By Dena King … After working for ten years for an employer, my sister and I decided to go into business for ourselves, opening The Grey House, a boutique in Estes Park. And after three years of paying other vendors to print our private label items, my husband and I bought a printing company that was going out of business so that we could keep everything in house. Our family was now fully self-employed and enjoying all the benefits that brings.

Those of you reading this probably already know the twist that this story takes. At the beginning of this year, COVID-19 began to spread across the country and in March all non-essential businesses in Estes Park were asked to close their doors for a time. This definitely hurt The Grey House because we didn’t have any foot traffic supporting our shop, but it equally hurt Trail Ridge Printing because all the events we normally print for were cancelled–no marathons, summer festivals, or fundraisers. And even the retailers we print for were not ordering because they were unsure when they would be able to open their doors to the public again. All of a sudden, it wasn’t so nice to be self-employed. In fact, it felt really scary to be completely reliant on things for our livelihood that were now uncertain.

I wrote an Instagram post around that time saying that God had brought us through the 2013 floods and we trusted He would take care of us again. But in conversations, I found myself more often telling concerned people “at least this didn’t happen in July!”

July is the month for during which both of our businesses make most of our sales. July revenue accounts for about 25 percent of our yearly totals. Foolishly, I believed God could take care of us in March when sales weren’t that great, but that July would be too great a problem for Him to handle.

And you can probably guess again what happened next. I woke up July 3 to my feverish little boy crawling into bed. He stayed at home with Daddy and I went to work never thinking that this could be the illness that shut down our shop a few months earlier. But as I walked into the house that evening, I wasn’t feeling well either and realized we had to take extra precautions. So, after a few difficult discussions with my sister and husband, we made the decision to close the boutique and cease printing operations until we knew it was safe for us and our employees to resume.

Once again, ironically this time, the loop playing in my head was “at least this didn’t happen in July.”

Here we were at the very beginning of our busiest month, a month where we had hoped to recoup our losses from March, and we were shutting down again. It was really devastating. I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of our looming rents and incoming inventory and not knowing where the reserves were going to come from to cover all these expenses. I was so thankful that our family, although sick, wasn’t severely ill and we weren’t showing any of the scarier symptoms. But in spite of my gratitude for our health, my mind fixated on our finances.

In my prayer time and conversations with family during this time, as soon I would lament, “I can’t believe this happened now,” I would hear a gentle reminder come back to me–“Test me in this.”

“Test me in July.”
“Test me in this.”
“Test me even in THIS.”

It was one of those Bible verses I learned ages ago, so I had to look up the full verse and context. It is found in Malachi 3:10 and it says: “Test me in this,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out for you blessing without measure.”

I clung to that promise as we waited for our test results and for clearance to go back to work and safely open our doors again.

And yes, you have probably guessed the end of the story as well. God did provide for us. He gave us much more than the things I was worried about and He showed me again that He is so good.

Dena King is Co-Owner of The Grey House and Trail Ridge Printing in Estes Park, Colorado