#nospendOctober

Earlier this year I purchased a book titled Living Well, Spending Less by Ruth Soukup.  Can I share that I loved this book and jumped on board implementing most of the ideas.  Except that crazy idea of a no spend month.  That was the one thing I was certain, I did not have the strength or will-power to do.

Fast forward 9 months later and I find our family nearly one week in to a no spend October.  I think the number of people I've had tell me they could never do that made me reflect and realize.... That was me back in January and February as I was reading this idea for the first time.  I had a long list of all of the reasons that it didn't make sense for us.  We had baby.  We "needed" to have the ability to eat out.  We needed date nights.  My list of rationalizations went on and on.

And then something happened....  God turned our life upside down.  In January, I could rationalize the need to meet people for a meal out.  The need to invest in relationships that made it impossible to give up the dining out budget.  Going to a church service took everything I had so what else were we to do, but go grab lunch out afterward?

The interesting thing about inviting God into your everyday life, something that our family has tried to do more consciously this year, is that God starts to show you what is really a value and what is just taking up space in your life.  As God moves more fully in to the life you invite Him to share, He starts to push out the things that are taking up space that He intends for something else.  

What I've discovered in my journey from "Just Say No (to this crazy idea)" January to "No Spend" October, is that when I let Him in more fully God starts to push out the unnecessary.  In some cases it's relationships that while they aren't "bad", they aren't pushing me to find ways to draw closer to Him.  In other instances it was busywork that I had allowed to consume my life over the past few years because it was "for a good cause".

The crazy thing is that our No Spend October is becoming our busiest month this fall.  We are finding opportunities to practice hospitality that we missed in the busyness of our "full" life.  We have the opportunity to take part in a Family Day at a local orchard with our daughter's daycare (ok, so I reached a little bit and justified that as a grocery expense since we're getting a bag of apples out of it).  We get to spend time with 3 different groups of friends (and that's just what we have scheduled).  We're going to the Halloween Hike at our local park on the last day of our No Spend month.  It's crazy, but our life is being stripped down to purposeful things.  Things that I walk away from feeling like I've received an amazing blessing by God in being able to just stop the craziness and allow God to push some of the unnecessary things out of my life.  So I have room for the life He wants to invite me into with Him.