On Money

I often tell Chad that I wish we could have lived in the 1800's.

How nice would it be to not have to worry about cars breaking down? Yes, your horse might die, I'm sure it happened a lot. But let's get real. I think buying a new horse to pull your wagon would be a little less complicated than buying a new car or buying expensive parts to fix your car.

No expensive mortgages or second mortgages. Most of the time they bought their land outright and built their houses.

Also, no electric bills or gas bills. Candles are cheap. And fire, well fire is free.

No cell phones or TV's to distract us and take more of our money. They read books and spent time with their families...isn't that what we are counseled to do anyways?

No credit card bills to worry about. No debt...hmmm...what would that be like?

No expensive gas stations or overpriced grocery stores to worry about. We could grow our own food for the most part and horses just drink water, not gas, thankfully.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Chad usually smiles at me when I talk about this and tells me it wouldn't be quite that nice. And yes, I get that. I get that no A/C in the summer would be miserable. And horses and wagon's take a lot longer than cars to get places. I also understand that you might get pretty bored without TV and cell phones. But they did it, so I am confident I could too. If you didn't know modern technology existed you wouldn't miss it right?

I sincerly want to live in another time period, one more simple. One where money didn't control our world quite as much. But I can't. I live now. I was chosen to come to the earth for this time period for a certain reason and I must deal with the evils of "money" and the hardships that it brings.

There really isn't a certain thing that brought this post on. It's no secret these last few months for us have been hard financially. But we have persevered. We have gotten through it and I believe we are much stronger because of it.

But doesn't it just seem like sometimes you can't get a break??

Do you ever feel like selling everything you have, changing your name and going and living on a farm somewhere and just getting by with what food you can grow on your own? I do!! It won't happen, but sometimes I feel like it. (Again, I am sure it sounds more simple and appealing in my head.)

Satan tries very hard to control us with money and sometimes he succeeds. There are many people out there that are controlled by money. Chad and I try really hard to not be those people, and we aren't. That I can be happy about. This is what I keep telling myself:

Money is only an object.

It won't matter forever.

As long as I have a roof over my head and food to eat, I'm good.

I also keep telling myself that Chad and I work so hard and the fact that we just barely get by doesn't matter. What matters is that we do it on our own. We don't bum off our parents (I'm definitely not putting anyone that lives with their parents down, just for clarification). We also don't live off the government when it would be so easy. We pay our tithing, which I know has a lot to do with why we do always have enough to meet our needs. And we try to be positive.

Who knows, maybe someday we will be "well off." But until then, we will just have to continue to work hard and be happy with what we have.

And I will keep daydreaming about horses and wagons and candles....