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The one with the root of all evil.

Money, y'all.

We know that the love of money is the root of all evil. It's a little disheartening to have a 2 income household and still be on the struggle bus with money. And we're pretty thrifty too. I've been trained to go for the best deals, the best coupons, the lowest prices, and to sacrifice quality when needed.
Would I love to shop in the organic, all natural section more? Uh duh. But this crunchy mama is more of a crispy mama, due to her budget. 
And yet, even in our thriftiness, we have been struggling with money.

A couple of unforeseen circumstances came up:
  • After the babe was born, we knew our insurance premiums would go up. But they went WAAAY up. Like, into the stratosphere up. Like, "wow I didn't know they could be that high" up. 
  • We had a lot of medical expenses after pushing the baby out, and we spent a day in the Phoenix Children's hospital after he was born. 
  • I'm a teacher, so I already make basically nothing. I also had very little maternity leave pay. I had to go on short term disability, which isn't my normal paycheck and didn't last my whole leave.
    •  Ugh. Isn't maternity leave an absolute JOKE?!
  • Elias makes okay money, but he's basically moved all the way up as far as he can go oat his job.
  • Although baby Leo is getting most of his meals for free, via BoobDonalds, he still has some basic costs: diapers, clothes, solid foods now, wipes, bags to put my milk in, back up formula, and probably some other stuff.
  • Oh hey, the biggest cost: child care! Now since a couple weeks ago, we have been using a family member instead of our normal Poppins. (This is due to outside circumstances, not anything to do with her). So that has helped quite a bit. But we know that, eventually we will be back to regularly paying someone to take care of Leo. 
All of this sounds like complaining and excuses. And, actually it kind of feels like complaining and excuses. 

Here's what I'm learning though: trust and patience. Trusting that God will still have our backs, and patience in waiting to get what I want and focus on what we need. 
Trust and patience feeds into every other aspect of my life as well. 
I need it with my husband, my son, my students, my coworkers, my friends. Trust and patience is needed literally in every aspect. 
So I'm thankful. Not because we had to eat my terrible cooking instead of eat out this week, but because of the lesson of trust and patience. 


Taken in NC, 2014

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