If I stop and think about money right now, I could really start to stress.  See, we live off of Josh’s teaching assistantship and the scholarship he won last March.  His assistantship was guaranteed for two years; the scholarship for one.He’s been teaching for two years now, and as you know, it’s almost March.

If I stop to think about money, my throat starts to constrict and my chest feels tight.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him
and He will make your paths straight.

And again.  And again.

Josh is hoping that his TA supervisor loves him so much (because he really is an amazing TA – one student even called him “The best TA I’ve ever had!”) that he won’t even question whether Josh deserves another year or two.

And the scholarship is supposed to be easily won if you’ve won it in the past.

We’ll find out about the scholarship late March/early April.

We won’t know about the teaching assistantship, though, until the fall semester starts up.

In other money-related news, remember when I told you we ceased to qualify for foodstamps because we had over $1000 in savings?  Well, I kept using the card, waiting for it to be rejected for lack of funds.  But guess what.  They let me keep that $1000 I had accrued in unused, rolled-over foodstamps.  And it just ran out last week.

That’s exactly five months.  Which breaks down to $200/mo.  Roughly $50/wk.  Pretty good if I do say so myself!  That’s an average, too, with the more recent amounts being $40-45/wk.

AND, the same week we ran out of grocery money, my neighbor approached me with the possibility of watching her son for a few hours every day.  I assumed I would do it for free, but she insisted on paying.  The weekly amount?  $48.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him
and He will make your paths straight.

And again.  And again.