An AMAZING Blessing

For those of you who don't know, David is an Architect. Architects don't do well in an ecomonic recession.

About six months ago David's work laid of 18 people because of the economic downturn. Then a couple months later, they laid off another 11. Then came the salary reductions, no longer paying for parking, no longer matching 401(k), no overtime.

Another staff meeting a couple of weeks later revealed what we are currently experiencing now. They are calling it "Temporary Unemployment." This means over the next 3 months, David will be off of work for 5 weeks. He will have off one week, work 2, then have off one week, etc. He will retain his benefits, and will receive unemployment benefits for 4 of those weeks. This is his first week off and will not be able to collect unemployment for this week.

This is where the story actually has an upside. I forgot to submit our taxes on April 15th. OOPS! I did them through Turbo Tax, paid for it and everything, but just forgot to submit at the end, though I thought I had. My older brother told me he received his Federal refund within 9 days. So I waited, and waited and waited. After about 6 weeks, I was getting that nagging feeling I had forgotten to file. Sure enough, I hadn't. While we were waiting for our refund, we were notified by his work of these current changes. The blessings come here: If I had filed on time and received our refund, the money would've been used to pay down our student loans, leaving us with very little extra. BUT, since I knew about the lack of pay that was forthcoming, we now have enough to cover the money we will be losing by his collecting unemployment.

I have been filing taxes for half my life and never once have I forgotten to file. I know the Lord's hand was in this and we have received yet another blessing for being faithful tithe payers.