How we embraced faith, practiced frugality and discovered peace after a layoff: making lemonade out life’s lemons and blessings that come from them.
When life gives you lemons you make lemonade, or so the sang goes. Well, the last few months have been the some of the toughest, yet most blessed times of our lives. That’s one of the reasons I am finally starting this blog. I wanted to share how we learned lessons from making lemonade from life’s lemons and circumstances happened: we embraced faith, practicing more frugality, and discovered peace along the way.
When life gives you lemons you make lemonade, or so the sang goes. Well, the last few months have been the some of the toughest, yet most blessed times of our lives. That’s one of the reasons I am finally starting this blog. I wanted to share how we learned lessons from making lemonade from life’s lemons and circumstances happened: we embraced faith, practicing more frugality, and discovered peace along the way.
Simple Living for a Frugal Life
We have always lived a more simple life. We don’t drive fancy cars or live in a fancy house. I have been a stay at home mom for twelve years and homeschool mom for the past four years. My husband is the hardest worker and soul income provider for our family, other than some side gigs I have had over the years. The recent lemons of life was my husband being laid off from his position last summer and was definitely a sour punch to the gut. It really hurt at first. I would even say we had to go through a grief process, but not for long. But we made lemonade out of those sour life’s lemons. As a family we had to get back in the saddle and work hard together. Little did we know how those sour punches would be a blessing in disguise and wake up call for our family.
Digging Deep in Faith
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
During this time we dug deep into our faith as a family. We had to fully trust God to be our provider, which really gave us peace in the chaos. I continued to feel His presence leading me as a wife and mom to do what I needed to do to help our family get by on little. One area I took over and became relentless about was our budget. There were times I could have doubted we could make it, but God provides our daily bread. Trusting that He would provide gave us so much peace, especially when we least expected it. Budgeting for every dollar we brought in by using the Every Dollar app was a huge blessing to us. We using it every month made a huge difference on how we made it on what income we had and make needed adjustments.
Working Hard and Making Lemonade
My husband was working his side gig more than ever to provide income for our family. Meanwhile he applied for hundreds of jobs and had a few interviews. I got back to my farm girl roots and homemaking skills of cooking from scratch. I love cooking from scratch anyways, but there was no room in our budget to eat out. Plus homemade from scratch food is much better and healthier for the most part. I know my family appreciates homemade from scratch meals. I’ll be sharing these recipes and tips on how to make your food budget stretch soon.
We even had a “lemonade stand” inside because it super hot and July in Arizona. We made lemonade, homemade sourdough hamburger buns, cookies, refrigerator pickles and jams to sell. Friends showed up and blessed us more than we could ever imagine. God provided when we least expected and needed it!
Our kids learned that it’s perfectly fine to live more frugally than we did before. We didn’t do all of the activities we would have enjoyed. Instead, we came up with other things to do that didn’t cost anything or very little. The kids and I even had a “lemonade stand” inside because it was super hot and July in Arizona. We made lemonade, homemade sourdough hamburger buns and pizza dough, cookies, refrigerator pickles and jams to sell (recipes to come soon!). Friends showed up and blessed us more than we could ever imagine. God provided when we least expected and needed it and He continues to do so every day!
Life’s Lemons, Lessons Learned and Blessing Others
We learned a lot of lessons in this season of life, and have felt like it was time to share those lessons from life’s lemons and blessings with others. Our family is on our on journey to be debt free, God willing by the end of the year. This experience was a wake-up call to us personally. Quite humbling in fact. We can only rely on God as our provider, but we too must be good stewards of what He provides for us. We haven’t been as good of stewards as we could have been. It’s in the past now and we are moving forward at gazelle speed to be debt free. My husband was blessed with a new position in January, a true gift from God after so many months not working at a full time job.
The Purpose of Blessings from Scratch Blog
I have been wanting to start a blog for a couple of years now, but never really got it started. But recently I felt in my heart and the Holy Spirit telling me to share our journey because others are going through similar circumstances. This economy isn’t the greatest. There will be other people facing lay offs, lower incomes, increased costs and stress of everyday life. My hope is that I can share encouragement and hope, share some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way from doing things from scratch (most of the time). So if you’re here for a from scratch recipe or DIY idea, or seeing how we are working on our Baby Step 2-becoming debt free and on to the other steps. Or maybe you need some encouragement my hope is that this blog is a blessing to you.
Emily, Blessings From Scratch
Psalm 128:2
