Monday, December 10, 2012

I do have to admit that sometimes living below the poverty line has its unique stressors.  I know most families stress over money, but in the personal case to me, my wife and I  both live on disability (she has had neck and back surgery, and has nerve conduction issues, and I have had two open heart surgeries, several strokes and not quite a small bag of MH issues) so our income on disability is VERY limited.  In fact we have a little less than $1000 a month to live on, and honestly some months our bills exceed our meeger income.  Luckilly our bank only charges a singular overdraft fee, not a fee every day you are overdrawn so when we have to overdraft it is only one fee, and not a pile of accumulating fees. 

But, money is definately a stressor in our lives, and we have from time to time fought over money.  The trick is learning to get past it.  We (my wife and I) have two aduly children in the house.  Our daughter is good with money and figures.  She is also oddly enough is free of the compulsion to buy on impulse.  So now our daughter is in charge of the finances, and she is doing well with them.  It has aleviated some of the stressors involved, and since she is not quichk to spend everyone elses money we don't have a money pit. 

Some of the things that help though is that we do live in an economically depressed region so rents are cheep relative to other areas in the United States.  We are primarially a Christian Household, though our oldest son has rejected all organized religion, the rest of us are Jehovah's Witnesses so sometimes we have a unity that is because of our unified faith. 

Sometimes peace returns to our lives because of our unified faith, but in a human way sometimes the stress overwhelms it.  That is where we really have to apply the lessons of 1st Timothy 6:8 about being satisfied with satisfied with sustainance and covering.  Sometimes it is just fine to want and strive for more, but if you cannot be satisfied with what you have then you can never find something that sates the beast...  it just consumes, and consumes leaving no contentment.  In the end we are all left with the decisions to pursue goals or not but if we are not satisfied with where you are then you end up caught a "just a little more" mentality never complete, never whole.  So this means to me that it is good to see how something has value, or benefit to you, but it is not necessary to own EVERY gadget, gizmo, widget, and doohicky that you will never use.  My wife and I own a blender, and a magic bullet, and we liberally use both the blender for bigger jobs, and the magic bullet for individual sized jobs.  But I admit that we did not buy the magic bullet it was given to us by someone who rarely used it (hadn't in years) and they gave it to us.  Funny but in a similar way it can sit for 4 to 6 months and never be used, and get used 10 to 12 times a week for 3 or 4 months and then it goes back on the shelf till the next spurt of time when is get used as if it was never put up.  It could be as long as a month, or even six befor it gets used again.  The point is I would still use just the blender if I didn't have the gadget it is a convience yes, but I could still be living happily without it.  I have achieved some measure of contentment.  That is a place you need to find before you consider the desire of the moment.

Well I guess that is all for now.

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