Faith like a Pioneer

Janetta Ann McBride Ferrin, my third great-grandmother

My husband recently quit his job to start a business.  It has been about six months now.  He has had some success with that, and a lot more of "what do we need to change to make this work?"  It has been a learning experience for all of us.  For me, it has been a major trial and foundation-rocker.  I have always thought that faith was trusting that as long as I was doing my best, the Lord would help us have enough.  But having to live on our savings, and then our credit card, and not knowing where the money for our bills would come from, has shaken that belief to its core.  I have come to understand that faith is trusting you will be okay, whether you have enough or not.  I have read about my pioneer ancestors who crossed the plains with handcarts and literally starved and froze to death, some of them, without losing their faith.  My faith wasn't like that, and it needed to be.  My faith needed to be shaken so it could be re-established on the truth, which is that our God is with us in our hardships, but He will not take them away from us.  He will help us along, but He will not shelter or protect us from things that will help us grow.  Faith is knowing that even if we fail, even if we die, as some have, there is meaning to what we suffer and it will be for our good and the good of our family, in this life or the next.  I have learned to let go of the idea that being faithful means always having "enough".  It doesn't.  However, if we will look, we will find blessings, even miracles, in even our worst circumstances.  We will know we are not alone.

Here are some miracles we have experienced as we have progressed through this experience:
- I am pregnant, and my baby and I have continued to grow exactly as we should, though I have been living on my food storage, supplemented by the generosity of family members and less-than-regular trips to the grocery store.
- We didn't have health insurance for five months, and my family was healthy and mostly without need of health care for that whole time.  My daughter did perforate her eardrum back in July, but it did not get infected, and when I took her to the doctor yesterday (for an infection in the other ear) he told me her eardr
um that had been perforated was now healed and whole and would not need surgery.
- I have been able to come up with meals, day after day, when the day before I would have no idea what I would fix the next night.  I would get on my knees and pray, and an answer would come, and I would know what to fix.  This has happened over and over.
- Our air conditioner, which in past summers has needed lots of coaxing to keep running, made it through this whole summer without breaking down once.
- Every appliance or vehicle issue we have had, John has been able to fix.  We haven't had anything we needed to replace or take in to get repaired.  Our 12-year-old van has been so reliable.  It has little issues, but it starts and runs whenever we need it to, and that has been such a blessing.
- People have been so generous to us, especially people in our extended family.  I am a very independent person, and consider it our responsibility to provide for ourselves, but as we have been trying to do that and have not been able to, we have learned how to receive help from others, and let them serve us, and that was something I needed to learn.  We are so grateful for their kindness.
- The Lord has provided for our family's needs.  We have always had food to eat, and clothes to wear, and transportation, and a roof over our heads.  He has taken care of us, maybe not always as I would have hoped, but in the ways we needed.

I don't know if I have learned, yet, all the things I need to learn from this experience, and I don't know how much longer it will last, but I know that somehow these experiences will be for our good, and will help our family to be stronger.  I hope I will have the faith to press forward even when things are hard and I can't see how they will possibly get better.  I hope I will have some small portion of the faith my pioneer ancestors had.  I am grateful for their examples and the sacrifices they made for me.