A bit of thanks (and a lot of rambling)

I know I promised to blog about Sundance, and I'll get there, but today I have to write a thank you note to my parents.

Why, you ask? Because today, for the third time in less than a month, I had to tell my mom that I had no money in my bank account.

I spend a lot of my time joking about how I have no money, but still eating out, driving all over creation for free voice lessons and to see my family half a state away, and spending $60 a month on a gym membership. Yea, my life is terrible. But in the past month I've gone from joking about having no money to legitimately having NO money.

I knew at the start of this school year that things were going to be tight. I didn't get any of the part time jobs I thought God was calling me too, and the government decided that since everyone who gets a Masters degree becomes a doctor or a lawyer we probably didn't actually need subsidized assistance anymore. That meant less classes and more loan payments due to my dropping below half time status. Which left me figuring out how to pay $700 school payments on what turned out to be less than $800 dollars a month and whatever was in my savings account.

But that was fine. It was going to be a couple months. Some other job opportunity would randomly present itself. Or I would here back from the video production thing I was waiting on. And then I didn't.

Last quarter I knew something was going to have to change. Christmas was coming up and I was going to need to make some serious bank to counteract everyone's presents (even though I made everything to save money and I'm still not done with them, KC, Danny, Michaela, and Charles I swear they're coming) and driving across the state. The hard part about moving from salary (even crappy intern salary) to hourly wages is that when everyone you're working for closes for two weeks and you suddenly realize that you have no way to make money.

I tried to recoup, find some more hours to work at the jobs I did have, applied for some new things, volunteered a bunch for a nonprofit I'm hoping to work for eventually, but nothing that panned out right. The hard part is that finding another job on top of what I already have seems exhausting. I'm letting stuff slide through the cracks as it is. As much as I'd love to say I'm at least giving 100% to girl scouts, and youth group, and midweek, and my babysitting kid, and my nanny kids, and school, I'm just not. I'd say maybe 80% all the way around, but even that's generous. But we're getting into a different blog post now.

This post is about my wonderful, amazing, gracious, loving parents and how thankful I am for their support. They have always, always supported me. Even more since I decided to go into debilitating debt--I mean ministry for the rest of my life. We're even slowly started figuring out what it means to be parents/adult!children instead of just parents/tiny!childthatcan'tdoanythingonitsown (which my parents have generally been good about anyway).

But I am an adult now, and I've been trying really, really hard to be an adult. Albeit one who lives in someone else's house and spends most of her time with children. I even feed myself occasionally. I get to work on time with no one having to remind me, I have secure, happy relationships with other adults (most of whom have kids of their own), I do the bulk of my school work, and I'm responsible for other lives on a daily basis.

But money is something I've never been able to wrap my mind around. I don't get the idea of currency beyond the fact that I have to use it as part of the established system which I live in and greedy people need to own the idea of it. I have no problem paying for other people, and a huge problem letting people pay for me, though I'm getting better at it. (Thanks again, Courtney and whoever else bought me food last month!)  I get that it's necessary, I just hate having to worry about it. And I definitely don't need more of it than is necessary for the stuff I do generally. But then again, I've never been poor.

Thus, my thanks for the safety net that is my parents and the actual point of this blog. Since I've had to start worrying about money (even if it's just for school and not rent or food) I've had panic attacks, job interviews, conversations with my school counselor, calls to my parents, and a lot of conversations with God. Not once did I hear, 'drop out' or 'maybe it's time to take a break' just His ever present presence and one small sentiment. 'I've got this, lean on me.' (maybe not God's actual words, but when we talk he sounds like me, so...)

I wasn't sure what he meant, so I kept looking for solutions, praying for things I didn't get, and trying not to worry while my bank account slowly drained. Then came this last payment, and yet another phone conversation with my mom that started off about tax returns and ended up about how I currently have less than $100 to my name. My taxes are my latest scheme to get some money since I'm currently poor and in grad school so I always get a significant chunk of that money back.

After several firm but soothing repetitions of 'how much do you need?' I finally grumbled about how hard they make it to be an adult. My mom did that wonderful thing where she starts a sentence and then pauses to choose her words with the utmost care. She told me that she and Dad had been to some meeting about support for candidates to ministry or something and that they felt called to provide some of that support. I couldn't even talk through my tears (crying is my body's reaction to stress involving people I'm close to, like letting down my parents by repeatedly asking them for money).

And then it clicked. God had been telling me for a month that he would provide. And my mom had lovingly nicknamed the money they still send my every month to cover loans and a little bit of tuition the 'seminary scholarship fund' when they'd started sending me more money in January to cover the cost of my loans coming out of deferment.

It's a bit of a hit to my pride, which is probably phrased better as, it's a growing edge for me to let my parents help as much as they have when they already paid for my undergrad and I'm supposedly an independent adult (at least according to my taxes). But I do appreciate their support. I don't think I really understood in undergrad what it meant that my parents paid for my education.

 It's not like I'm terribly spoiled. My parents didn't get us everything we ever wanted or cave when Brittany and I spent years only half joking about wanting a pony. But that was by choice. We could have owned a pony. We would have whined about having to take care of it, and it would have had to live at my aunt's house, but it could have happened. But we didn't. Because it was important to my parents that we understand the value of what we had beyond just the monetary. And because they didn't want to hear the whining or have to drive us all that way to take care of it.

More than anything though, those values are what I'm thankful for. That I have generous, loving parents who taught me to be thankful, to know what I have is important, but who I have and taking care of them is even more so. Taught me that home cooked dinners and decorating cake can be the best gift you can give someone when there are no words. And that being thankful is sometimes the only thing you can give back, and that's enough too.

So thank you, Mom and Dad. For all the things you give me. And especially thank you for supporting me in my calling. We're probably going to have more seasons like this, but the work I get to do because of your support will be so so  worth it. I love you.

Nicki