My "Ouch" Moment

Have you ever had that moment when you come up with this amazing idea?  I mean it seems borderline genius!  And so you begin to work toward that idea and then comes the "Ouch" moment.  The moment you realize it's going to cost you something.....

I had one of those this week.  Our church has been doing a series called Moneybomb.  It's one of those series that one moment is encouraging, the next moment is challenging and in nearly every moment provides this underlying conviction about how I've used money unwisely.  

One of the things I've been learning over the past few years is to stop living in the guilt of what I haven't gotten right and to move forward into the future that holds the things I can change.  I can beat myself up over my tendency to cope with issues using retail therapy.  Or I can celebrate the fact I found an awesome counselor and am getting more out of what I spend for that therapy then a credit card bill.  I can look at where I've overspent in the past and beat myself up.  Or I can move forward finding ways to change those habits and re-channel that spending.

Which brings us to my brilliant idea of last week...  One of the books that has had a huge impact on my life this year is a book written by blogger Ruth Soukup titled, Living Well, Spending Less.  In this book, Ruth shares her own struggles with money, debt and how she's taken steps to change her habits.  In her book she briefly talks about a no spend month that her husband suggested they do while they were struggling with their own finances at one point.  I acknowledged the idea at the time, but quickly moved on rationalizing all of the reasons that it didn't work for us.  And then last Tuesday, Ruth posts to her Instagram account the news that their family in getting ready to do a no spend October.  This combined with the series at church led to a little voice inside saying.... "this might help that budget line item titled dining out".  So before I could talk myself out of it again, I texted the idea to my husband.  

That's how I find myself with a week left before we begin our no spend October.  Can I share it's kind of scary?  I have all of these "what ifs" popping up in my head.  What if the starkness of a month of no spending triggers my panic attacks?  What if I forgot to prepare for something I didn't realize we need?  Our concessions since it was rather last minute has been to keep our grocery budget as usual, but to see if we can have left over at the end of the month to roll into the savings and to keep previously made appointments with mentors and family.  I still find myself a little apprehensive though...  

I think my big "ouch" moment came in realizing I need to give up my Starbucks study sessions for four weeks.  That's a little hard.  We actually discussed whether I keep them or not, but I know our purpose is to reset our priorities.  As much as I like to think it is, Starbucks is NOT a necessity.  It's a luxury.  One of the convicting realizations that I've had over the past week is the way we have come to view our dining out as a necessity rather than a treat or a luxury.  Part of me knows we really need this reset, but another part of me fears the unknown and what comes with it.

What about you?  Does your life need a reset in an area?  Maybe a no spend October is something your budget needs, too.  Want to join us in the adventure?  Company always makes the trip more fun! 

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Sustainable Change

In June, my husband and I closed on our first home.  It's estimated to be the second oldest home in Mooresville and was built in approximately 1875.  The gentleman we purchased it from had lived there for nearly 40 years before he and his wife could no longer live here by themselves.  While when we initially looked at this home there wasn't this solid idea that we would want to spend the rest of our lives here that idea seems to be taking root as my husband and I make changes to our personal lives and our family culture that make us look at life more intentionally.  

In today's society it seems to be the norm rather than the exception for couples to have a starter home and then the dream home.  I think I really first started to notice our trend away from normal when I looked at Dustin one day and made the statement "I want to live in our house longer that the last couple".  Making that statement has made me more conscious of some personal choices that we have started to make in our lives with the idea of creating margin in our life for sustainable change.

Just this morning I was reading an article by Michelle Brock, When Justice Becomes Trendy.  As someone who was passionate about doing her part to end sex trafficking before it became the in thing to do, she has taken the approach of looking toward a future when the next big trend will come along and her cause will be discarded by the wayside by everyone, but those truly invested.  

Her article has had me evaluating how we as a family do things and oddly, I found it encouraging.  I realized that we've been investing in making life changes that will make living in those changes doable even after the trendiness goes away.

The first book I completed in my personal reading challenge for 2015 was a book by Margot Starbuck titled Small Things With Great Love.  One of the appendixes in the book included a list ways that her readers could begin to make intentional choices about how they spend their money by giving tools to evaluate businesses based on their environmental impact, their free trade practices, etc.  As we have made it through the first half of the year I now find myself evaluating how we've done.  The truth while I know there is always room to improve, I'm extremely happy with the habits we as a family have begun.  We shop local much more than we did in January.  We default to the question of can we get it used before running to buy the shiny brand new version.  I've begun to purchase through companies such as ePantry and invest in products from companies such as Seventh Generation.  

As I evaluate those extremely slow changes we've been making, after reading this 2013 article by Michelle Brock, I realize that this year has definitely been a year of change for our family, but we've been making intentional choices to make sure that our change that is sustainable.  Change that isn't dependent on trends, but change that we believe in enough to change not just our lifestyle, but our way of thinking.

Change

Change.  It's something we look forward to at times and yet dread in other moments.  It's the thing that signifies progress, but it can also be what moves us away from something we need to remember.  

I've really felt the impact of change in the last week as I've watched my baby girl turn one and move from infant to toddler.  It's in me as after a 13 year absence from college I once more begin classes to pursue a bachelors degree. 

As I've observed so many things changing in lives around me I find myself contemplating that word a lot.

Change.

Why do we so often want it so badly we go to great lengths to achieve it?  As I look at myself I start to see that often I want change so I don't have to actually deal with something that God is trying to walk me through.  Often dealing with the thing that is in front of me is hard.  It means facing things that I've spent years trying to ignore and it means that I have to go into those places that hurt.  

Know how I know that?  Because I have this awesome husband that won't let me quit these classes I've started.  The last week and a half have been one panic attack after another for me.  

Quiz time?

 Que the panic attack.

  Paper due? 

 Panic attack.

Lengthy reading?

You get the picture.

The reality is I've wanted to quit since day 2, but we keep wrestling through the panic attacks to uncover the reasons that I have test anxiety.  And through that process God is showing me things about myself that I had used frequent change to ignore.  

One thing in my reading for class this week that really stood out to me because of what I'm experiencing in this moment of my life is the moment in Scripture where God changed Jacob's name.  We focus on the part of the story where Jacob wrestles with God all night and then the next morning God tells him his name will not be Jacob any longer it will be Israel.  This time reading through that story looking for things I hadn't noticed before and reading what comes before in the same sitting I was struck by the change that was going on in Jacob all along.  So often I think we tend to go "Oh, God changed Jacob's name and then Jacob was different", but that's not the case at all!  Jacob was letting God change him long before God ever changed his name.  The thing we can easily forget about the night Jacob wrestled with God is that it was the night before he was to meet with the brother who the last time they were together threatened his life.  I'm convinced that God didn't change Jacob's name to change him, but to remind him who he was.  Jacob was already coming back to face his past, but this new name was God's way of reminding him in a very real, very physical way that he wasn't the same man who ran away all of those years ago. 

I'm not an expert, but the thing I'm realizing about myself is that too much change can be me trying to take the easy way out.  I can use the surface change as a distraction to keep me from dealing with the hard things that are going to bring the lasting change.  And so (with the help of that awesome husband I mentioned) as much as it hurts I choose to move through the anxiety and the panic attacks for the slower, substantial change that will lead me to that new identity that God has waiting.