Murphy Came Around

In FPU lingo it's called "A visit from Murphy." In their very encouraging words, the folks at the LLNOE acknowledged Murphy's tendency to show up especially during baby step number 1 and 2. Thanks to everyone over there who are living it out everyday and pressing on.

I still need more time to clarify in my own mind some of the heart struggles I've been noticing in me as a result of this Murphy visit. I am very introspective so I've known about them but they're worse than I ever imagined. It's apparent, I quickly turned being debt free (a good thing) into an ultimate quest in my life (and that is a bad thing.) Anything that is given the place of ultimate and supreme in life has the power to enslave. Think about it. Money is not morally right or wrong, it is neutral. But the human heart makes moral choices 24/7. There is so much more going on here than just having to dish out $650 to fix a car. There is a battle raging. A struggle between the promise of money and debt freedom and trusting the God is sovereign and good. In this battle faith meets everyday life. The human soul is prone to turn anything good into an object of worship so much more quickly than I ever imagined.

I'll pick up the van this morning. I actually feel really great. Happy to write the check! We have the money and we're only dealing with one emergency here - not two, which would been the case if we didn't have the money.

Turns out too that we made a mistake when depositing money to open our emergency fund, we deposited $270 more than the $1,000. My wife and I are trying to figure out how this happened but I won't fret much more. We obviously had a little extra left over when we sold a bunch of stuff on craigslist. Also, by working our budget very tightly the last two months, we had already allocated $139 in a virtual envelope designated for car repairs. Because of these two blessings we'll only need to dip into the real emergency fund by $241. That amount will we refunded from my next paycheck. I am amazed!! Simply amazed! Frankly, I know I am revealing a lot about myself here, but two months ago I would have been fighting to find a way to either mentally and emotionally checkout (so to speak) for a day or two in order to recover from this train wreck or I would have made a dumb decision to go further in to debt.