Running out of vices

TJ and I are in a weird place of self-betterment: We're taking Financial Peace University and living strictly off our budget, preparing to start our Debt Snowball and emerge from under the cloud of credit card payments. We also gave up eating out at restaurants for Lent (also, it's not in Budget). And we're taking a marriage class at church so we can have a long, healthy, happy union.

Ooh ... shrimp cocktail.

Here's the trouble: I can not eat out. I have no money for lattes. I can't take pleasure in wandering through Kohl's or Target and buying a new shirt, or a pretty trinket, or a $5 movie because I have no money. And I have to have weekly, emotional conversations with my husband about our marriage.

I am being emotionally ripped open, and I have no where to hide.

All of this lead to a complete mental breakdown on Saturday morning. After a week of feeling kinda down, I finally collapsed in a pile of tears on the couch.

"I have no good vices!" I sobbed to TJ.
"Of course you don't," he said. "That's why they're called vices."

We didn't go into no-restaurants for Lent for deep spiritual reasons. It was simply pragmatic: Let's see if we can finally give up eating out for 40 days. We've tried it before, with no luck. But maybe, maybe, if we pretend it's for Jesus, it'll work.

But that's thing about God, he can overcome your motives.

In the past 12 days since Lent started, I have had rough weeks at work. I feel insecure, there are changes coming and I'm nervous. I've had conflicts with my boss. I feel majorly exposed. We've also hit some tough stuff in our marriage class, and TJ and I have had some deep, meaningful conversations. Positive stuff, but it can still leave me feeling drained and energyless.

Normally, when my feelers are feeling a bit raw, I take solace in the high-backed booth at El Caporal, Red Lobster, 2nd Street Grill ... really, anywhere. Carryout pizza offers sanctuary to me.

I associate restaurants with safety, comfort and intimacy. I've had deep, life-changing conversations in restaurants. TJ and I decided to get married at the Sports Buzz in Rapid City, a short-lived sports bar. My dad used to take me to Panhandler Pies in Sandpoint for special just-me dates. My mom and I would drive an hour to Coeur d'Alene to go to Olive Garden, a real treat. Restaurants make me feel special, like the person I'm with is carving out special time just for me. Nothing will interrupt us, the diet coke will flow as long as we want it to, and if it's really special, and you're not too full, you can have dessert. And someone else will do the dishes.


So you see what God has done to me? He tricked me into giving up my favorite hiding place just when I'd need it most. My mind is reeling.

I know that I need to address my emotional reliance on restaurants — and food, in general. I've known for a while, but I wasn't ready. I'm not ready now, for that matter, but now is the time that God is addressing it. Instead of running to my safe, comfortable place, I am being forced to be uncomfortable, to address emotions and feelings I'm not thrilled about. God is asking me to find comfort, safety and intimacy in Him, rather than free chip refills and low lighting.

In the middle of my meltdown on Saturday, I began reading the next chapter of our "Love and War" book and a paragraph jumped out at me:

"You have got to silence the power of fear right now. Fear, anxiety, uncertainty, panic — they won't lead to one good thing. Not one. Quite often the fear is the unknown future: Will we make it? What is going to happen to me? What is going to happen to the kids? You are secure. God will not abandon you. Emotionally, financially, and physically, you are going to be okay. Calm down."

I read that and breathed deeply. I am going to be OK. I don't need to be afraid — of changes at work, of fixing the cracks in my marriage and myself, of living on budget and denying my immediate pleasures. I don't need to be afraid.

The book offered this mantra, which I wrote on a sticky note and posted on my computer monitor at work:

I am loved.
I am secure.
I am forgiven.
God is with me.

And hopefully in 28 more days when Lent is over, I can remember that. God is my refuge. Restaurants are just food.

My Budget and Me

Wait, where did the money go?

Money stresses me out beyond all reason. If my finances are a mess, by extension the rest of me is, too. I will plot and scheme and write lists and do all sorts of things trying to right the boat again. I felt like living one emergency or paycheck away from complete financial insolvency was my cross to bear – the one thing that God was never going to relieve me of.

Lord, why can't I just win the lottery and be able to make all these debts go away? My car payment, my student loans, my credit card. Would that be too much to ask?

Yet as much as financial woes have always bothered me and as much as I hate feeling out of control, I have never used a budget.

I'm not sure why. It's not that I didn't understand them, I did. I just didn't like them. I felt like maybe I didn't have enough income for it to actually matter: Most of our paychecks turn immediately into bills, leaving very little leftover to be "budgeted." I felt like budgets were for people who needed to decide they would spend $40 a month on clothing and $70 a month on eating out, etc. I felt like I spent on those things what I had leftover after the bills, if anything, and felt damn happy to have it.

I wasn't living purposefully with my finances. I had no plan. Well, that's not true: I had a plan, but it usually centered around a windfall of some kind. You know what I mean, "When I get my tax return, we can get caught up ..." "When my VA check comes, we can pay that bill off..." "We can use your student loan to pay down that credit card..."

But the tax return is never big enough, and I've run out of VA and we always manage to charge up that card again. (Because we never actually get rid of it! Idiots.)

In my marriage, money has been stressful, I think especially for TJ. Because I control it. I make the most of it, I pay the bills, I decide what we have left, I do the grocery shopping. Sometimes TJ gets an "allowance" for  entertainment, but he never gets the chance to question all my lattes and their fiscal impact. I have the power.

As much as I'm a control freak, this balance has bothered me. I don't want him to resent my control and feel stifled. So TJ signed up for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at church. The class is at a time I can't go, so he goes by himself and then teaches me. We go over the workbook, read the chapters, and talk about what he learned. Then he tells me what the homework is, and we complete it together. Last week, we had to make a list of all of our "necessary" (not debt-related) expenses. This week, we created a budget.

I loved the budget exercise. Because Ramsey recognizes that there is usually one half of the pair that is the "nerd" (that is, the numbers keeper). The other half is the "Free Spirit," which is absolutely TJ. So the nerd gets to write the budget, down to the last penny. Then she has to turn it over to the Free Spirit and allow him (actually, require him) to make at least one change. And then she must accept whatever that change was. This meeting can not last more than 17 minutes. So I created the budget, I slid it over to TJ, and he adjusted a couple of amounts toward credit cards. I accepted those changes.

And I starred at this magical piece of paper. There it is in black and white (well, actually in blue and yellow — I used a legal pad): Proof that we do make enough money to get buy, with even a little over our debt payments. The budget includes gas, groceries, savings, our tithe. Everything. Even a little for eating out, if we want to.

So for the first time in my life, I have hope that this budget will work. I have hope that we're on the road to not being blown over by an emergency every month, that we won't have those paychecks anymore when we say, "Well, we aren't eating ..." That I never again have to call my mom and ask for a short loan.

I'm so encouraged by our budget, it's nearly a sacred document to me now. I'm going to put it on the fridge. It's a part of the family — that strict, rule-making, hard-enforcer Catholic aunt. We call her Budget, as in "Does Budget say we can do that this month?" "I don't think going to Red Lobster is OK with Budget this week." "You'll have to ask Budget if you can buy that DVD."

It's not a piece of paper, it's an Entity. I may just keep a copy of it in my wallet, as reassurance that we will be OK. That God is in control and that He has a plan. And now we have a plan, too.

The heart of marriage

Till death or morning breath do you part?

T.J. and I started a new small group at church last week. It's on the book "Love and War" by John and Stasi Eldredge. We both really like John's other book, "Wild at Heart," (a must read for any men, wives of men, sisters of men, mother's of men ... you get the idea). I also read his book aimed at women, "Captivating,"  which is sort of the female-counterpart to "Wild at Heart," co-written with his wife.

"Love and War" is about how marriage is a total setup for failure. Seriously. It uses those words. It calls it a heavenly "grand conspiracy" — God uses lust and passion and the desire for companionship to suck us into these commitments, and then we discover how hard it is to live with another human being without killing them, and he uses that knowledge to mold us and transform us into the (kind, generous, loving) people that we were meant to be.

It reminds me of the subtitle of a book I was given as a wedding gift, "Sacred Marriage." It proposes, "What if God created marriage to make us holy rather than make us happy?"

It's quite the question, isn't it? What if marriage isn't about you — what if it's about your spouse? Or what if it's about neither of you and really it's about becoming more like Christ? Which brings us more to the heart of the issue: Can you have a good marriage without Christ?

A quote I've really liked so far in "Love and War" says, "Trying to have a successful marriage without God is like trying to grow a tree without sunshine and water."