Chapter 26

On top of everything else we were facing the direst financial situation we had ever had to deal with.

We had to cash out our retirement accounts and take out a small business loan just to keep the business afloat. All our employees quit at once because Garen was so unbearable to work for at that time. Our trucks all broke down. Garen was having to work 18-hour days just to get by.

All we had left was our home, our car and our gym membership - at the Catholic gym. I was so full of anxiety that I was in constant physical pain. I would take Timos to school and head to the gym and walk on a treadmill and pray. Then sit in the sauna and pray. Then take a shower and pray. For hours every day all I would say was, “Please God. Please help us. Please. I’m ready to do whatever it takes God. I’ll do whatever you want God. Please!”

I opened the door the smallest crack, but that was all God needed.

It wasn’t that long before I realized my prayers had changed. I was no longer begging God, but I was actually thanking God. Thanking Him for loving us enough to take everything away so we had nothing else to look at but Him. My heart was running back to God after so long away. I still had no joy. But I was looking to God.

I think Garen in his own way had started looking to God as well. Things were so bad that he realized he needed to lean on something greater than himself if he was to have any chance of rescuing the business and our finances. Garen is good. But when Garen is looking to God, he is phenomenal.

We still hated each other. But we were hating God a little less and that was the tiniest of first steps.

For as bad as things had been with the business they really did rebound astonishingly quickly. But our personal life just became that much worse.