Blessed

I was listening to Dave Ramsey today. He’s funny stuff. I appreciate his humor, his passion for “living like no one else” and his compassion for people who call in. Two things are stuck in my mind since listening.

First is that I’m so glad that we don’t have stupid debt. I’m praying that it stays that way as we’re looking at the expense of a new well in the coming month. With that said, we do owe on our house. It kills me to be paying so much in interest each month. I want to have “gazelle-like intensity” to get this thing paid off. Or move to a cheaper one. The thought of living on beans and rice sounds easy in some aspects and really hard in others. I know we can do it. But I’m not sure if I’m willing to yet.

Second thing is how blessed we’ve been. Dave was asking people to call in with their debt stories. We don’t have this amazing story of getting out of debt. Fortunately debt has never been something that we’ve taken pride in. We already live unlike many in our culture to avoid that nasty thing called debt. Though we don’t have an amazing “get out of debt” story, we have a story of God’s blessing which includes our finances. A little over a year ago, we signed our names to paper obligating us to the financial commitment of an international adoption. At that time, we didn’t know where we’d come up with 30-grand, but we believed that God would provide. And He has! Because we’ve been mostly decent stewards of our money, we didn’t have the big bad cloud of debt hanging over our heads. That alone is freeing financially and emotionally. We made several financial decisions in our family that allowed us to save more money each month that could go toward adoption. We held two fundraisers that brought in some extra cash. In the end, we chose to empty our savings and emergency to fund the adoption. It worked out great. Seeing God’s hand in the financials as we continued to walk in faith was amazing. Though we already knew how to be good stewards of our money, it was through the Dave Ramsey program that we were able to make wiser decisions. We had a goal, we focused on attaining it and we have a cute little boy asleep in the next room over to show for it. Thank you God for continually blessing us!

Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? Have you heard of The Total Monday Makeover book? If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to invest in the book. It can change your life and has the potential to change your family tree. Now how’s that for a $12 to $20 dollar investment? Check out the resources at daveramsey.com