How We Got Here
I realize some of you may wonder how we got to this point. The truth is we have always teetered on this edge. We have lived paycheck to paycheck for many years. Our Western culture has been built on two-income families since WWII ended, but I don’t want to work outside the home. I have always wanted to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. It is my highest calling. I also don’t trust our school system, and that’s not just because of the times in which we live, but it’s also because people who have worked in the school system have specifically told me where we live to not put the kids in the school system. I also know that because of the chaotic disruption of having a broken parental unit, going away to school would actually exacerbate any issues they already have. Homeschooling allows me to support my kids and love them and be there for them and provide stability for them even with all the crap going on in this world.
In the recent weeks and months, as inflation has skyrocketed, I have been forced to live more and more off credit cards, and in the end, a payday loan. When I pulled the loan, I was promised that it would be paid off immediately. That promise was broken, and I was left with even more debt to pay.
While I understand that I don’t HAVE to pay debt when I’m trying to just survive, I get pretty vehement about it because I had gotten the credit cards in the first place to BUILD my credit. When I got them, I was totally capable of paying on them easily, paying them off multiple times over, using them the way they’re meant to be used to build the credit I need to buy a house or buy a car that doesn’t have a trillion percent interest rate. I was literally just at the point of getting the credit in a good spot when income came to a stand-still. Basically, I don’t WANT to NOT pay my debt. I am building something, and I don’t want it come crashing down. I am 46 years old, and I can’t buy a house for my kids, and I can barely afford our car payment because the interest rate is so high.
There is a lot of frustration and anger and shame, and I really don’t know what the right thing is to do fully. I have never been good at doing multiple things at once, and my time is taken up with my kids, which is what I planned for and wanted. But, it makes working – even working from home – an almost impossibility for someone like me. I know there are a lot of you out there who think that you could do it, who DO do it, so I should be able to as well. All I can say to that is that you just don’t know.
You have no idea how many millions of times I have already tried BEFORE we were at this point. You have no idea how much I’ve beat myself up for not being able to do all of it. You have no idea what God has asked me to do and who He has told me I am. You also have no idea how much I am STILL TRYING. There are things that I actually WANT to do, but when time begins to press because of responsibilities, when my back is cramping so bad I can barely move, when exhaustion comes to the point of truly not being able to even think straight, only the basics get done, and those basics always have to do with taking care of the kids.
All I know right now is that I have to be here for my kids. I have to be at home. I have to homeschool. These are not options. These are requirements for their well-being. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know how to get out of this. I do know that the Word says that my God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory, so I trust Him, for nothing will be impossible with God. He gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist, and whatever I ask for in prayer, if I believe that I receive it, it will be mine. (Philippians 4:19, Luke 1:37, Romans 4:17, Mark 11:24)
April M Knight 