You give and you take away, blessed be Your Name Part I

The tune is catchy, the lyrics is familiar, and almost every congregation sings it from time to time. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. "You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will still say, blessed be Your name." It is so easy to just carry the tune and sing the lyrics from your mouth, but it is not so easy to do so from the heart when He indeed GAVE and then TOOK away.

The lyrics is based upon Job's reflection on his condition after everything has been ripped away from his life. His property, and his family, his life in entirety in a nutshell, was lost after God gave permission to Satan to test Job. Interestingly enough, it is right at the first chapter, at the very beginning of his suffering when he uttered those words. When Satan found out that Job did not waver after such great lost, He again asked for permission from God to bring its scheme to the next level. This time, Job's health was taken away from him, and the physical suffering he was inflicted with was abhorrent. Yet, Job's faith remained anchored in the Almighty God even after his wife urged him to curse God. "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" He rebuked his wife without giving in to the temptation of blaming God.

The Bible reiterated, in all these Job did not blame God and he did not sin.

"How," I wonder. How could someone, from possessing everything to losing everything, from riches to rags, from being highly esteemed to being lowly regarded, all in a blink of an eye, could still not blame God. I doubt that the question "why" even crossed Job's mind.

He Did Not Blame God in ALL of These

After more than four years of not having a stable income, my husband finally secured a job in a much acclaimed company that came with a customized career ladder. With the launching of this new phrase of his long lost career and my meager job, we thought we could settle down a bit and rest by a mini-oasis. That is until our bank account got suspended.

October 1, 2011, like many other landmark dates since 2005, I was dumbfounded. There are four such dates in all. Mid May in 2005, mid May in 2007, mid January 2010 and October 1, 2011. All of these were not just a shake-up on how our livelihood would turn out, they stroke like lightening bolts directly into my heart and soul. In hindsight, some of these were consequences of some much-regretted decisions, but some I had no idea how they came about except to see them as trails God put in our lives.

The House that Falls Apart

Without much hesitation, we signed the papers. The house was ours. Or was it?

We painted and furnished, cleaned and decorated. Everyone was giving us the congrats on what a nice house we got, and sadly, we believed them.

In mid May 2004, we purchased our first house with no down payment, and with an ARM interest rate that started out ridiculously low. My husband had just started a new job that had a meager salary after a long lay-off not long before we purchased the house, and I actually quit my work before the move to take care of our baby boy. Like any couple would when they purchase their first home, we went wild on the furnishing! So, piles after piles of loans added on to our expenses, on top of the mortgage payment.

In fact, all the red flags were raised before and after we purchased the home. Just before finding this home, my husband was notified that his citizenship application was indefinitely postponed due to certain history in his record. With such postponement, that halted my own application to obtain a legal status. I believe it was God's way to stop us from going further with our home search. But, we didn't listen. Despite the meandering, we went ahead and purchased the home with two mortgages, and all the furniture we thought we needed, also on a loan. 


On the surface, we seemed to be happy living in a nice home, but when i encountered our first electric shut-off, that was when everything went South. Our bank accounts started to show red, and I caught my  husband lying about our finances to me. The lies couldn't last because our creditors started to call left and right to both of us. We had our first default on a mortgage, second and more to follow. One of those dark days, I held my then 9-month old son in my arms, and just cried and sobbed to a point of screaming that my son still remembered that moment "mommy crying in the green house," referring to the walls at the new home that my  husband and I painted turquoise green when we first moved in. Only then that it daunted on me that we needed help. Not just financial help, but wise advise on what to do next.

Crown Ministry came to the rescue

 I found out Crown Ministry offered coaching for free from one of their volunteers. We met with John, a volunteer coach, a few times. He did not just give us sound advise, he prayed with us every time that we met. He showed us how to figure out our net asset and helped us figure out the direction that we knew was needed but which we so desired to stir away. We had to sell our home, immediately, stopped short of a foreclosure.

We moved out of our "new home" and moved back to an apartment in July of 2005. God sometimes uses natural consequences to discipline his children, and He did 
Within two months, we found us an agent, and sold the house for 10k more than what we bought it for. God was also faithful in that He provided me a job back at where I quit more than a year ago, and we were able to quickly regain a financial foothold with the extra income. Nonetheless, the job did not last long because my work visa status expired nine months later. 

To be continued...