Blessings

It's amazing when you look back over your life to see the blessings you've been given.  This week I've been contemplating the financial blessings that Clayton and I have had in our life together.  When we first met and started dating, I was working full-time and had finished my Masters degree just a few months prior.  Clayton was in his last semester at ASU.  We were still dating when he graduated.  He had a hard time finding a full-time job, but was blessed to find a temporary job that wasn't too horrible.  He had already decided that he wanted to ask me to marry him, but kept putting it off because he had been raised that the man is to financially provide for the family and he couldn't do that on his temp pay.  After a couple of months, he finally took the leap of faith and asked me anyway.  About the same time, he received an email from a career advisor at ASU about a job at Intel for recent graduates - the last email sent from the advisor as he was quitting to take a new positon elsewhere.  Clayton sent in his resume and didn't hear anything.  A month later, he was called for an interview.  We were both shocked to hear from Intel as it had been so long.  He had a phone interview and then an in-person interview.  Then we didn't hear anything for a while again.  We were out to dinner with his grandpa and siblings when he got a call offering him the job.  At first we were hesitant about him taking the job as it was an unconventional work schedule and would make our time together very limited.  But when we heard what the salary was, we couldn't turn it down.  It was far more than we both expected him to be able to make in his first "real" job after graduation.

He started at Intel the day we returned from our honeymoon.  I was still working, but things at my job had deteriorated.  I had a boss who was threatened by me, I guess, and started to pull responsibilities from me.  We decided I would quit, take a month or so to put our married life in order, and then I would look for a new job.  A week after I quit, I found out I was pregnant with Andrew.  We decided I would just stay home since I would quit when the baby was born anyway.  With the exception of a month, we have lived on one income our entire married life.

Clayton is smart and hard working and did well at his job.  A year ago he received a new position that was a pay grade higher than his current pay grade.  It put him in a great position for this year to receive a pay grade promotion, but we didn't count on getting it after what we had heard some areas were getting for pay increases.  He met with his manager this week and was given his promotion.  She's super impressed with how quickly he picks things up (I think she used the word sponge) and how he's willing to share what he learns with the rest of his group in order to better the group as a whole.  So we knew the promotion usually comes with a relatively sizable pay increase, but once again we kept our expectations low if he did get promoted.  Let's just say we were both pleasantly SHOCKED!  He got a very sizable pay increase.  What a blessing with another mouth to feed coming shortly.  We are also trying to pay off dept and increase our savings for the future.

Clayton and I have always paid tithing.  It's never been a question.  We just paid it, no questions asked.  We have always been able to pay our bills and put food on the table.  And we are continuting to see the blessings of making this a priority.  We realize that it may not always be this way, but we know that paying tithing leads to blessings.