I Am Wrecked

This video clip was the opening to the final session of the Financial Peace University classes that The Boss and I have been taking at our home church.  Though I had seen it before, this time around, it had quite a different effect on me.

It wrecked me for the rest of the night.

Heck, it's Friday and I still feel wrecked.

There is a lot that The Boss and I feel in our hearts that God has for us and for our commitment to live debt-free.  It's been a long road and we've made some great progress.  It's been very humbling to see the freedom that our healthy choices are affording us now. But, being very honest, in the course of the 13-week classes, it's also been very discouraging at times. Thinking about the foolish things we did that landed us in this position. See, before we moved to our current community, we were almost debt-free. We had been living on a strict budget, we were choosing wisely how to spend and it was working well for us. When we moved, we lost our focus. We lost our motivation. It only took a few years of living mindlessly to create the mess.

We've been working (mostly) diligently to fix the mess and restore our finances to integrity for almost 4 years now. It's been a long four years and many times during these 13 weeks, I felt like the topics didn't connect to our current situation. Like we would never "get there." Hanging in there till the end of the series was an act of obedience for me and the last session totally framed, for both The Boss and I, just WHY we needed to take the class (even though we were already living most of the principles of the program).  It was just the shot in the arm that I needed to keep living with the strict guidelines and a plan in place.

Cuz, guys?  The last session was basically this:

It's All HIS.

I am just a manager.

When I hold it all loosely in my hand,

I am free to do with it what HE wants me to do.

Nothing terribly new or revelatory in that. Nothing we haven't known for these past four years. In fact, these past four years, we've worked hard on our finances and re-ordered our home to live according to that very principle. But again, with that video clip opening the whole summation of the series, it hit me differently when I I heard it this time.

See, that couple in the video that received the trampoline and the very large check to pay off debt?  I'm not gonna lie - in this particular stage of my life, while waiting and waiting for mei-mei and longing for the day that I can start throwing around all the acronyms and initials of adoption again? I would LOVE to be the recipient of a gift like that. Of an investment by another godly couple into my family.

But really?  Far beyond the addition of our family by the next adoption that we are waiting on God to engineer  in His timing and plan?  Far beyond the "knowing" when our family is complete and resting in that sense of being "done"?  In my heart of hearts, I want to us be that couple that gave. I want to be such an excellent manager of HIS resources in our home that I can hear His voice prompting us to come alongside another family who is waiting for their own mei-mei. I want to share the blessings from His hand with my neighbors. I want to be a giver who invests in other families freely, generously, and without thought to "how I might afford it." I want to live in such a way that His resources flow through my hands, in ways that will build His people. That will build His kingdom.

Yeah, that video wrecked me. But the wrecking has been going on for a while now. And I am praying that it keeps on wrecking me - till His work for me is done.

"Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God's Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears." ~ Philippians 1:3-6 (emphasis mine)