Getting Ahead?

Good morning, God, and thank you for this new day in my life.  The next hours are filled with potential and possibility, and I'm grateful for the chance to live another day in this world, to be able to give and to receive and to laugh and love and feel. . . .

These days find my wife and me on the verge of a huge change, but also still caught up in the financial maelstrom that started three years ago when I was laid off.  The last two years of my wife not being able to find work haven't helped, of course, but that's neither here nor there.  No matter what, we are where we are, we are trying our best to resolve the situation--and we seem to be treading water, still unable to catch up with the bills and the responsibilities and the debt that came to us as a result of the layoff.

So what can we do, God?  How can we start changing things and turning things around?  The main reason for which we're making the move is that our current situation isn't at all helpful to us, and we need to change it.  The fear that we both share, though, is that our next situation will be just as negative, especially with the possibility of my wife finding work.  What will we do if she doesn't?  How will we ever get ahead, and how will we ever prepare ourselves for retirement?

I know that we're not the only people facing these problems.  I know that there are millions of people out there who have things much worse than we have them.  But that doesn't keep me from searching for answers, from asking for guidance, from trying to turn things around.  And I know that we're very blessed with the things that we do have--it's not a question of a lack of gratitude or of taking things for granted.  It's simply that it's very hard to live this way, and we both want to turn our financial situation around so that we can get ahead and actually help others for a change.  Could you please tell me what's up with this, or give me some guidance as far as what we might do to improve things?  I'll be listening for an answer, and I'll try to write it down here tomorrow. . . .