New Profession: Mom

I've always known that I wanted to be a mom and deep down I wanted to stay home with my children. My mom stayed home and I really appreciated having her home and available all through my childhood...especially in my teen years!

Rilyn's arrival confirmed all of my desires to raise my family at home. It was a little harder to convince Matt as he had major concerns about providing for our family, which I appreciate that he even thinks about that! So, I told him that I would continue to work if that's what he felt we needed to do. All summer, I was preparing myself to return to work. The closer and closer it came, the harder and harder it was for me to think about leaving her. I'm sure most, if not all, moms feel or have felt the same way.

The tipping point for us is when we figured up how much we would be spending in childcare. Despite the incredible deals that people were going to give us, more than half of my income would be going to having other people take care of Rilyn. That just didn't sit well with us. I couldn't see the benefit of being gone from Rilyn every single day, all day, for a few hundred dollars a month.

After much prayer and conversation, we made the decision that I would stay home to raise our family. I'm so excited!!! This is going to be a season of trusting God but I'm anxious to see where he takes our little family. I've turned in my resignation but told them I'll stay until they find my replacement and I train them.

I find it interesting that God has been preparing us for this. Our first month of marriage, we took a class called "Financial Peace". Because of that class, we have never truly lived off my income. It has mostly gone to paying off our school debt. But we still enjoyed the extra income to go on vacations and drink lots of Starbucks. :) Then, last December our church did a challenge called "750 in the black". Basically we were all challenged to either start tithing or double our tithe to the church and also invite friends to see what God was doing. Matt and I were really stretched financially during this challenge -- which was incredible for us! It was a great time of learning how to trust God with our money and changed our view of money.

Now that I'm not working, we're making much less than we did in December 2009 and yet, everything is panning out. Once again, we're having to trust God. Its an exciting adventure yet again!

Just look at that smile! She's so worth it!