I’m really getting excited about my trip to visit dd16 in six weeks!  I’ve made my ticket, reserved a studio apartment for the two of us to stay in for a few days, arranged with her school to take her out for the time I’ll be there, and now need to make arrangements with friends in a couple of different cities to spend time with them. 

I must share with you how amazingly all of this is working out.  When I decided to visit dd in Israel just two weeks ago, I didn’t have the funds to make the trip.  It’s not just the cost of a ticket, but for transportation, food, a place to stay, a passport – it all adds up really quickly.  We didn’t have the extra money from our regular budget to fund the trip, and we don’t charge expenses on a credit card unless we have the means to pay in full when the bill comes due.  I wasn’t sure where the money was going to come from but I just knew that this was a trip that I needed to make and I felt a deep inner certainty that all that I needed would come through for me.

I planned to buy my ticket last Monday night online, and was hesitant to purchase the ticket via credit card without a sense of how I’d pay for it two or three weeks later.  I had about three hundred dollars towards the ticket at that point from my parenting classes – which was a nice start, but still left a lot to cover! 

That very afternoon, a check arrived in the mail.  It was from a business contact who owed me money, who ignored invoices, emails and phone calls for over two years – and the very afternoon of the day I needed to make my ticket, the $656 I had almost given up on ever receiving showed up.  Incredible timing, isn’t it?!?

I put the check in a file folder since it was too late to go to the bank that day.   I didn’t end up making my ticket that night, either, since it was ds17’s last night at home so we ended up talking until very late at night about all that’s going on for him.  So it wasn’t until very late the next night that I made my ticket.  When I was ready to leave to the bank the next day, just hours after having made the ticket, I opened the folder to remove the check.  As I took out the check I had received, saw another envelope there.  I don’t keep empty envelopes in my files, so I checked the envelope, thinking that I must have left some kind of paperwork to file there – and found a check for $254!  A hospital had placed an order with me months ago for nursing pillows, and because I received the payment during the busy holiday season of September, I put it to the side.  And totally unlike me, completely forgot it was there. 

So far, Hashem has sent me $1191, enough to cover my ticket and almost all of my passport application fee!  When I told my dh about this, I said to him with a huge smile, “Doesn’t it seem very obvious that I’m meant to go visit dd?”  (He had been apprehensive about the cost when we initially discussed me going.)  And he very strongly agreed that Hashem (G-d) is clearly paving the way for it to happen.

It’s so amazing to see Hashem’s hand behind everything, and though a big unexpected roadblock just last night came up regarding child care while I’m gone, I trust that just as He is smoothing the path for everything else, He’ll help us resolve that issue as well.  🙂

Avivah