O — Organize your life in preperation for change

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“Do your planning and prepare your fields before building your house.”

Proverbs 24:27

I’ll be honest this is not my strongest suit. I started out my life unfortunately like a lot of college students. I opened my mailbox one day in 1995 and there was a Visa Gold Card. This was a time when every student was being offered credit cards with no income and usually a parent’s card they sent them to school with as their “proof of creditworthiness”…I was one of these kids. I had a $5000 Gold Card which lead to an Eddie Bauer card, Dillard’s card etc. etc. Oh if I could take anything back in my life it would be this. I really hope my kids read this blog someday because I’m sure I was warned about the dangers of this, it’s something I paid for until I was in my early 30s. I hate to think where we could have been with all these great jobs and salaries if we could have just taken this step really early in life. Alas we didn’t and I don’t look back I look forward, I look at today.

I’m confident God put me through financial challenges and just down right ignorance to make me acutely aware of where my priorities should be and it has felt very good to turn the ship around. I have been fortunate in many ways as I’ve walked this walk but I’ve finally found myself where I make better decisions, still not perfect by any means. I mean I LOVE gadgets it is my true weakness, I use the excuse that “I do this for a living” which for the most part is true but I still really enjoy opening up boxes and turning things on for the first time. The good news is I’m not a fancy things guy, I don’t buy cars, jewelry, houses etc I mostly stick to smaller toys not tens of thousands of dollar toys.

The other thing I did which I am very confident has put me in the position is a bit counter-intuitive to some. I began to trust God and taking my biblical responsibility to take care of others and use my good fortune to bless those around me more seriously. I did this with great consistency over the course of the last three years, interestingly enough at the time I began this I didn’t know anything about this DECISION acrostic, we had just found a new church that was just starting in our town, something we had prayed about for many years as we struggled to find a church home. I met the pastor by chance at a 4th of July gathering, he told me they were having their first services in Rainbow Lanes, a local bowling alley. I haven’t told the story of my father’s passing yet (which I will) but rainbows are really special to our family and it was the place I decided I’d stop saying yes to everything I wanted, and to start saying yes to opportunities to come alongside people and help them.

I said this is a bit counterintuitive but as I sit here nearly 3 years later I know it was/is extremely intuitive. Our family has been entrusted with a lot over the last 3 years and I know that my faithfulness in this area has directly impacted my ability to do what I have done and walk away from my job. We also took a very hard look at our expenses paid off everything we could, cut out subscriptions, stopped clicking that damn Amazon button (at least as much). Again we are not perfect but I created a spreadsheet got real with what we were spending and where and decided we could use a little clean up around our spending habits. This absolutely contributed to my confidence in making this decision. It’s still very hard some days not to just buy everything I want but I know that if I sacrifice today that it will pay off in the end. I have tremendous Faith and confidence in that today.

What I would tell anyone looking to make a big move in their life is to really take a hard look at things around them. Do you really “need” that new ride? Do you really “need” that new house? Do you really “need” that piece of jewelry? Most of the time the answer is a resounding no but as humans, we can justify just about any decision. I decided this time to justify why my family was most important, why what they needed from me had nothing to do with finances or fancy things. It had to do with showing them that those things are not most important to me, they are.