Do any of you have a mom that is easy to make fun of? Just me? I love my mom more than life, but she is an easy target. She gets phrases wrong all the time. I really need to start writing them down. One of my favorites that she’ll never live down is her “The end of an error” mishap. You see, my younger sister was leaving for college and my parents were going to be empty nesters so my mom was explaining how she couldn’t believe she was done raising kids and finished with an enthusiastic “it’s the end of an error!”
2017 is pretty much done. I still remember when Y2K was a thing and I thought the world was going to end when the computers crashed or something. And yet we’ve somehow ended up at 2018’s doorstep. I won’t sugarcoat it, this year kicked our butts. Certainly not our worst year, and there were definitely great moments, but so many “growing opportunities” happened this year.
Life handed us a lot this year. My stress level was through the roof. I wish I could say I was a super supportive wife and kept it together, but I didn’t. I let the stress get the best of me. I finally went to see a therapist and literally burst into tears the minute I walked into her office. A heavy weight on my shoulders, lingering child loss issues, all of it came to the surface and I think I finally broke right there in her office.
We were in a season of needing doors to open and every single one was closing. There were many times I would look up to God and think “really?” Why us? After everything we’ve been through I was just ready to have something come easy for us.
So in the midst of the chaos I tried to control what I could and that was watching every penny. I watched youtube videos, read every pinterest article on ways we could cut back and I started developing this passion for frugal living and wanted to share it. So the idea for this blog came about and by October it went live. I had a new passion project. I love hearing from you that it’s helping, or even just providing you with a brief moment of entertainment during the day.
So where do we go from here? I will be rolling out some new ideas and challenges to help get your finances in order along with us next year, but this post was purely about the complexities of life. It’s easy to think you have a simple solution to a complicated problem when it’s not your own. That person with the angel child that tells you how you should fix your problem with your challenging kid is just like that person who is comfortable financially telling you how simple it should be to fix your finances. It might be a simple fix but it also might not be. For us it’s anything but. There are so many moving parts.
I am closing the door on 2017 and can honestly say I am grateful for the lessons. If this had happened when I was 20 I probably would have just been angry. But at 33, having lived through a lot of life in these last 13 years, I can say that while it’s frustrating going through it, I still can feel God working something out in us. There is a purpose behind it all. We are becoming better people through the process.
The end of an error. A new chapter beginning. I am hopeful.
