Hi there,
I am new to this kind of thing. We have always been the one to give and never the one in need! It seems like this year has been just one bad thing after another. I am a disabled mother of 3 beautiful kids age 13(girl), 8(girl) and 7 (boy). I am married a great man who tries so hard to provide for us, he is getting less and less hours at work and I am not able to work due to an illness that will never be cured in my lifetime! We were doing so well in january of this year and we finally bought our first home, a real home where we could finally be a family and not just the people living with relatives! Right after we moved in a pipe bursts downstairs and destroys everything, thousands in furniture and flooring and thousands more to repair! Then a month after that we were hit with an enormous amount of medical bills. Then our washer drain cracked and flooded the upstairs laundry and ran down to the downstairs and flooded it again! Thousands more to fix and replace! Then last month a down spout poured water out so hard during a storm that it drilled into the ground and leaked through the concrete wall into my daughters bedroom, and not found till morning with 1 foot of water in most places! We live in a place that our mortgage in the amount of $2,000 a month is on the cheaper end for the area. But when work hours are cut and i am in so much pain and overwhelming fatigue that i can barely wake up and move to help my kids get off to school, that my husband has had to switch his work hours from day shift to night shift to help me and our kids, and that we are both so severly depressed and out of options. We have fallen behind on all of our credit cards and they have all gone to collection, medical bills are huge, our mortgage is 2 months behind and our truck payment is 1 month behind! We cant lose our home and our vehicle, and if my husbands work finds out about our financial situation he will be fired! Our insurance just cancelled and we can barely afford groceries so we go to the food bank for help every month, but even they can help us enough to get by! I mean last year we were the ones donating toys to toys for tots and donating a basket of food for each holiday meal! We were the ones who have always given money to friends and family in need and never asked for anything in return, but now when we need the help, no one is there, no one returns the helping hand! So now we are reaching out to anyone who may be in better fortune than us, anyone who was where we are now but is now able to help. My husband and I were always told how stupid we were for how much and many people we helped and asking for nothing in return not even pay back, and i always believed that what comes around goes around and if you hold out your hand to those in need and less fortunate than you, that if ever the time comes, that some way some how it would come to you! I have tried so hard to teach my kids these values and volunteering at the food bank and helping others worse off than us, and they have been so understanding and helpful now that its us like that, but i cant believe that now we cant even give them a somewhat normal christmas and something to open christmas morning, something from santa. I mean how am i to explain to my two youngest why they were the only kids in their class not to get anything from santa even? We have always made sure they know the real value of christmas, but how do you tell a 7 and 8 yr old that we are having ramen noodles for xmas dinner and that they should just sleep in on xmas morning cause there wont be a stocking or present for them cause santa isnt real and mommy and daddy needed the money to keep the heat on so we didnt freeze to death! I guess i am just wondering why, why isnt it coming around to us after all we have done, all the families i worked so hard to get into an apartment so they had a roof over thier heads! All the families i helped get food, help with their rent, help paying their power bills and now that it me trying to get help, there is no help to get! No help for utilities left until maybe february, food banks almost empty and no one out there to help with a mortgage! I guess i am just starting to doubt what i have always believed, but as a mother, i cant show that ever, as mom i will continue hiding the tears and unplugging the collection phone calls and my husband will continue to beg for more hours and feel like a failure as a provider, and just keep hoping that one day soon our luck will change!