Lessons from a Past Regret

Two months ago I stood in my kitchen holding an invitation to my best friend’s wedding. I read the print as if I didn’t already know the details. Sunday, June 16, 2013. San Diego, California. Why does it have to be in San Diego? I clipped the invitation to the refrigerator wondering how long I would wait to tell her that I had decided not to go.

Feeling guilty for my decision, I silently listed my reasons. It made me feel better. It’s not really a choice. I just can’t go.

For starters, I’ve never been a great flyer and ever since my semi-emergency landing situation in 2008, I’ve become an awful flyer. (Actually, I’ve only flown once since then but it was enough for me to know that my level of fear has skyrocketed past uneasiness and is now orbiting straight-up panic attack).

I can’t go.

And now we’ve got this house and these two kids and I don’t work and money doesn’t grow on trees and ticket prices are high – not to mention hotel rooms, meals, and the high cost of everything in California (or so I’ve heard).

I can’t go.

PLUS, I’ve never left my kids. Ever. I’ve left town without my children one time since Reese was born. One time! Matt and I went to Chicago for a weekend getaway - we didn’t even leave the state. How can I go across the country without them? What if they get sick or hurt or they just need mommy?

See?

I can’t go.

After convincing myself that this was not a choice made by me but by factors outside of my control, I made my peace with it. Her parents are having a reception here in July. I’ll go to that. There. Now I really felt better. Well, that’s the end of that.

A few weeks later, I was clearing out my office/guest room/catch-all-disaster (because I'm finally giving in to my desire for an official play room). I filled a small box with my framed diplomas, pictures, and other decorations. I paused as I grabbed the picture of my brother in his Marine uniform. That picture is all I have of the experience of his graduation. I don’t remember the ceremony. Because I wasn’t there.

I chose not to go for a lot of the same reasons. Mike had advised me against bringing Reese because of the lack of accommodations for a baby. He warned me that we would be outside all day in the heat with few (if any) convenient places to change or nurse her. As a new mom (and a generally high-strung person), I didn’t think I could handle that. But I also couldn’t handle the thought of leaving her…. AND I probably would’ve had a panic attack on the plane and I had just quit my job and money doesn’t grow on trees and...

I should’ve gone.

Until then I didn’t realize that I had never really made peace with my decision. Even though I did what I thought was best at the time, I wish I hadn’t let fear, discomfort, and uncertainty cause me to miss such an important milestone in my brother’s life.

If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t miss it.

I didn’t add his picture to the box. Instead I took it out of the frame and walked it to the kitchen. As I clipped it to the refrigerator next to Katie's wedding invitation, I saw my handwriting on the back.



People talk about living without regrets and I don't know if such a person exists, but I feel sorry for anyone who truly has none. Some of my deepest regrets and biggest mistakes have taught me the most valuable lessons of my life. Often the choices I would change if I could go back and do it over are the ones that shine a light on an opportunity to go forward and do it better.  

My flight leaves Saturday morning.

Birthday Party Mania!

This might seem a bit out of the ordinary compared to my usual content, but I can explain. We just celebrated Reese's 3rd birthday and during her party I had several people make "this should be on Pinterest" comments. I'm not necessarily all that creative in any particular area, but every now and then I come up with random things that turn out to be pretty cool (or so I'm told). I thought it would be fun to add a new element to this site, so consider this my first venture into a new type of blog post. Now, I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with a lot of these things, but everything I post here will always  be my own ideas (unless otherwise credited).

I figured I would start with the two things that generated the aforementioned Pinterest comments... 

I'm not big into huge expensive birthday parties - especially for little kids who don't know the difference. I didn't choose a theme for any of Reese's birthday parties. I made the cakes myself and bought whatever decorations and paper products happened to be on sale. My goal is always to make the day as nice as possible while spending as little money as possible - a process I find to be way more fun anyway.

My biggest challenge every year is the cake. I have no formal cake decorating skills whatsoever (actually, the cake for Reese's first birthday was my first attempt ever). I thought it would be fun to try to do something completely different every year so this year I decided to follow the cupcake trend. The cupcakes were very simple so I wanted a nice display. I didn't have a display tower so instead I used Reese's Little People Disney Princess castle... 

I also wanted to do some kind of game or activity with the kids - something that would be fun, cheap, easy to put together, and manageable for a bunch of three-year-olds. We live on two acres so we ended up doing a goodie bag scavenger hunt and the kids loved it!  

I gathered 10 buckets from around the house. (Random buckets are on my list of things I never pass up at garage sales so I always have a bunch). I filled each one with a goodie bag item (so one bucket had pencils, another had sand box toys, another had bottles of bubbles, and so on). Then I set up a table with crayons, stickers, and white paper bags with each child's name. Inside each bag was a checklist of the things they needed to find. We corralled all the kids into the garage to decorate their bags, and while they were doing that Matt placed the buckets around our property. We turned the kids loose (with parents in tow to help read the checklists), and they put together their own goodie bags with the 10 items from the buckets. It went over so well that we will likely make it a birthday party tradition!

Thanks for joining me today. Keep watching for more fun tips, creative gifts, really random ideas, and (as always) inspiration stories and moments worth sharing. For easy access to new posts, you can now follow my blog on Pinterest.  Have a blessed day! 

Coincidence or God Incident?

I sat in the Aldi parking lot drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as the gray cloud overhead spit intermittent raindrops on my windshield. Just two minutes earlier, I reached for the “Aldi quarter” in my cup holder and came up with a gum wrapper. I tossed it into the passenger seat and pulled my wallet from the diaper bag. No cash. None. I checked every crevice of my vehicle. Nothing. So I drummed angrily on the steering wheel as if my frustration had the power to manifest spare change.

I already had one of those mornings. Expired milk, spilled coffee, crabby infant, potential downpour. I knew I should have stayed home. But I went out anyway and now there I was in the Aldi parking lot having a very ridiculous “why me” moment. I eventually gathered my thoughts and surveyed my options. None of them was appealing – probably because I was already aggravated.

Meanwhile, Allie’s fussiness had turned into an all out scream fest. Still undecided about how to solve my original problem, I stepped out of the car and went around to Allie’s side. Her pacifier hit the ground as I opened the door. Really?! I bent down to pick it up and there at my feet was a shiny silver quarter.

My in-laws would call that a “God incident.” When I first met Matt’s family almost eight years ago, I didn’t know what that meant. Before then, I had never thought of God as an active participant in my life. The whole concept seemed really far-fetched. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God. I had always believed in God. I just didn’t think God believed in me.

There are just so many of us in the world. There is so much suffering and so many unanswered prayers. It seemed like God should have bigger things to worry about than arranging convenient coincidences and reminders for kindness in my little insignificant world.

Over the years, I slowly grew into my faith. I started reading the Bible and trying to live its message. I began to see real acts of God in my daily life, and instead of nodding along with ignorance when someone said “now that’s a God incident,” I began to smile with understanding.

See, I had always pictured God incidents as isolated events involving intentional interventions on the part of our Creator; as if a Divine hand reached down and placed a pen in my dryer to teach me about grace or perfectly timed the stop lights to prevent my tardiness for an important appointment. Looking at them from a small-scale perspective, it is easy to dismiss the possibility of God’s involvement.

But I have come to believe this about God: He doesn’t operate on a small scale level, nor is His involvement in our lives limited to certain events on certain days at certain times. He is ever-present at all times and in all things. His carefully crafted and perfectly orchestrated universe lends itself to these “coincidences” simply because everything in it is entangled in a web of simultaneous existence. The complexity of that existence and the depth of our connection to it are revealed to us in the events that those of us who don’t yet know better would call “coincidences.”

Today, I know better. That’s why I sat crouched in the Aldi parking lot whispering a prayer of gratitude to the Great Orchestrator. It’s not that I think God knowingly placed a quarter under my car to offset my crappy morning. It’s that I believe He created a world that allows the lives of the dropper of a quarter and the finder of that quarter to overlap for a single moment in time. And I believe that if you can see God’s presence in the smallest of things, you can begin to find Him anywhere and everywhere.

Now that I know how to spot His work, God shows up in my life every day. Sometimes He leads me to small things like quarters in parking lots. Sometimes He leads me to big things like houses and jobs. Sometimes it’s a surge of grace and compassion, comfort and healing, or courage and strength on the right day at the right time. Sometimes it’s the urge to give, the will to forgive, or the power to carry on amid the struggles He needs me to face. His form often changes but His presence never does. 

Over time, faith and patience have slowly begun to take the place of the worry and urgency in my life. My last paycheck will hit our account this week, which means the small gap in our income will soon return. Last week I opened an email from some friends who are moving to our subdivision this summer. They wanted to know if I would be interested in watching their three-year-old daughter three to four days a week through the school year. I always said I had absolutely no interest in taking on someone else’s kid unless it was part-time excluding summer for someone I knew who was the same age as Reese. Coincidence? Of course not. 

In the moments where you find your life perfectly overlapped with another, whether it affects you for a single moment or the rest of your days, you can assume the events happened at random and walk away feeling puzzled. That's a coincidence. OR you can recognize your significant role in the complicated web of existence, whisper a prayer of gratitude, and walk away feeling blessed. That’s a God incident.

My Kind of Budget

It’s Saturday morning. Two steaming mugs of coffee and an apple juice sippy cup rest on the patio table while a happy toddler chases bubbles. Matt and I pass the bottle back and forth, seeing who can blow the most bubbles with a single dip of the wand. We have no time limit, no agenda. I live for these mornings.

And I am beyond thankful that these days are not few and far between. This is a typical Saturday. This is our lifestyle – one of the many reasons I chose to stay home. The groceries are bought. The house is [relatively] clean. There are no errands to run, no bills to pay. My days are filled with diapers and coupons and bills (oh my!) so our evenings and weekends can be filled with snuggles and bubbles.    

At times, this life is not easy. We sacrifice a lot to have it this way. Our kids may never go to Disney World or have a fully paid college education. Christmases and birthdays are small and the gap between what we want and what can afford is often big.

All around me I see people taking vacations, refurnishing rooms, upsizing, upgrading. And it is tempting – oh, so tempting – to join the race.

Until Saturday comes again and I sip coffee with my husband and blow bubbles for my daughter with no time limit, no agenda. Because everything else is already done and there is nothing left to do but relax and be thankful that we may have to budget our money, but at least we're not short on time.

A Lesson in Giving

I approached the doors of Walmart, trying to look invisible as I passed the table outside. A woman’s voice said, “We’re collecting school supplies today.” I assumed she was talking to me, but I avoided eye contact. I muttered a noncommittal response and continued inside, trying to ignore the guilt mounting inside me. I tried to consoled myself, leaning on the excuse that as a one-income family, we are limited in the amount we can give.

Moments later, I stood in the bedding aisle holding a bed skirt - a completely nonfunctional item serving only to add to the aesthetics of my daughter’s bedroom. I pulled my shopping list from my purse. Few things were actual necessities. Instantly, my mind suddenly left the store, floating away and resting on a memory I had long since forgotten…

I was in my college dorm room, flipping through the TV channels when I came to an episode of MTV Cribs. The celebrity, whose name isn’t important (and I don’t remember anyway), paraded the cameras through his custom-built garage. At the end of a long line of motorcycles of varying models and colors sat a motorcycle molded out of solid gold. I thought of all the people who could be helped with the money that was now sitting idly in the form of a solid gold motorcycle. How sad that people are so greedy, I thought as I changed the channel.

The memory evaporated as quickly it came, leaving behind the sticky residue of the bubble of denial that had burst in my face. I was suddenly aware of my own abundance: the 55 inch TV mounted to my living room wall, the Android in my pocket, the appliances, decorations, clothes – everything in my life that is so far beyond the realm of true necessity – my own golden motorcycle.

I started to wonder what might happen if I stopped placing the responsibility on those with obvious, excessive wealth and started focusing on sharing my own abundance as much as possible.

I reached up and put the bed skirt back on the shelf and headed for the school supplies.

This is a Bigger Picture Moment. Share with us at Alita's Place today.

If You Jump, I Will Catch You

I hear a lot of moms talk about how badly they wish they could stay home, but the fear of losing their income prevents them from taking the leap. For all the moms who want to stay home as badly as I did, all I can say is I know that fear. I know that doubt. But I did it anyway, and I have no regrets. This is my story….

When I was pregnant with Reese, Matt and I wavered quite often in our feelings about me staying home full-time. Although it was the lifestyle we both always wanted, neither of us was convinced that we could meet our needs with half of our income. With the help of an online tutorial, I created an elaborate spreadsheet detailing our expenses and the upcoming change in our income. I quickly developed an unhealthy addiction to tinkering with the numbers… maybe if we downgrade our cell phone plans, or if we cancel our cable TV, or if we give up this or stop buying that, maybe then the number at the bottom of the screen will rise above zero. It was not uncommon for Matt to find me staring at the screen in tears saying, “It’s just not going to work. I can’t stay home.”

Halfway through my pregnancy, I gave up on my dream and started researching daycare options. I started by calling a few women in town who provided daycare in their homes. No one had any openings. I was running out of references, so I chose a different route and went to a local day care center. As I looked through the window to the main play area, I could already feel the heat rising in my body, the tears pooling under my eyes. I thought about the life I pictured for my children, and this was not it. The woman behind the counter said, “Hi, can I help you?” At least, I think that’s what she said. I was already out the door.

After that, Matt suggested that we take a break from the daycare search until after the baby was born. We decided to spend less time worrying about doing it our way and more time praying for guidance toward the right decision. It took over six months, but we finally decided to leave it to God. Once we did that, we realized that He was already trying to give us the answer. The uneasy feeling I had in the daycare center and my inability to find any openings with an in-home provider were two of the obvious signs. Then there were other things like the unexpected partial tuition waivers we received from Matt’s work or the last-minute financial aid award notices that helped pay for his graduate classes or our decisions to skip out on a bigger house and newer cars just because we “had a feeling” that it wasn’t the right time. We had too many instances where money just happened to line up just as we needed it, as if God was saying, “If you jump, I will catch you.”

A few months later, I watched my brand new baby sleeping peacefully in my arms, tears coming and going with each new surge of emotion: pride, joy, pain, exhaustion, love, fear. After watching the look in my eyes all day, Matt finally asked the question we both already knew the answer to, “You’re not going back to work, are you?” My answer was simple: “I can’t.”

We still had three months to make a definite decision, and we talked about it almost every day. After actually having the baby, we were more determined than ever to make it work. With just a couple weeks left of my maternity leave, I sat down at the computer and wrote my resignation letter. As I walked it into the office, the negative number on my spreadsheet flashed in my mind like a strobe light. I handed the letter in anyway. I quit my job anyway. I walked out the door and went home to my baby.

Since that day, it hasn’t been easy. We’ve turned down invitations to go on trips and passed up homes we wanted to buy. We drive cars barely large enough for a car seat, and we hardly ever eat at restaurants. But we didn’t cancel our cable TV; we didn’t give up our cell phones. We still do fun things, and we have a great life. We pay all of our bills and we still have a lot of money in savings. And that negative number on the spreadsheet? Well, I don’t know where it went, but when I go on line to check our bank statement, even on the months where I feel we went a little overboard, there’s always enough. There’s always more than enough.

I've been home for almost 17 months, and I never regret my decision. I never miss my paycheck, and somehow it all works out. Living with less really is easier than it seems. Of course, I can’t say that it will work that way for everyone, but it worked that way for us. All we did was turn it over to God. We prayed and we listened. We took a leap of faith and we followed our hearts. We jumped and He caught us.

What Really Matters

When we first decided that I would stay home with Reese, we knew we were going to take a major financial hit. To combat that, we made a plan to scale back our lifestyle. The plan included an agreement that we would discuss any major expenses (which had actually always been our practice but the dollar amount we used to define "major" suddenly became much smaller). During the first six months of my unemployment very few things came up, mostly because we both knew we were pretty limited in the "extras" we could afford. Then in the spring I got invited to go to Atlanta and we had our first "major purchase" conversation.

If you've been following along, you know that I did end up going because I blogged about it back in June, but I never did talk about the conversation that led to my decision to go. When I first decided to talk to Matt, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would convince him that this was a good idea and a worthwhile expense. I thought about the questions he might ask and prepared answers for everything. I wanted him to know that I wasn't just doing this on a whim. My whole argument was based on the way I would react to an equally expensive request from him. But when it came time for the conversation, he had only one question for me: "How important is it to you?"

That's it. That's all he wanted to know. He didn't ask how much it would cost. He didn't care if it fit with his definition of "necessary expenses." He only cared about how much it mattered to me. At first, I didn't know what to say. This was the one question I wasn't prepared to answer. Almost immediately, I felt guilty. If the situation was reversed, I don't think I would have thought to ask him that and if I did, it certainly wouldn't have been my only concern.

Matt always tells me that my happiness is important to him, and it's such a wonderful feeling to see his actions prove his words true. I walked away from that conversation knowing that anything that's important to me is also important to him. I felt loved, supported, and validated, and I never want to forget to reciprocate that back to him. It's been several months and a similar purchase hasn't come up for him yet, but when it does I'll be ready with the only question that really matters.

Financial Freedom

Most people might be surprised to hear that Matt and I believe that we have financial freedom. A year ago, I left a job that provided half of our annual income, and even though we've spent the last 12 months on a take-home salary that barely breaks $30,000, I do not feel bound by our income in any way.  We thought it would be a struggle, but we are so happy with our life and we live in complete abundance. People keep asking me how we're doing it. Well, I'll tell you....

Livin' it up in 800 square feet.

In May 2009, we saw a house for sale in our town. It was beautiful and very tempting. We took a flier, decided we could easily afford it, and called the realtor. But then we talked about how buying this house might fulfill our dream of owning a beautiful home but it would destroy our dream of the lifestyle we wanted to have inside it. So we canceled our appointment, tore up the flier, and decided that we would pass on one dream to fulfill another. So we stayed in our little farmhouse, and when we had a baby a year later, I was able to stay home like I always wanted. And that was the beginning of our realization that we actually have a lot more financial freedom than we think.

If you start asking people what it means to have financial freedom, you will probably hear a lot of responses about being able to do and buy whatever you want. Therefore, if you aren't in a position to do and buy whatever you want, then you must not be financially free. I disagree. Very few people in this world have the financial freedom to do whatever they want. But we all have the freedom to choose not to do things that don't realistically fit into our budgets. For us, financial freedom is just as much about choosing not to buy something as it is about choosing to buy everything. Every time we are faced with the opportunity (or temptation) to purchase something, we exercise our financial freedom as we decide whether or not to buy it.

I've been waiting to use this picture!

Sometimes we look at a potential purchase and think, "we can't afford that." But that's not true at all. We have credit cards. We have a savings account. We technically do have the ability to buy whatever we want, we just choose not to do that because being debt-free is more important to us. When we make our financial choices from that perspective, we feel empowered by the money we have rather than hindered by the money we don't have. Instead of constantly trying to get more, we've decided to focus on being happy with less. And because we are happy with less, anything extra - like an occasional dinner date or a new outfit - seems like an exciting treat instead of something we do all the time. Since we are motivated by saving instead of spending, we actually want to make less expensive choices.

So that's it. That's the secret. It's all about attitude. It's our attitude - not our income - that allows me to stay home. It's our attitude - not our income - that allows us to live without debt. And it's our attitude - not our income - that gives us our financial freedom.

Embracing Frugality

When we decided that I would stay home with Reese full-time, one of the things I had to do immediately was learn what it means to be frugal. Matt is a high school teacher and my job provided 50% of our income. The day I turned in my resignation letter we took a huge leap of faith. We were determined to make our lifestyle fit within Matt's take home salary and not accumulate extra debt. We've been without my full-time since August, and we have not taken out any loans, carried any credit card balance, or touched our savings account. Now, I realize that it's only been 7 months and we haven't faced any major catastrophes, but we haven't been without any financial surprises either. One of the many things that made the difference for us was embracing a frugal lifestyle.

I have learned so much about living with less over the past 7 months. I still have a long way to go, but at the very least, frugality has gone from a word that brought me feelings of embarrassment to one that brings me feelings of accomplishment. I used to think that being frugal meant being cheap, but I was so wrong! Some of the people I know who live the most full and abundant lives are also those who are the most frugal with their spending. Here are some of the differences I've learned about being cheap vs. being frugal. Cheap people are stingy; frugal people are generous. Cheap people will sacrifice quality or safety to save money; frugal people find creative ways to get safe, high quality items for less. Cheap people stiff their friends on the tab and make frivolous complaints to avoid paying full price; frugal people make sure costs are split fairly and take advantage of sales and coupons to avoid paying full price. Cheap people only want to spend money on themselves; frugal people donate to charitable causes and prefer to spend money on others. The biggest difference is that frugal people spend less on tangible that fill their closets and more on intangible things that fill their lives.

How amazing is it to think that your life can be so full without a high price tag? Fortunately, anyone can embrace a frugal lifestyle - the difficult part is taking the steps to get there. Here are some of the things we have had to start doing to help us be more frugal in our spending: (1) fully understand the difference between needs and wants, (2) get in touch with our values, both individually and as a family, (3) re-define some common words and cultural concepts, (4) surround ourselves with people who support and encourage us, and (5) pray for strength and guidance throughout the process.

I hope that as our financial state evolves, we will continue with the frugal habits we're developing. I hope that we remember to think of others before ourselves and that we stay committed to being good stewards of God's blessings. Most of all, I hope that we never forget all that we gained by embracing frugality.