A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 2 (Monday)

  A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 2 (Monday)

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.The Holy Bible (NIV) - Collossians 2:6-8

Today I am grateful for obstacles and challenges. My life has not been an easy road and I always seemed to have to learn things the hard way or by taking the long road. But everything greatly difficult in my life has turned out to be a catalyst to something greater or a protection against something worse from happening to me.  Every struggle or challenge, every hardship, has a purpose in life and will make you stronger and build tenacity and character. Back to my story:

Things start unraveling again

In between 1993-95 I had some more setbacks those years and experienced a major loss in my life - my father, due to pancreatic cancer that came on very suddenly and he was gone just as quickly. At age 22 I became my 16-year old brother's guardian and he moved in with us, which meant I was a single mom of three small children - AND battling an angry teenager who had just lost his father. Later that year I also lost that city office position due to my compounding personal issues, mainly my problems with childcare, and my own growing up. 

We were sponsored that year by the YWCA, I believe, and were lucky to get a corporate sponsor. We received not only toys, but someone had gone to Costco and loaded up a big truck-full of food for us that would last us for many months. I had very little of my own money to give gifts to anyone that year and I was so grateful for all the generosity that I just sat down and cried my eyes out. I couldn't believe it. I was both humbled and my hope was restored in the goodness of other people.

Life as a single mom with three challenging children plus a teenager was so hard. I was 23 at the time, and my very strong-willed children, who would later be diagnosed with ADHD, and had incredible fits and tantrums - I was exhausted and I could not cope with everything on my own. My brother was struggling with alcohol abuse, and depression, and I very much needed a break and help for me as a parent, but was still struggling to grow up myself and felt ashamed to even ask. I had begun to think I was a bad parent and was very self-critical and anxious. I made many mistakes and I struggled with depression quietly, with few people to talk to about these issues. I grappled with my own faith and my self-esteem, and it seemed that society had conditioned me to find fault with myself so I internalized a lot and just tried harder to do better.

By 1994, my brother left our home to try and live on his own, and I found myself back in the welfare office asking for help – again. The kids and I moved in with some family members in Kent, while I struggled to get myself on my feet again and find another job. I did find another job rather quickly – too quickly as it turned out. The childcare assistance program had a six-month waiting list and would only help me if I had been through their welfare-to-work program for a minimum of 4 months and was able to find a childcare spot using their approved childcare providers. I didn’t have time to wait another 3 months – I was already ‘homeless’ and needed to build up money for deposits and moving expenses. Living on my family’s couch for another 6 months was not a viable option. I said no to them and I opted to work and save money for my own place. My cousin offered to help me with free childcare while waiting for the opening to come up for the childcare assistance wait list. My cousin LuAnn was (and still is) a lifeline of support - was like a surrogate mother to me and helped me learn parenting skills and helped me begin to be an adult, and make better life decisions.

 

Pride put aside, I was very much at-risk to fail and return to the welfare system at that point. The costs of supporting a family for a single mother are almost impossible. For example, a single parent of three young children, with a take-home pay of $1000 approaches DSHS for help with daycare because she cannot afford all of the cost. She is put on a six-month waiting list and has to fend for herself - or lose her job and get on welfare for three months to qualify for transitional daycare assistance. Of course, one will lose what housing she has established for herself (most rents for a family of four range ranged from $500 to $700 in the Seattle area at that time). 

Because the cost of a babysitter for those three kids exceeded $600 a month at the time, child care costs would take up most of that income. It really is a catch-22. Either way you go, you risk losing everything you have gained trying to stay afloat, or you do not try and you still face eviction, utility shut-off and the endless poverty cycle continues.

 

More obstacles – poorly running car and not able to make it to work

So, new job and poorly running car in hand, I began my new job, with my children in my cousin’s care. The new company I worked for was a Redmond manufacturing company as an office assistant, making a little over the minimum wage at $8.50 an hour. Since I was considered self-sufficient enough by the State’s standards, I was not on any assistance anymore, with the exception of subsidized childcare help, for which I eventually was able to get assistance.

I still needed help from the food banks weekly, and had to creatively stretch my weekly budget of $40 to feed three small children (less than $5 a day). We received help from food stamps for a while, but it wasn't enough to feed us, so I joined a gleaning club, and couponed every single thing that I could to save money on food and got creative on everything else. I managed to feed my family well as I baked and cooked a LOT of things from scratch and we rarely, if ever ate a meal out, and occasionally visited the food banks as often as possible to make it work. I think we did qualify for WIC, which gave us cereal, orange juice, milk, cheese and peanut butter. The kids are grown up now and don't remember ever being hungry - they don't remember all the ramen soup, and cheap chili mac dinners, but they remember family times and that we were together.

I wrote to a local newspaper at the holidays that year (1995), despite still being in the midst of all the turmoil, and they printed my letter in the paper.  I was in the middle of losing another job and still found hope and gratitude for all my life blessings and challenges. This was a constant theme in my adult life and somehow God saw us through the turbulence and helped us thrive. 

My car starting falling apart and I could not travel the 50-mile round-trip drive to work every day, reliably.  My car needed an expensive overhaul (engine rebuild) and was going to take a lot of time and money to fix, which I did not have. I struggled to get to work, because car had a blown head-gasket so I was going through a ton of oil, and I was having to change my spark plugs weekly (sometimes on the side of the road).  

Unfortunately, with all the struggles with reliability, I lost this job in Redmond after several months of missing too much work and not being able to open the office up for them on time. I know how to change my own spark plugs though! I still have that little gapper tool somewhere as a memento! 

After I started working again and I got my car fixed by a family friend (he generously let me make payments on my car repairs), I could no longer get any childcare assistance or food stamps anymore, even though I was only making a couple dollars over the minimum wage. Thanks to my family, I had help watching my kids before and after school. Life was tough. You just keep marching forward and somehow find the support you need to keep going. I never gave up hope that we would make it somehow through these times.

(to be continued)