The Hopewell House

I feel a lot of times I share a lot of things that affect me emotionally without really going into details about what is actually going on in my life.

I tend to shy away from being too personal with details about what's going on mainly for privacy purposes, but I feel that my situation is a lot like what many of you other newlyweds out there are experiencing.
{The issue being money.}
For those of you who are struggling, know that you're not alone.

I think the hardest thing I have had to learn about newlywed life is how to deal with money.

Just the thought of money makes me cringe.

I have this love/hate relationship with it, and frankly, I've had a hard time learning how to balance it.

The truth is, I don't want to be rich.

I've never wanted to be rich & honestly, if I was rich, I probably wouldn't know what to do with that much money all at once.

But whatever my stance may be on money doesn't really matter when it comes to bills or to things we call "the real world."

I need to work to survive, D needs to work to survive.

We live pretty much paycheck to paycheck-

& well, up to now we've gotten by-

Close on a lot of months, but we've survived.

That is, until this week.

My small amounts in vacation time hurt us more than we realized & since we weren't monitoring our money close enough, we overdrew pretty drastically on our accounts.

It is probably one of the worst feelings to look at your account and see you're over & having this sickening feeling when you realize all your money has gone into paying bills and you have no money to pay off your debt.

It gets worse when you get into your car and you start bawling because you realize you have just enough gas to get to work and back and that's it for the week.

And to top it all off, you look into your refridgerator and realize you don't really have groceries, at least not enough to hold you over until your next paycheck that will be coming in two weeks.

Then the overwhelming feelings set in and you start thinking about all the other debt your in, all the other billls you haven't been able to pay yet, and you start praying hard that some sort of emergency doesn't come up because you know there is no way to pay it.

Honestly, I don't really know if I felt worse than I have these last couple of days.

It's so hard to feel like you're defeated.

That I joined the newlywed club and I failed already.

That maybe D. & I can't survive on our own.

But you know, that's where my humility had to step in.

That's why I posted what I did yesterday, I had to realize D. & I weren't going to be able to get out of this by ourselves,

We. Needed. Help.

I needed to look around me and see the support net that surrounded D. & I-

To know that a year and a half ago, when we said "I Do," the people that were present at our wedding weren't just there just to be there, but to let us know that they SUPPORTING us in what we were about to begin.

They were there letting us know that when were going to face hardships, they would be there,

whether that meant financially, spiritually, or physically- they weren't going to just give up on us.

They believed in us, and were going to see us through those hardships.

So in my desperate plea, I asked for help.

Simply sucked up my pride & realized I needed a better plan than the situation I was obviously facing.

& you know what,

We're surviving, we're going to make it.
When I feared we might not have enough for us to eat for this week,
A few people from work {both a customer & a partner} who knew I was starting some gardening up this year brought me in some of their own veggies from their gardens & delicious homemade hummus-
The funny thing is, they had no clue what was going on behind the scenes-
It reminded me that God's still there even in the hardship & he has funny ways of reminding me to not be afraid-
It's the small things that He reminds us with to let us know he's taken care of the big picture.

For the last year or so, I feel the biggest conflict that we experienced when it came to our money issues was knowing we didn't have a lot.
Instead of getting on a plan, I felt like we were just throwing our money into this black hole just trying to get out of the mess we were slowly creating, but not really knowing how to fix the problem.

Last night we made a commitment to start the Dave Ramsey program & we're getting on a budget as well as starting an emergency fund for those moments when we don't have the money.

We're making commitments not to buy things unless we have the money and we're getting rid of those pesky things we call credit cards.
For the first time, I am feeling extremely encouraged-

I'll keep you filled in on how this goes.

And this goes further than just telling you about my little situation that happened the other day,

This is me reaching out to you.

This is me letting you know, that when I attended your weddings, when I came to your baby showers and invested in parts of your life, it wasn't just to come.

I support you friends,

I am here for you.

I won't give up & just write you up as a lost cause,

D. & I love you guys and we will help you out anyway we can.

{Obviously money wise we're a little tight, but we'll do whatever is in our might!}
We are here to pray for you, to be encouragement, to just listen-

...Just please don't be afraid to ask for help.