Soooo, It is actually January of 2012 right now and I am about to make this dear old blog into a book and I realized that there are some things I want to record about our life in 2010 in it before that happens. Namely the sacrifices we made in our years in school and the incredible blessings that we received during that time both of which in so many ways have made us who we are today and so here I go...
So I'm going to start with money matters. Javier and I are pretty much a perfect match in our extreme frugality. I worked in steady jobs (ranging in hours from 2 a week to 20) from the time I was about 15, with a whole lot of delivering phonebooks and other odd jobs at impact in the summers and lots of babysitting during the school year. Javier's Dad didn't let him work until he graduated from high school but he worked extremely hard after that and neither one of us spent the money we made for example when I was a single student at BYU I was making 350 dollars a month working as an aid in a special needs classroom, but I lived at campus plaza which was the cheapest housing at BYU and rent was 200 a month and my grocery budget was $30 a month (which was pretty darn lean-chips and salsa 3 meals a day sometimes) and Javier was making way better money that me working at the MTC and living as cheaply. So when we were married we had about $7000 in the bank and 3 years left of school which pretty much felt like an eternity. After the first summer we were married Javier had to quit his job while he was going through the most intense year of school (the Junior Core). That was a crazy year. His grade would determine whether or not he would get into the masters program so it was very important and the work load was unimaginable. There is no way he could have worked and made it into the mac so we made a good decision there. SO I worked 20 hours a week that year while I was pregnant with Max and by then I was working on campus for $7.00 an hour. We lived in the cheapest apartment we could find and it was darling and we loved it and we tried to live within our monthly income and save the money in the bank. You have to remember too that every semester we had enormous expenses like tuition and books, so the whole time we were in school we almost always had huge balances in our bank account, but we never touched that money because we knew that we would need it to get through.
When I got pregnant with Max I enrolled in a government program which gave me coupons that I could use to buy some kinds of food to augment my diet. It wasn't food stamps. Javier wasn't allowed to eat the food, it just bought me milk and cheese and juice and a couple other staples that I can't remember. I felt really guilty about it at the time, but I am so grateful that program was available to us. Our diet was not adequate at that time, so much so that I fully believe that my sweet Max would have actually suffered if I had not had that help. It was a tough year for me. Javier and I were newly married and had hardly any time to spend together because of his school schedule and mine. My pregnancy was extremely difficult. I remember waking up each morning and trying to eat breakfast, but invariable I would end up hunched over the toilet throwing up. Javier would be late for school and me for work but I knew I couldn't make the walk without him without throwing up again on the path so I would beg him to wait for me while I finished puking and he was so sweet and understanding although I know being late caused him quite a bit of trouble with the teacher of that class. Always as I threw up I would feel grateful because I knew that was a sign that the pregnancy was okay and I would tell myself, "This is so worth it to have a baby!" That semester I was so sick and so tired I missed a lot of class and chose not to write several papers because I needed the sleep more. I was also so emotional, crying in class about little things, sometimes which was embarrassing. As my pregnancy progressed, I also developed Gall Stones. I would wake up in the middle of the night once or twice a week and be in so much excruciating pain that I would be rolling around on the floor crying. The pain would cause me to throw up. The first time I thought I was dying or miscarrying, but my doctor wasn't at all worried so I just kept dealing with it. These attacks would last an hour. Once it happened at work and I was crying and throwing up in the bathroom. The people around were really concerned and that was embarrassing too. One of my favorite memories from that year is how much I loved my little baby from the very beginning. I remember each night as I walked home in the cold and dark I would sing songs to Max in my tummy and talk to him about how I couldn't wait to meet him! I have made it sound like it was a hard time and it was truly but it was also a wonderful time! The second semester I was pregnant with Max I was in my cohort where I got to spend half my time at the university and half my time teaching with a more experienced teacher at an elementary school. It was also a semester where they say you cannot work, but since Javier's grade were very important and I just needed to graduate I took one for the team and kept my job. During that semester I also had a correspondence class in children's literature to finish in order to graduate. It was incredible, I was so busy. I had to finish a young adult novel almost every day in order to finish my children's literature class on top of working 20 hours a week and the busiest semester I had ever had at school. But the Lord helped me to accomplish it. I felt deeply his tender mercies that semester. I finished that class in fact I got an A in it and got straight As in my other classes. I Was able to really enjoy my cohort experience, receiving amazingly positive feedback from my mentor and teachers and finish school with a conviction that I would have been a fantastic teacher which meant a lot to me since I was not going to have the chance teach for a job. And at that same time, I became really the top employee at my job and had the satisfaction of being the only one who could answer a lot of questions and people requesting to talk to me when they had a problem. Being able to accomplish all of that while I was experiencing all the trial of a miserable pregnancy was a miracle and I know that with all my heart. SO many times I would sit down to take a test I had not had any time to study for with a prayer in my heart that the Lord would help me, guessing often along the way and come out to see I had scored %100. Those times reduced me to tears of gratitude and humilty, not because I cared so much about the grade as much as being overcome by the tender expression of love from my dear father, that he would pour so much help on me to show me his love was such an evidence of his perfect kindness. I am still overwhelmed to think of it!
Well we finished that semester. We both made it. We worked hard, we were very blessed and I Was done. We went to Boise for the summer and started working for my Dad. I liked my job at first but after a month I was dreading going to work so much that one night I prayed that Max would come so I wouldn't have to go any more and the next day I went into labor. I knew I was in labor but I was 4 weeks early and having had lots of contractions already no one believed me and since I am always one to doubt myself, I went to bed and woke up a couple hours later because my water broke. See I was right! :) Max was born 10 hours later and Oh how I loved that sweet little one! I had already loved him for 9 months of course and a life time of anticipating him but it was a sweet moment to hold him, my baby, in my arms fro the first time and feel how special he was and how much Father in Heaven loves him deep in my heart. We spent a blessed summer in Boise. We ate great food, we loved being with our family. I spent all my days just staring at my baby while he slept and I never ever put him down. It was amazing!
SO I guess it is the next 2 years that I wanted to wrote about mainly, but you see I got pretty sidetracked and it is good history I guess so I will leave it there. We had a baby, 2 more years of school and now school and the money making were pretty much on Javier. Luckily he is so fantastic and he was hired again at the MTC so our apartment now was a little more expensive. We couldn't live in a studio with a baby very well, but we found the very cheapest apartment we could find with 2 rooms and paid 580 a month for it which was our entire income except for 100 dollars. SO that was our food budget. 100 dollars to feed a family of 3 was really bad. Let me give some details: I didn't eat lunch for a year. I would feed Max and finish whatever he didn't eat but I didn't make a sandwich for myself. I would buy a big hunk of cheese at costco and grate it up and put it in the freezer so I wouldn't be tempted to snack on it and that one hunk of cheese would last us an entire semester (it tasted a little funny by the end). I would put one chicken tender in a meal for all of us jut so there was a little protein, although as often as I could I tried to avoid meat altogether because it was expensive. I quickly found that tofu was cheaper and could stretch farther than chicken. We didn't have any fruit. I had powerful cravings for some foods that we coudn't afford especially honey and salsa. The best Christmas present I have ever received and the one which I was the most moved by was that year when Javier gave me a huge thing of honey and a huge thing of salsa. I was overcome with emotion when I opened them, it was so sweet of him (and much more expensive than the present I got for him too).
Javier sacrificed incredibly during this time for his education. He used to wake up at 4 in the morning to study and stay up till midnight. At the MTC his schedule was not all in a block so he did a lot of walking from school to the MTC and in the winter he did not have a good coat and he would freeze while he walked. He went hungry quite frequently too and it was much harder on him because his life was so much more physical than mine. Poor Javi, its no wonder he got so sick. He ran himself ragged.
In the middle of our time at Wymount we had an internship in New York which I wrote about already in the blog during our time in New York we were making incredible money but we lived as frugally as we did in Utah because we knew that Javier's last semester of double tuition was coming up and we would need the money.
When we got back our life resumed. It was so fun to live at WYmount! Max and I played outside everyday and made incredible, dear friends! I haven't kept up with those women but I love them dearly. They were amazing and they were doing the same things we were and living with the same and other difficulties. They were amazing!
It is interesting too when talking about money that I kept a very detailed budget during this time. I accounted for every single expenditure and predicted what every expenditure would be in the following month. I always felt it was miraculous the way we always ended up with more money than we thought we would. I kept track of each penny and still I was always wrong. It seemed like the money was truly coming miraculously, like the widow and her son that never ran out of oil. That was our bank account. There was always more in it than there should have been.
We received a lot of help too. I used to go to my grandparents house in Salt Lake every Wednesday and they were so kind to let me do my laundry there and feed me and Max 2 meals. We always had our clothes spread all over their living room and they were so sweet about it. Also they always had food that they supposedly couldn't eat. It was always something. Dadu had bought too many apples, or Grandma had made too much bread, or usually both, but they would always send me home with a big brown grocery bag filled with delicious food that we couldn't afford. Oh Sweet grandparents, I love you!!! I loved those Wednesdays! I felt like I came home full of love and buoyed up (and full of delicious food too)!
The other help we received was from my parents. this is another part of the story which has moved me to tears many times. Daddy gave all his children shares in his company about this time and we started to get distributions. One day we were staring at our bank account wondering how we were going to makes ends meet and the next day a check would come for a thousand dollars. Wow! I saw amazing symbolism in those distributions. The kindness of my earthly father and my heavenly father were one and the same at those times. We prayed fervently for the money to pay for books. or tuition, or food and a check would come just at the right time. Each one was a miracle. We paid our tithing faithfully a hundred times when we didn't know if we would have money to pay our expenses, and I felt the Lord's blessing for our desire to be faithful. We knew we couldn't afford to put off paying tithing, because we needed the Lord's blessings day to day and we certainly received them.
Javier got so sick his last year of College (I also recorded a lot of that history already in the blog) and was not able to work much and then not at all for several months and we lived on food storage for the last three months we were at school going to the store only for milk and lettuce. What a time it was when he was sick. It is till painful fro me to remember. We truly suffered then. I could not sleep when he was sick. I would watch him sleep all night and listen intently to each raggedy breath. I was so worried they would just stop coming. We were so young and so unsure. we were afraid to go to the hospital because we couldn't afford it and we weren't sure how serious his sickness was. I knew that I felt it was very serious, but the doctors we talked to always told me I was overreacting, that it was not so bad and that he would be well with just a little medicine, and I learned to distrust those doctors and start to stand up for what I felt was true. But even then I was not forceful enough. We waited a month to get into the specialist and then we were only allowed to see the nurse practitioner. One day after they had done a new batch of tests trying to pinpoint the problem I asked her what the risks were currently. She looked at me uncomfortably and said, "well, if we aren't able to figure out what is doing this to him so we can treat it, he could die." Wow. I wanted to be brave for Javier, what a thing to hear that your life is in danger. I was painfully aware of all my dear husband had endured in these last few years of poverty, all the things I had not let him do because we couldn't afford them so I took him to his favorite restaurant and we talked about nothing and tried to be cheerful but I didn't last very long until I broke down into deep sobs and he held me close and told me he wasn't going to die that it would all be alright and walked me out to the car.
There were probably many times when I should have taken Javier to the hospital I remember very clearly the first time I did. He had been sick a long long time at that point, several months. I was 6 months pregnant and experiencing lots of preterm labor. I wasn't supposed to lift anything heavier than 5 pounds and I wasn't supposed to walk further than a few feet. And I was supposed to limit my stress levels. My doctor was really concerned that Sammy would come soon at that point. So what was I to do when Javier started coughing? Coughing so long and so hard without being able to draw a breath in between even after I put the nebulizer on? Even after I gave him 2 treatments of medication which was his maximum total distress dose and it didn't help at all and he hadn't had a breath in 15 minutes? Well I put his arm around my shoulders and picked up 20 month old Max in my other arm and I ran down three flights of stairs and across the parking lot to our car carrying them both. He coughed all the way to the hospital without a break, without a breath and I cried and cried and prayed and prayed that he wouldn't die that minute, or the next, or the next. We got there. They rushed him back, they stabilized him. I chased Max all around the hospital. they admitted Javier to stay a few days there. I didn't wan to leave Javier for a minute. I was so afraid that if I did I would never see him again, but eventually I had to take Max home. By the time we got home my contractions were powerful and after I laid Max down I worked hard on slowing them down. What a week. I tried to be with Javier every minute and we tried to be positive and we ate lots of oreos and drank lots of soda and I didn't answer my phone because nothing mattered except being together and I didn't care if people thought something horrible had happened to us because it had. It was such a delicate balance. Javier was in the hospital, maybe on his death bed, Max was sick too and I was afraid he would have asthma attacks if I left him with someone else and at that time we didn't have a really good treatment plan for him so that was terrifying, and I was contracting like crazy. We used to joke that Javier would be on one floor, I would be on another, our 3 months premature baby would be on another and Max would be wandering around the hospital by himself. It was funny but it also felt very possible.
The day after I took Javier to the hospital I had a doctors appointment and since I was so worried about all the contractions I had been having I had to go. I remember I was driving back from that praying that everything would work out. I was praying for strength to cope, for faith. I was thanking him for taking care of us, for giving us this chance to grow. I was telling Heavenly Father that I trusted him, that I knew he would take care of us and that he would cause the things to happen which would be eternally best for us all. (I fully expected that some heartbreak would be the end of this experience, since it seemed absolutely impossible that so many things could all be worked out happily) but I did trust Heavenly Father with all my heart and I knew that if heartbreak was what was in store it would help us to be happy ultimately. But I remember saying this prayer and as I stopped for a red light a feeling overcame me, like warmth filling my heart. I felt Heavenly Fathers pure, unlimited love for me, and also for Javier and Max and the baby in my tummy. What a profound moment in my life. In fact that was probably the single happiest moment in my life! I learned then that feeling the love of God is better than having an easy life. He blessed my so much. I was able to take care of Javier and Max and in spite of being sure Sammy was coming many times, he didn't until it was okay.
The blessings kept coming, some hardships kept coming too, but so many miracles occurred. First we realized before some of these things happened that through a complete miracle we would be able to buy a house when we finished school. That was truly a miracle, partly because Dell offered us $10000 to cover our relocation and partly because we received huge tax return all of the sudden we had plenty for a down payment, although that is also part of why our last few months in wymount we didn't go to the store except for milk because we were trying to save up for our down payment. I went down to Texas for a weekend with my mom before Javier went to the hospital and we were able to find a beautiful dream house for a ridiculously low price that was well within our budget. That was another tender mercy. It was Heavenly Father telling me he loved me. It was overwhelmingly kind and good of him!
The greatest miracle that happened though was when my old bishop (a brilliant doctor) called and listened intently while I described Javier's symptoms to him and brainstormed with me about what we should do. He told me what tests to ask for and most importantly he disagreed firmly with what other doctors had told me before that mold in our apartment was not a possible cause. Hew told me he had seen mold affect people as strongly and that it was definitely something to consider. After Javier left the hospital the second time, I never took him back to our apartment and he never got sick again. After so many reoccurences of that awful illness that was truly a miracle. Javier survived! It still feels like a miracle. I don't think a day has gone by since then that I haven't looked at my sweet husband and felt the blessing it is to have him on Earth with me still. That gratitude in and of itself is a blessing.
Sammy wasn't born until 38 weeks gestation and the most perfect possible day. Tender Mercy! And he was perfect! Healthy and sweet and the greatest reward for so much turmoil! The Lord has poured out so many tender mercies on us!
So I just couldn't make my book without including those stories. I want my posterity to know that the Lord has blessed us! I want them to see in our life that sacrifice means giving up something you want for something better. And especially to see that the best thing we could ever have which is worth any sacrifice is to feel the love of God!
