Wow God!

So our blog has pretty much become a brag book for Raegan's grandparents, with the majority of all our blogs being about how big she's getting and how much we love her : ) Which is ok because we think she's pretty much the coolest kid ever (most of the time)!

Anyways, I jot down (like with a real pen) more personal thoughts or significant happenings in a journal instead of sharing them here on the blog, but there's something significant that happened recently that I feel like I should share - for HIS glory.

Ok first off to be perfectly honest, I'm a tight wad, luckily for me I have someone to thank for that (blame it on), my dad.  I was very much a daddy's girl growing up.  I remember enjoying sitting with him to organize and roll coins so we could take them to the bank.  Also when we were young my dad would often get Arby's 5 for 5 sandwiches and bring them home for the 5 of us (mom, dad, sister, brother, and me) for dinner, I specifically remember the day we drove by and the sign for Arby's said, "5 for $5.55" that day Arby's lost a customer.  I remember my dad critizing the 11% price increase and honestly I'm not sure if he's ever been back. These experiences and others (including analyzing my babysitting money income and beanie baby spending habits in Quicken at age 12) are what shaped me in to a money hungry, money controlling, tight wad. 
Some examples: In highschool my parents would give me a set amount of cash a week for lunch (I think it was $20 or $25).  I would often skip lunch, order kids meals, or buy $.30 sauce with free breadsticks from Fazzolis and save the rest of my lunch money for other things.  It wasn't that I didn't have money to spend I just didn't want to spend it, in fact through multiple jobs during highschool I was able to save up quite a bit of money for college, which is one area that I definitely wasn't a tight wad on when I chose to go to Baylor (good decision by the way).   Anyways the examples don't stop there, I looked for extreme sales and cost cutting ideas for our wedding, we went with a much less expensive house than what we were approved for, we don't have cable, and I love finding good deals at the consignment stores or on craigslist.  Oh and one more thing I've been pretty selfish when it comes to tithing and here comes the important part of the story I need to share.

So yes I admit it, the accountant in me wants to analyze how the church is spending money.  Does the pastor really need that LaCoste shirt and Northface jacket? Does our church really need an indoor playground? Etc... these thoughts that my tithe may just be wasted along with justifications like we already give and volunteer to klove, united way, and other organizations doesn't that count, why do we have to tithe.  We aren't 'bad' people, we don't lie, cheat, steal, etc... couldn't this be my little sin? Philip has talked to me many times about how we need to tithe more and I've come up with even more excuses like well how can we, his income isn't even set, how are we suppose to know what 10% is and we already pay so much money to the gov't who uses it to help people and only 6% of the people in our church tithe, seems unfair to be a part of that group. 

But in 2011 Philip finally convinced me to see things his way (he's so patient). My willingness was primarily driven out of selfishness, because I've heard so many times that God will bless and multiply what we give to Him.  Hmmm... sounds like a risky investment, but we'll see how this goes.  We started tithing a set amount each week beginning in January, rather than our random donations (i.e. tips) online or in the offering plate (well at our church its actually a plastic bucket, but same idea).  Not too long ago, while I was rushing to finish things at work up and get home I received an email stating "You got an Ovation! You are being recognized for your "above and beyond" contributions."  A what? I thought, hmm I wonder if it was a mistake?  But no sure enough it was for me. I'm not sure exactly what I did to deserve the award/bonus, but I was sure to thank the partner who nominated me for it.

Anyways a couple days later Philip pointed out to me that my unexpected bonus just happened to be pretty close to the amount we had tithed; really God, is this your way of showing me that tithing is important?  I couldn't stop thinking about it and went back through our finances and recalculated to make sure and sure enough it was the exact amount we had given had been graciously returned.  So thats my WOW GOD moment that I wanted to share.  And in case you want to know what happened to my bonus, well we gave it all back to Him, because we TRUST HIM!