it seems that with each child my memory gets shadier and shadier. i have days when i can hardly remember the day of the week...and i've been known to forget the month and year as well.
this little diddy of a testimony builder came back to my memory the other day. i failed to write it down before, but like Nephi (3 Nephi) in regards to the story of Samuel the Lamanite, i will not forget this time. there is nothing like having the Lord remind you AGAIN to feel the weight of the importance to do so.
a few years ago -- maybe 2006 -- we got to the end of the year and tithing settlement. tithing has always been something i feel strongly about because i saw so many of the blessings that come from it as a child. more on that later. (if i remember!) at any rate, paying tithing is something that devan and i have always done and have always felt grateful to do. it has always been important for us to be full tithe payers. with all that God has given us it is the least we could do.
so per the usual we received the end of the year statement from our ward clerk and were surprised to find that it did not match our gross income for the year listed on devan's pay stub. in fact, it appeared that we were $1000 short. how could that be? i have always handled finances in our family -- the daily logging, the buying, the rectifying of accounts, the paying of bills, etc. -- and was in complete shock...and then i was scared. did i make that much of a mistake?
i sat down the next day and went through all the pay stubs for the year and matched them up against the tithing account. sure enough, i had missed two paychecks entirely and had been guesstimating incorrectly the amount of tithing we owed based on the net instead of waiting to find out what the exact gross was. for example, i would look at devan's net and say, "well if this is his net than if i add $___ amount to that i'll get his gross" and then i'd pay that. unfortunately, i didn't realize that when he had received a raise earlier in the year that it bumped us up a tax bracket, which meant that the difference between his gross and net had grown. essentially, i wasn't assuming enough. and so i came in under every month. in the end, the tithing statement was correct -- we were $1000 short...and we had about one and a half weeks left in the year.
when we explained to our bishop what had occurred he said that since we had always been full tithe payers and it had been an accident on my part that we could just take the next few months to pay it since he knew we didn't have $1000 cash lying around. but devan and i both felt that that was not the right thing for us to do. we wanted to be able to say that we were full tithe payers on december 31st, not march 31st.
christmas was just a few days away and all the gifts were bought. devan said we would just have to return gifts and explain to the kids our mistake and take the consequence. there were some things i could and did return, but i felt that the mistake had been ours (mine really) and i didn't want to make the kids take our consequence. we were at an impasse of sorts so we decided to take it to the Lord.
we prayed and explained our desire to be full tithe payers within the next week. we explained that we had made a serious error and repented for not having been more on top of our finances. we asked Him to make a way for us.
it's been so long now that i can't even remember how it all happened. this is why we write these things down as they happen and not years later, by the way. but it happened. like i said above, i returned some gifts, we scrimped and pulled money from other places where we could -- we did everything in our power. and then we received the rest of the money through other means. no random gifts from anonymous people, but credits, returns, and money we hadn't been expecting came pouring in. and by the end of the week we had $1000.
it was one of the most amazing moments of our life up to that point. we literally watched the Lord "open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing". it was absolutely breath taking. we couldn't stop saying to each other how amazing it was. it was awesome.
now a word on the side...remember our bishop had told us that we could take the extra time if we needed it. i want to say that i still think that would have been okay with the Lord. the bishop, is, after all, the Judge in Israel and the Lord's mouthpiece in a ward. but taking that route wouldn't have tested our faith either. and i have found that it is when we are most willing to try our faith -- to take a larger than normal leap -- that we see the greatest miracles. and our faith grows even more. that experience gave me the courage to take larger leaps of faith in the future. and what have i always found? that God never leaves us, never deserts us. never. never. never.
elder george q. cannon said, "when we went forth into the waters of baptism and covenanted with our Father in heaven to serve Him and keep His commandments, He bound Himself also by covenant to us that He would never desert us, never leave us to ourselves, never forget us, that in the midst of trials and hardships, when everything was arrayed against us, He would be near unto us and would sustain us."
so true. so very true.
so the next thing we did -- after thanking God in prayer, of course -- was to set up an account that helped me track every check, every piece of income as well as every tithing check from there on out. i felt that that was one of the biggest ways we could thank God for helping make up for our mistake and to show Him that we really meant to improve. and we've never been off since. but we've continued to see blessings galore from being willing to let go of our money and give that portion back to God.
tithing is a privilege. i think it's one of God's most merciful gifts.
and so...we saw God's hand that day.
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