Dr. Suess knew the depravity of man. He even created a character to describe how man falls into sin. It's in the book The Lorax. The character? The Onceler. Because the Onceler does something "once", he gets the name, but it wasn't something that was necessarily a good thing, it was doing something that wasn't so good, cutting down one tree, that led to the slippery slope of all sorts of trees being cut down that ruined the face of the earth. Later he lives in regret for the rest of his life and tries to redeem himself by sharing his story with the main character in the book so he can avoid making the same mistake.
I share this because last night I was up late talking with RM. We always sit and evaluate things financially, talk about where we could make adjustments, etc. I suggested that we take a major look at our last year where we did really well and where we did not-so-well. Immediately the thought came to me of places where I knew we could have been more careful and I said to him, I think the reason we kind of "give up" in one area or another is because of one small compromise. As soon as we've given in and made the justification that it'll be "just this once" where we overspend, then the next time the same temptation comes up, we think to ourselves, well, we already blew in that area, I guess it won't matter if we overspend again, and the next thing you know we start overspending in other areas, "cutting down trees", which can only lead to the debt taking much longer to pay off. He agreed and then he said, "We're Oncelers." Ouch.
I'm going to be taking this week to go through some past bank statements and then I'm going to give RM and the family a bit of a report, then, I think, seeing as it is coming up to the "anniversary" of getting more serious about killing the debt, we will step back and decide which areas we need to allow no compromises, where we can more determined and where we need to allow ourselves grace as sometimes I found myself in a situation that I spent money but because we were trying to kill debt, I found myself feeling so guilty when the thing I had bought was necessary for living, like groceries!!! It was true! Sometimes I'd be in the grocery store and I would come back with hardly anything as I felt we couldn't afford to eat! It wasn't true, of course, but I had gotten myself in such a tizzy that I was oddly out of balance in my resolve to kill debt. RM would always scold me when I got like that and tell me, "We have to eat!" Of course, I knew that, but that's what I'm talking about with respect to giving myself grace - we need winter boots, we need to heat our home, we need to eat. I will still try to not overspend or pay full price for anything, but I will buy what our family needs if our family needs it.
More to come on that as the week unfolds....
Chapter 6 - Hair, Vegetables and A New Job
Stephanie was changing in all sorts of areas - being the best daughter and sister she could be and the most available bachelorette in town. She and I had also had a few funny heart-to-hearts about why she had such short hair and why she was a vegetarian. It turns out she was a bit of a closet feminist. Not really anti-male, but anti-superfluous beauty. Her short hair was a way of trying to not draw attention to herself, to not look feminine. I explained to her that the Bible even dealt with this, including hair! By no means is it sinful to have short hair. I had short hair for many years of my life. I know many godly women who have short hair - it isn't any less feminine. It's always about your heart, though. You can be a very ungodly woman with gorgeous long hair or a very godly woman with very short hair. In Stephanie's case, she was deliberately keeping it short to fight the nature God had placed in her. The Bible speaks about a woman's hair being her "glory"! Growing it can be another beautiful feminine attribute which is why I dislike long hair so much on a man as it makes them look so feminine. She considered this and like the idea of trying to be more feminine as opposed to less feminine. It was simply a matter of seeing how God made men and women very different, equal, yes, but different. We have different roles and different abilities. It would naturally follow that we look different, too and boy, oh boy - what a transformation! She went from literally having hair cut as close to your head as a man, to long beautiful hair in a fairly short period of time. I've tried to grow my hair for years and her's has surpassed my in length many times over! I envy.
I'm not sure all the reasons she was a vegetarian except that she was concerned about the inhumanity to animals and thought by being a vegetarian it would make a sort of a personal moral stance. However, she had moved home to a full-out meat-eating family! There must have been some discussion about this before she moved back home as they weren't planning on cooking two separate meals upon her return. I think that must have been hard for her to give up as this was a decision she had made back at university, but because her dad was doing most of the cooking when she first arrived home, and because he or anyone else in the family didn't hold the same opinion in this area, what's a girl to do? She ended up giving it up in the name of honouring her parents and being under their roof. I thought this was really noble and respected her greatly for submitting in this area. It wasn't "caving" in the sense where on the outside she was eating meat, but on the inside she was a vegetarian - that isn't submission, respect or honour at all! I think she truly submitted without any grumbling or complaining. I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed by her family. She's still eating meat today, though she is still concerned about cruelty to animals!
Meanwhile, during this whole experience, life had been going a hundred miles an hour, or "gazelle intensity" as a certain financial guru likes to put it, in our lives as well. When Stephanie first came to live with us for her practicum, we had just made the decision to pack up our house and move to Niagara to build a house, sell it and then buy a farm. In the midst of all this packing up, moving and resettling while we built, we found ourselves running a book business where we sold Christian books about family, marriage and homeschooling at homeschool conferences and on-line. We were also planning a conference for the first time where we were bringing in a speaker from the States speaking about church, family discipleship, and raising our children with intentionality to know the gospel. I also found myself pregnant with our seventh child! In addition to this my husband had a full-time engineering job that was in its busiest time with contract after contract due all at the same as building the house! PLUS, we took on some additional help in the form of three teenage brothers who we needed to help us in the building of the house. It turns out they helped us in many other ways, but that was the primary reason we took them in, so they lived with us for 6 months which meant I was cooking for at least 11 people all the time. Stephanie was a godsend in the middle of all this chaos.
She still hadn't found full-time work other than all the volunteering she was doing and helping at home. My husband needed an assistant, at least a part-time one. I would have loved to have been able to help him more, but it just seemed too much on top of homeschooling and running a busy house of 11 people. We approached Stephanie with this idea and she really liked it. We just didn't want it to impact her new role at her house, so she thought and prayed about it, spoke with her parents, and everyone seemed ok with doing it on a part-time basis. This was a tremendous load lifted off of my husband's shoulders. It was also nice for Stephanie and me as she and I were able to debrief almost daily, pray more and have that little extra help if a kid was crying or if I needed to run out and get two grocery carts of food on my own! Stephanie also developed a special relationship/friendship with my husband who kind of took her under her wing like the father took me under his wing in Colombia. He and Stephanie were really the ones that were "related" - I was only related through marriage. Because of this special time together where she worked for him, she is one of the few people in the world who understands my husband. It is the funniest thing to see even now if she happens to be over when he's come in from a hard day. She quickly runs over, moves stuff out of the way so he won't trip, offers him a drink or something to eat! She knows what makes him tick!!!! If she's around and his keys are missing or a file, Stephanie jumps up and starts looking and is usually the one who finds the missing item! I love seeing how he cares for her as if she were one of our own children. He thought he could only love his wife and kids, but he found out, there was more love in him to give. It's very special and we all know it. So, looking back on that crazy time when all those things were going on, we wonder how we all made it, but we did and I'm convinced it was because God sent us an angel in the form of Stephanie!
One thing our family loved doing was getting as much teaching from mature believers that were a step ahead of us. We didn't know a lot of people out in the Niagara area yet, so we looked for this kind of teaching from like-minded believers at conferences down in the States whenever we could get a chance. The kinds of conferences we attended were meant for entire families, in fact, it was encouraged, but at the same time, it is never easy to bring a baby or a toddler and expect them to sit through hours of teaching. It occurred to us, why not bring Stephanie as a mother's helper?! We approached her again with yet another crazy idea and told her we would even fly her down (we drove and had no extra room for her)! She liked this idea, too, as she was also wanting to receive teaching and more instruction in the faith. A conference provides intense teaching in a short amount of time - more bang for your buck!
It was early December and a cold time to travel, but we were so excited to take a break from all the intensity of life. Stephanie was unfortunately sick with a cold for most of the conference, but she took in as much teaching as she could. On one of the first mornings there, she sat in on a talk by Voddie Bachaum, 8 am, she reminded me recently, front row. She couldn't wait to hear this one, no doubt - "Sufficiency of Scripture and Feminism"! When she walked into his talk, she would have called herself a Christian feminist as she thought the two were compatible. She walked out of his talk something completely different! Voddie shared that Scripture teaches how Christianity empowers women and that it doesn't really look anything like modern-day feminism. She was exposed to some fairly serious topics along those lines at that conference that she'd never thought about before and she was really challenged, but it was good. Everytime she wasn't certain about something one of the speakers said we were able to debrief over dinner or in between talks. I could see the lights go on in her mind in all sorts of areas. Of course, one of the main reasons we were bringing her to events like this was always with the idea that you just never know when you might bump into a future husband! We were always keeping our eye out for her!
By this point she had tried to talk with her dad in particular about her desire to get married. I'm not sure exactly how she worded it, but she was trying to get his input - would he help her find a spouse? Would he want to be involved in the process? That made no sense to him whatsoever. Do what you want, Stephanie! Date as many guys as you can, Stephanie! That's how you'll find the right one! That had been Stephanie's approach so far, but she no longer wanted to do it that way. She decided to talk to my husband.....
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