GO MAD Monday

Do you remember a few weeks ago when I was pondering why it was so hard to see if I had done anything to make a difference? I wondered if I was simply so self-absorbed I couldn't even begin to think of meeting a need in someone else, or was I merely spending all my time pouring myself into others, making a difference in their life that nothing came immediately to mind.  (You can find that post here)

Today I was so self-absorbed, I completely forgot about GO MAD Monday.

I am in the process of slowing decluttering my house. I love it. I love seeing things go out the door in some form or fashion. I have had garage sales and I've found my best friend, Craigslist. I have had some measure of success selling things using that service. Some items I have had to list multiple times before they sell, but for the most part I'm incredibly happy with craigslist.

A few weeks ago or so I re-listed my canning jars. I don't can at all. I have tried. I've tried making my own jam but honestly, it's not for me unless I have someone to can with me. And all my canning buddies have left me.

I had a fairly large box of canning jars and lids. And since canning season is upon us I thought they would go quickly. But several days went by and no one seemed interested.

Last week I received an email from a girl wondering if I still had them. We emailed back and forth one morning and I discovered she didn't live locally, she had an 8 month old baby, was in school full-time, she has three boys, one with Aspergers, lives in the country and works part-time.

And she was asking for my address so she could mapquest it to see how far she would have to drive. I offered to meet her halfway.

We met in a small town and I gave her the jars. She was happy to get them. And probably happy she didn't have to drive three hours round-trip to get them.

I know I probably spent more getting there than I made, and finances are tight but I can't help but think I ministered to her somehow by meeting her. And I know it was a God-thing because who in the name of getting rid of things and making a few dollars, drives 90 miles (round trip) to deliver jars, knowing it would cost them all the money they should be making?

(my apologies for the disjointedness of this post....we are fully entrenched in our school day and I had multiple interruptions to my thought processes)

What did you do to GO MAD Monday?

A weighty issue

Hey, my friend Kathi, is requesting prayer. Prayer that she would believe God, have Faith that what He says is true.  Even when it involves a "weighty" subject. So head over to her blog (Kathi Lipp) and since we can all relate, leave your prayer in her comments! You will be blessed and so will she!

I would like to take the time to say...

I would KILL for a good hard freeze RIGHT NOW. I am so very tired of headaches and a runny nose.

That is all.

Contentment vs. Complacency

I've been pondering this two things a lot lately. I want to be contentment but I do not want to be complacent in anything.

I think contentment is being happy with what you have, while not denying there might be a need in the future. Jesus says we are to be content with housing, food and clothing. If we have those basic necessities we have all we need to be content.  That does not mean we won't need more food, more clothes or a different house/neighborhood.

Complacency is a lazy contentment. A contentment that says, "I don't want anything and I refuse to acknowledge a need because then I will need to do something to meet that need." Complacency denies needs because it deems everything a want. Complacency says, "I have food. I will never need food and I will be content with the food I have. I have clothes. I will never need more clothes. I have a house. I will never for any reason need a different house.  So I won't even bother grocery shopping, clothes shopping, or house shopping for any reason."

That might be overly simplistic, and taken a bit too far. We all know we'll need to get more food and we can't wear the same clothes all the time. That is ridiculous.

But so is denying any need we have because we're content with what we have.

I love love to save money!!!

I do. I am always so thrilled when I do. I tend to be more "free" than Russ. Not free in the sense of driving us to the poor house, or not paying bills, but free in that I'll see something I know someone would LOVE and okay I'll admit it, I know they would LOVE me for giving it to them. So I'll buy it.

But that has changed...somewhat. I still enjoy doing that but more often than not, I'll count the cost and find something else.  My favorite place to shop is the clearance rack, and even still my girls will tell you I more often than not will say, "That's not low enough for me." and I'll walk away. No more impulse shopping for this girl. Instead of burning a hole in my pocket, money now burns a hole in my hand, so I leave it safely tucked away.

My favorite grocery store closed down early this summer and I was in a definite quandary as to where to shop. We have a super Wal Mart and well..no thanks. The other two stores left a lot to be desired in my estimation. To me they seemed dirty and that wasn't counting the "soft" porn in the check stands.  I started shopping at the least of the evils and had to force myself to go.

Fast forward to last month, August. I was desperate to get out of town. Desperate. D.E.S.P.A.R.A.T.E!!! I thought if I just casually mentioned I'd like to travel, we would find a million and fifty reasons why we couldn't afford it. But if I said I wanted to go out of town to check out a store we don't have here, and "hey why don't we combine it with a trip to see your sister", it would seem so much more...legitimate.

Yes, if I were an Eskimo, I could rationalize spending money on an ice machine. Just sayin'.

We went. And I shopped. And I loved it. I loved filling my grocery cart full of good healthy food for a month. For a fraction of what I would have spent at home.

I kid you not. I spent about $175 on food for my family of 4 for a month. I did need to purchase more milk and fruit mid-month, but the bulk of the shopping was done.

I just returned home last week from another shopping trip. The girls and I went on Thursday, not to visit my sister-in-law, but to a town a little closer. I was amazed! I spent about $100 more than in August but I also bought some non-food items. I will still need to get milk and fruit mid-month but I won't be spending all the household envelope every two weeks.

I have been asked for some tips on saving money. It can be done!!! I'll be sharing those tips in the next few days/weeks. So stay tuned!!

Waiting for God

When I was in college I was bound and determined to make it big in Hollywood. In my History of Theatre class, my professor spent a lot of time talking about his favorite play, Waiting for God. Which is not pronounced "God" but "Guh-Doh".  I don't remember much about the play but I do remember it ends with God not showing up.

Fast forward a few hundred years, yesterday my girls and I traveled to a larger town in Wyoming to do some serious shopping.  I rocked the "Saving Money World." It was as if I became Dave Ramsey. Or at least I had him in my back pocket.  I saved so  much money I thought I would go back to college and finish my degree, only I would not study Waiting for God again, I would study finance. Forget that simple math can drive me batty. I knew I could rival Dave Ramsey at his own game. I knew it.

In order to get to this larger town, I had to drive through some pretty desolate places on some pretty deserted highways.   I do not live in a large urban area. Farm ground and ranches are much more prevalent here than any high rise office buildings. You are more likely to see farm stores and men in cowboy boots caked in manure than anything resembling Wall Street wear.  My part of the world has a definite beauty, but for some, it's just to desolate. Maybe you have to live here to see and appreciate the true beauty.

To keep myself from going batty with silence (the girls were working on school in the back seat), and to keep my spirit focused on WHAT is truly important, and to prevent my panicky about buying twice as much groceries with half the money, (that is another post!) I listened to KLOVE  until I ran out of the signal. When that happened I popped in my Aaron Shust cd.

On the way home, Aaron's song, My Savior My God, was playing when I was passed by a semi-truck heading in the opposite direction. As he passes, I look in the rearview mirror and I am shocked to see all of this truck in my lane. I could only pray over and over, Thank YOU! I have no idea how he could pass me and immediately be completely in my lane without hitting me.

 "My Savior loves, My Savior lives, My Savior's always there for me." 

What might have been simple platitudes before became very real. There is nothing more real, than hearing My Savior Lives and realizing had God not stepped in, the semi most certainly would have clipped at least the back of my van. At 65 miles an hour, I most certainly would have lost control and it could have been deadly.

 I am no longer Waiting for GOD, He showed up in a big way.  And I will never be the same.

GO MAD Monday

I know it's Tuesday but yesterday was a busy day with no computer time. So today you get my Go MAD Monday post.

I really had trouble this week. I seem to be so busy I forget to go M.A.D.  I don't know I'm just so self-centered that other people don't even hit my radar or if I'm just so busy giving my life for others that nothing stands out as "you did this to make a difference in someone's life". I do know I don't often sit down and think, "Go MAD Monday is coming up and I need to do something for someone else because I need blog fodder."  It seems rather fake if the only reason I do something is so I can blog about it.

We home school. This year has been different and difficult to say the least. If you follow my homeschool blog, you might know a little taste of the year we've had.

My oldest is now a 5th grader and her sister is in 3rd grade. For a couple of years A has become convinced that she hates math and therefore doesn't want to/can't do it. We use Singapore math and it is advanced. She is learning things in math I opted out of in high school.

We switched curriculum last year and had her redo third grade math. She struggled. She finished third grade math and started fourth grade. She didn't quite complete half of fourth grade math before the year was finished. So this year she is finishing fourth grade and I'm hopeful she will be able to finish 5th grade as well. The things she is learning, she is learning well enough to do quite well on her achievement tests she takes every April.

Last week I had a meeting and came home to find all three of my family members doing school at the table, Elizabeth was working on correcting her grammar and Ariana was doing math. In tears. When at 9 o'clock we sent her to shower and go to bed, I said I was finished with that math. Every night for over a week our family time had been spent working on school and I was done. I was done with every waking moment spent on school. I was done done done. I reasoned, "If I wanted to do school all night long, I would send them to school and we'd work on homework all night long. I homeschool so I can avoid that." (among other reasons.)

I planned on printing off math sheets for her while I perused curriculum again. But I hate to waste money.  I already had math curriculum, surely there was some way to use what I had already.  I decided to, instead of telling her, showing her and having her do it while I got something else done, we would start first thing, when she was fresh and we would work every single problem together.

I started that last Wednesday, September 8. We spent just over an hour working on math. And she finished three pages with all the answers correct.  We were completely done with school by 12:15. It felt so good.

I continue to sit with Ariana and we spend an hour working on math. It is amazing the difference a little sacrifice on my part has made in her. I think I heard her tell Dear Man she liked what she was learning in math!

What did you do to "Go MAD Monday"?