Dancing in the Mine Fields

He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses more;
He who loses faith, loses all.  ~Irish proverb

 Yesterday I paid my stupidly expensive yet supposedly necessary cell phone bill, spent more on groceries than the previous trip because most dairy products cost up to a dollar more now than two weeks ago, and put $75 worth of gas in my thirsty SUV. Last time gas was up to $3.70 a gallon, we had to cancel family activities and eat hot dogs for a week.
Ok, so maybe not every day of the week, but we ate a lot of hot dogs. And I'm pretty sure those few months in the spring/summer of 2008 are the reason my oldest daughter, Annabelle, can no longer stand spaghetti. To say that money was tight that summer would be a serious understatement. But we made it out unscathed....again.
In the ten and a half years that Chris and I have been married, we've seen our fair share of financial hardships. We didn't exactly start off the "right" way. We had our son Luke just three months after getting married. I was a full time student and Chris was a part time key holder at American Eagle. We moved from our first apartment, where our neighbor was a "working girl" and the steps leading up to my door were usually covered with crack heads and "Johns" whose pants were three sizes too big, most likely to conceal a weapon or paraphernalia of some kind. Our second apartment was too expensive, and after months of quarrelling over which bills should get paid and which will have to wait (and several meals prepared on a Coleman stove because the electric bill was beaten out by the rent), we celebrated our first anniversary by moving in with my parents and teenage sister.
Shortly after moving in with Mom and Dad, Chris was blessed with a good paying job and Annabelle was born. The plan was to stay put and save as much as we could, but with Chris working 12 hour days that started at 1am and the house becoming smaller with each passing day, we bailed much earlier than we should have, moved into another too expensive apartment and bought a car (so smart). As dumb as it was, I just laugh it off because, after all, I wasn't even old enough to legally consume alcohol and was bringing home $3,000 a month.
We could have done well, but we fell into the materialistic culture that is uniquely Amarillo, and found ourselves barely making it from paycheck to paycheck once again. Chris was tired of his job and wanted something that better suited his personality. Apparently that job was building fences on a cattle ranch outside Wichita Falls.
I was concerned about the (MASSIVE) cut in pay, but was reassured that rent-free living was to be provided once the property was cleaned up. Plus, if there is one personal trait that I can be proud of, it's my intense level of commitment to my husband. I have always had faith that our family's best interests were his top priorities and that he'd never steer us wrong. While that faith has been tested to very near it's breaking point more than once, I'm glad I stuck it out.
Chris went down to the ranch ahead of us while I moved back in with my parents. Knowing it would only be for a month or two made staying there a lot easier. Of course, in tiny towns miles away from what I would consider civilization, there are very few rent homes available. We had two choices 1) a one bedroom with a huge yard and garage and a living room big enough to hold a couch and a full size bed or 2) a two bedroom for the same price with a small yard, no garage and the lingering odor of the dead body that was locked up in the sweltering home for several days before the neighbors noticed the stench. While the man was very old and died of natural causes, I couldn't handle the possibility of ghosts tormenting me, so we opted for the one bedroom and hoped to make it work. After all, it too was only supposed to be temporary.
After waiting six months for news on the ranch house, we finally got it. The land owner decided not to let us use it. Instead, he planned to spend several million renovating it and turning it into a hunting lodge. A two bedroom bunk house to be used once or twice a year by his wealthy lawyer friends who like to get drunk and shoot birds. Awesome. It was downhill from there.
After suffering through a Red River summer with nothing but a single window AC unit to keep us cool and spending far too much time back in Amarillo because I was miserable in my own home, an old 3 bedroom farm house in a nearby town became available, so we jumped on it. The rent was a little higher and our lack of "cash up front" caused a delay in the turning on of our electricity. We spent two snow filled weeks in February cooking dinner on the trusty old Coleman stove and sleeping under layers of blankets and sleeping bags, all four of us in the same bed so that the kids didn't freeze. During the day, the kids and I would play inside for a while, then go sit in the car with the heater on to warm up (we were too poor to actually go anywhere), then back inside again. 
We managed to make it through those two weeks and tried to make home in Byers, but it just wasn't us. Chris continued to butt heads with the ranch owner and our landlord was always dropping by to "inspect" things. Even though I kept the house clean, she was always nagging about the back lot not being mowed and blah, blah, blah. We put up with it for five more months, but when I noticed a large lump on the side of my neck but couldn't get it checked out because we had no money and no health insurance, Chris decided it was time to get serious and joined the Army.
While Army life is no walk in the park, I'll leave those stories for another day. So far, though the military doesn't pay much (most soldiers, including us, are below what the federal government considers "poverty" levels), it's been a reliable source of income. Until now.
On March 12, an article was quietly published in the Army Times. It didn't merit front page news, in fact, it was buried in the middle somewhere. To sum it up briefly, the article warned that if congress doesn't pass a spending bill and the government shuts down, soldiers will not get paid. A continuance was passed the day after the article was written, allowing the federal government to keep functioning for another three weeks, but if there is no permanent budget signed by the president before April 8th, we will not receive our April 15th check. Or our May 1st. Civilians will be sent home without pay, but soldiers have been issued a stern warning: Don't report on the 15th and you'll go to jail. You'll be AWOL.
Now, I doubt that if every soldier in the entire active military decided not to report on the 15th, that they could issue UCMJ for half a million people, but there's going to be those few brown nosers that would throw a wrench in the military-wide strike plan. So, report to duty every day without pay for as long as congress takes to pass a budget. Medical clinics will be closed because they're run by civilians, but the soldiers who work in them still have to report. Commissary's, gas stations, PX's will remain open, but since they are also run by civilians, soldiers will replace them....even though no one will have the money to buy groceries. Gate guards will be replaced by MPs, leaving the crime fighting on the back burner.
All that aside, the situation in my own house will be dire. We're putting off paying bills on the 1st until we know for sure what's going to happen on the 15th. By doing that, we should have enough to get groceries and keep gas in the car, since Chris will still have to drive to work every day. I'm confident that we will be able to make it for a month, but any longer than that and I'm not so sure.
We have been through some pretty rough spots in the past and those have prepared me for situations like this. I have faith that everything will turn out alright in the long run. After all, the last ten years of dancing in the mine fields has left us with a few battle scars, but we're still here.
So on this (day after) Saint Patrick's day, when we celebrate man's ability to persevere as long as he has faith, raise a glass with me and toast to the important things. Knowing where you're going by learning from where you've been, and always standing side-by-side, arm-in-arm with the ones who matter most.

I have known many, liked not a few, loved only one, I drink to you. ~Traditional Irish Toast