When I was younger, we grew up with very little money. While I wouldn't call us poor, we were not middle class. I never went without electricity, but I can recall meals were sometimes an issue. For example, I can recall digging in the couch & car looking for enough change to buy 2 50c tacos from Taco Bell and a $1 soda to split with my mom. I can remember when she started dating again, she would only eat 1/2 of her meal and bring the rest home for me as my dinner.
Things eventually got better as my siblings moved out of the house. But, this time period had a distinct impression on me.
Money was important.
I didn't know much about what I wanted to do with my future, other than the fact I wanted to do something that would make me a lot of money. Money meant power to me. Power to control your future. Power to have whatever you wanted in life. The more money I had, that more I could do.
I remember getting my first real job, after graduating high school. One of the first things I did was "establish credit" by opening up a credit card account at a local store. After several months of buying things and paying off my bill, I was upgraded to a gold card. This made me feel so very important, like I had achieved some sort of status.
I got older, married, had a baby and became a stay at home mom.
I watched as our monthly income dwindled to down & things got harder.
I had lost power.
Power to get whatever I wanted, financially.
Power to make decisions on what I bought, since my husband was providing the income.
Power to go further in life, a loss of status.
Or, so I thought.
I had given money so much power, that without it I felt lost. I didn't think I had anything. And prospects. Any future. Then I started doing whatever I could to attain that power again. I was trying to figure out ways to bring in money.
Over the years we would be brought to humbleness in regards to our money. We almost lost our home. Something had changed in me, by that point.
My husband and I began taking a class called "Financial Peace University" at a local church. Over the course of the study, I realized how little power money actually had. I stopped allowing money (how much or how lack there of) to define who I was or how my life would be lived.
My emotional attachment to the need of money was gone.
It was easier to give money away, to those who were in need.
It was easier to spend it on my kids and not complain about my "sacrifices" for the family.
When something broke that was an expensive repair, I didn't worry. It was just money. Pieces of paper sitting around, with the purpose of being spent for just this very thing.
And if we had to go without for a while, that was ok too.
You see once I took the power away from money, it wasn't important to me at all.
What did become important was what I was doing with that money.
I didn't care so little about it that I would waste it, I simply recognized that while money had no power ... I did. God did.
Money doesn't solve our problems. It either makes the bigger, or simply gives us different ones. People with a lot of money are not happier. They are not exempt from the troubles in this life.
Some of the happiest people are those who have a lot less money, but a lot more quality in their lives.
