Miracle or Moving Truck

That has been my prayer since February when we got word from our Mortgage company with a sale date on our house. Lord, please provide us with a miracle or a moving truck.
After 30 years of continuous employment, of usually 2 jobs at a time, I am at eight months of unemployment. Eight months of job searching. Eight months without the ability to pay our mortgage. Eight months of not being able to provide for my family.
Eight months.
•The miracle would be having all of the past delinquent payments by the end of March to stave off the foreclosure.
•The moving truck, well that should be self explanatory.
For the past eight months I have tried all the work offered to me, some things worked out, some did not. Over the road trucking did not work out, I tried it for a month, but the toll on the family was too high. Day labor on a construction site was good, but short lived due to the economy. Janitor did not work out, I didn't have the eye required for the detail. Painting a bedroom, was good but only a days worth of work. Chauffeuring did not work out, cost more to drive to SB to get the car than I usually got paid and too many times I dropped everything with only 1 hour to get ready and go to SB only to have the job canceled when I got there. Substitute Bus Attendant is good, but is only good for a very few hours a week. Almost everything else is an online application process with no way to follow up with the company.

Unemployed with no way to provide for my family and a pending foreclosure is a very lonely place to be. Not many can identify, though a few try to empathize. As a husband and father to 10 awesome children, my stress level rises as I continue to look for work and think about how I will provide food, clothing and shelter for 12 people. Many promise to pray for our situation, and do. Many have job leads and ideas. Many well meaning people have much advise, usually having to do with Matthew 6:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (ESV)

But I notice that those who, with good intentions, are encouraging me to not be anxious are employed, have shoes & clothing without holes and are comfortable in their lives. God has blessed them with abundance, and they are comfortable.

This experience is not without its lessons, and I hope that I am learning them correctly. I am scrutinizing more closely how I serve and encourage others. Do I say I will pray instead of stopping right then and there to pray immediately? Or worse yet, do I say I will pray and then do not do it? When someone drops or spills something in front of me, am I stopping to help or walking around? When a stranger is walking down the street sobbing into his hands, do I put aside my agenda and approach him or do I get into my car a drive away asking God to send someone to comfort him? When I go to Vons, do I avoid eye contact with the panhandlers (justifying it because I'm unemployed too but at least I'm looking for a job), or do I give them the last $2 in my wallet? Am I showing the same love and patience to the difficult kids on the bus as the easy ones? The words of James 1 both challenge and convict me

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. - (ESV)

Will we get to stay in our house, or will we be living in a van down by the river? Only the Creator & Sustainer, The Lord God of the Universe knows the answer to that. I, however, must continue to be willing and faithful to what He puts before me day by day.