting our hearts to life, and we began to trust God's will for us in a way we hadn't before. We turned everything over, consecrating ourselves to the Immaculate Heart in October of that year.
Our son had started Kindergarden that fall at the local elementary school. He rode the bus, and made some little friends, and had a great teacher. But as my wife and I moved closer and closer to an orthodox expression of our faith, we began to wonder whether this was what God wanted for our lives, for our children, and for our family. We had friends who homeschooled, and we were always impressed by their children--their manners, morals, and how they learned. I think my wife in her heart of hearts wanted to be home and homeschool, but knew I had to be on board as the spiritual leader of the household, and at that point I wasn't. I didn't know how we would make it work financially. In many ways, I still don't.
After our third was born, though, my wife was dreading the thought of going back to her management position. We prayed, and decided it might be better to go back to bedside nursing despite the sizable paycut. This might also allow us to pursue homeschooling, should we go that route. My wife was happiest when she was home on maternity leave with the three kids. She made dinner, cleaned, and just relished being a wife and mom with undivided time and attention. It aligned with her nature. I, for my part, was adjusting to the loss of the salary we had been bringing in. We never had an issue writing big checks for repairs and charities; it gave us a comfortable cushion in which we could handle just about anything.
But even at twenty hours a week, my wife was struggling. We considered ourselves fortunate to have options for her to work part time and still make a good hourly rate as nurse. But it was hard to find time to sleep, and the house was always a mess and hard to keep up with the attention the kids needed, especially with the beginning of our commitment to homeschooling approaching this Fall. So we decided to double down and trust, turning everything over to God to make a way where I didn't see one.
The Lord has never let us down. My wife's favorite psalm is Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." We reached out to stay at home moms and learned about budgeting and a more traditional approach to marriage and family life, about men and women's roles and the natural order God established. I began to pray about having the courage to accept and embrace more my role as provider, and my wife began to realize her role in stewarding and caring for the home. God truly did make a way in making the numbers somehow balance, and providing opportunities for me to make some more income, and for my wife to work a minimal amount of hours to move us closer to that ideal.
We have never really had to budget before, but now we are doing so. We are learning to trust the Lord with our finances, with His provision to provide for our needs, and to appreciate the little things. Our income has dropped by more than half of what we were bringing in previously. but that salary did come with a cost, and the cost was, for my wife, time. My dad used to have a picture of a mountain stream in Colorado above his dresser when I was growing up with the words underneath: "Nothing is ours, but time."
But ultimately, our time is what the Lord lends us. No one knows the amount of days he will live. We have to be stewards of our finances, what the Lord has entrusted us with to live. But we also deal in the currency of the day, which is really time, which we trade for money. We never trusted God with our fertility, until the past year, and He was returned what we trusted Him with a hundred fold. We are now embarking on that same journey with regards to our finances, entrusting them to His management. We are at the beginning stages of that journey, but we look back to all He has done for us, all He has provided, and we don't doubt He can multiply those loves and fishes again.
God is so good. All He wants is for us to trust Him, not just with this or that, but with everything. It is exciting, and we have peace, which is itself worth its weight in gold. We don't have nearly as much disposable income, but we have learned to appreciate everything that comes our way, whether it's ice cream cones or just time together with books from the library. We don't judge anyone for how they structure their families, but for us we have found a contentment and peace with trying to bring that structure in alignment with how He intends it, and it has been a true blessing.
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