I feel terrible.

Our dog has heartworm. Well, it's not diagnosed yet, but I'm pretty sure she must.

It's entirely preventable, doesn't even cost all that much, but I didn't get her meds and now she has it.So we get to take her to the vet and spend hundreds of dollars to have her treated over the course of a few months and she will suffer and have to be restricted from activity if she doesn't die first. Sigh.

It's not that I feel guilty really, but it just kinda solidifies my hardness toward the Lord. I mean, if money never was an issue, I would have NEVER put off taking her to the vet and been so lax about her care.


Here I am, needing two surgeries, needing new glasses, needing to buy new underwear for myself and two kids for crying out loud. So I don't really feel guilty for not spending money on taking the dog to the vet.

Garrett's bike got stolen. It's been like 3 weeks now since it happened. I had hoped that some kid rode it home and after a while the mother would notice her kid got a bike from somewhere and would make him return it. I had hoped that we would come home sometime and it would be back. No such luck.

The dog got fleas and a stinky yeast infection, so I had to get her flea stuff from the vet last week. I got her heartworm stuff too, but giving it to her is what prompted me to get thinking about the possibility that she already had heartworms. Then I looked up the symptoms and she's definitely had the symptoms for some time. Anyway, if it wasn't for that and a flat tire last week, I would have gotten Garrett another bike for like $20 from the junk man down the road.


I feel so terrible about it all, I don't know what to do. I dread taking her to the vet. Our vet is really nice, he was actually friends with Steve for a while. He's given us the meds free before and always asks me all kinds of questions about Steve and how we're doing and do we need help with this or that. I just dread it. I have to go in there and tell him that the dog needs to be tested and he's going to ask me why I didn't just call him and get the meds. I don't really think he's going to give me a serious guilt-inducing talking-to, but still. If she needs the treatment, it's going to be a lot of work for him and he probably won't make us pay and I will feel bad. Or, the best case scenario is that he just says the reason she gets winded and coughs is that she's fat and Steve needs to quit giving her pizza crusts and I better keep in touch so she doesn't lapse with her meds again.

I hate depending on others for that kind of thing. I'm not so sure if I hate it really, but I know Steve hates it, so I hate it because I have to talk with him about it and I know it makes him feel like he doesn't provide well enough. I mean, the times people have given us things and we didn't ask for it was kinda different. We could both say, wow, that was a big blessing, a help. But I know for sure that Steve doesn't like taking free vet care from his friend because his friend has complained about people wanting free care just because they go to church with him. So anyway, having to ask for help now is doubly humbling because I should have asked in the first place.

So I kinda wonder sometimes if we're not seeing NT miracles and all because we aren't really open and loving with each other. I wonder sometimes if that's our calling, our path that the Lord has guided our steps toward. I mean, we're not poor because I need to have the best of everything or stuff I don't need. We're poor mostly because we have been trying the best we know how to follow the Lord. I think it's important that I be a "worker at home" and our kids get homeschooled. Steve does too. We both have grappled with allowing the Lord to determine the size of our family. But ever since that decision, debt has skyrocketed and problems get worse. We bought this house almost out of desparate exhaustion with living under a leaky, collapsing roof. We prayed and asked God to close the doors if it wasn't His will. We could see even while we were sitting at the closing table how God could just shut the door and say, "nope, it's not for you, not right now." But He didn't.

Is it something we need to learn about the interdependence of the Body of Christ? I don't know. I know that I wish I could just find a solution that wasn't some internet scam. I wish there was something I could do to bring in several hundred dollars a month and help to pull us out of this mess. I could do like 15 hours of something easily every week, maybe more. Unless I get pregnant, but that's pretty unlikely the way things have been going. Sigh. There are several people who have offered to help us with money. One of them could probably wipe out our debt with one check if she wanted to(not that I'd ask). I'm just saying. I really don't feel comfortable with looking at people like they are a "source," and I know that Steve isn't. Are we too "Americanized?"