I want to share this story with you, about how God literally transformed me while we were working on a monthly budget, but I don’t want to talk about money. Can you grab a glass of something cold (or a mug of something warm, depending on your weather) and sit with me awhile? Because this post isn’t about money.

So let me get really real for a minute. We have never been really great with money, as our problem was twofold: not enough income and never learned about finances properly. And because of that first reason (not enough income – and by not enough I mean more than most in the world, but for our family size and our location, we are extremely tight each month), we never really thought there was any point to the second reason: learning about money.

But I had slowly been feeling this nudge by God to do something more about the second reason. To learn more about handling finances and really, to just do a budget already. It was never a condemnation, as if God was angry with me or I was disobeying by not having taken these financial steps before, but more that he was just saying “it’s time.”

I think in the past I decided that doing a budget would be scary (spoiler alert: It WAS scary, but only at first). I convinced myself there was no point in budgeting when we lived in a time of financial scarcity as a family. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So, we did it, we set up time with a financial counselor to do a budget for September and learn a lot of other things too. Logically I was doing fine. I was looking forward to this appointment, because I felt like we’d see a) that we had been doing pretty well in our decisions; and b) that our money just needed a little organization and it would stretch a bit further.

But emotionally I had become really resistant by the time our appointment arrived. I could feel myself wishing I could cancel, or otherwise shrink into a hole in the ground. I wanted to escape, but I did it anyway.

Then as we sat down and began, I started to feel like I might burst into tears. I told my husband and the counselor what was going on, because for some reason I felt it important to give them a play-by-play. Five or ten minutes later, I told them I felt like I was going to throw up. I wasn’t upset or thinking about anything negative in relation to the money stuff; I just was having this weird physical reaction to what I was doing. Naturally they thought I was just stressed out, but I knew it wasn’t stress.

Suddenly I felt like it was very important for us to stop and pray. Why I hadn’t thought of praying before this financial appointment, I don’t know, but I learned my lesson for sure. We stopped and grabbed hands and I prayed things I hadn’t had on my mind at all (I love it when that happens).

I prayed that I would be free from any shame of financial failure of the past. I prayed that I would know how God saw me, as whole and beautiful and free, and that these steps were going to be wonderful for our family. I prayed I would ignore any lies of the enemy telling me we couldn’t stick to this budget, or that we would never get out of the situation we had been in for so long.

My husband prayed as well, and when we were done I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. All my physical symptoms were gone. I felt healed, body and spirit. We continued on with our appointment and it went fine and we are excited (as much as you can be) to begin the new budget next week.

Since that day I’ve felt a lightness in my spirit that can only be described as the transformative work of Jesus. How he heals with surrender, the way I was surrendering during my prayer. How he heals with obedience, the way I agreed to the appointment and showed up for it. And I know the obedience and surrender were only possible by the Holy Spirit within me in the first place, because when I got involved, I got scared and wanted to escape.

I love when the Lord uses the practical things of life to heal little corners of our heart that we maybe thought were “fine”, or that we thought because of mistakes of the past were just a burden we had to bear. God doesn’t want us to do any of that heavy lifting. He asks us, gently, to let him have it all.

What areas of your life have you felt transformed in lately? How has God’s spirit been working on your every day life, in healing your heart?

Or maybe you feel like it’s time to have God work on your heart in this way? I would love to hear your stories!

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