Oh, the irony

I've been praying a lot about contentment lately. At my base I feel very very happy with my life, overjoyed even. But I struggle with really silly things like our house not being what I want, the urge to buy new clothes, new furnishings, things like that.

I stumbled upon Nancy Ray's blog a few weeks ago and was so moved by her and her husband's financial  journey I began reading about a contentment challenge she was planning to conduct. No buying extra unnecessary stuff from April-June. No clothes, no house things, nothing, in order to focus back on what really matters and learn to practice gratitude for what I think we'd all admit is a life of abundance.

I committed on Monday, April 1st. And on Thursday, April 4th we encountered our third major house repair in THIRTY days. Trust me people, the irony is not lost on me.

We're spent enough money the past month making repairs to this house that we don't even want to live in that we could have bought a small car. We've been frustrated to see the money we worked so hard to save dwindle away. We've been so frustrated that we had other plans. WE thought we were in control. WE wanted to save a lot of money this year. We We We.

As the reality of having to write another large check set in last night, Matt and I sat down and started wondering if we're missing a bigger message in all of this. Here I am trying to focus on all of the blessings God has given us, and at the same time God is testing my sense of security (which is often wrongly set in that savings account).

Obviously my security shouldn't be in things. Or in money. Or the ability to control our life. if anyone should know by now that WE are not in control, it should be us. But clearly it's having a difficult time sinking in.

So even though it feels like we're financially treading water, like we really just can't get a break, and like we truly are going to live in this house for the rest of our lives I'm going to choose to be grateful. Grateful that we live a simple lifestyle and have the money in savings to cover the unexpected, grateful that we have TWO HEALTHY CHILDREN, and grateful that we can trust that there is a bigger reason for this. We may not be able to see it, but we can feel it.