I was reading out of a little preschool devotional with the Youngest Princess last night. She’s four and the topics are generally light but foundational to her faith. The verse of the day was something out of Isaiah and centered around traveling through difficult times in your life {You can tell I retained a lot, right? Hey, it was close to bedtime. And those cute little illustrations are distracting.}.
But it did get me thinking.
Life has been pretty good lately. We paid off our final debt to Sallie Mae. We were on the Dave Ramsey Show. We’ve begun to build an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. We’re saving for our first “real” debt free vacation in October. We had a smashing debt free party. The girls are about to finish their respective school years. Everyone’s healthy. We’ve got a couple of new projects to work on both at home and online. The King of Free is getting ready to celebrate his birthday this Friday and FINALLY eat at a restaurant for the first time in close to 2.5 years. We had an unexpected expense of over $180 today and I didn’t even bat an eyelash. The money’s in the bank to pay for it, no sweat.
Life is good. {deep contented sigh}.
I don’t know why, but every time I get to a place like this {which really hasn’t happened in at least 4 years because for the last 4 years, we were pummeling through $127K of debt}, I begin to get antsy. It’s almost as if I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For something to go dreadfully wrong.
Right now, they’re fuzzy and distant from my warm heart, but I remember times of darkness, not so long ago. Last summer was particularly hard for me and believe-it-or-not, the 2 weeks leading up to paying off our final debt were probably some of the darkest hours of my soul. There were days where it felt like I was aimlessly karate chopping my way through deep waves of dark waters that filled my mouth and sometimes my lungs with their bitter brine. I won’t lie, that bitterness was inching its way from my lungs closer and closer to my heart and I was having a particularly difficult struggle with trust and forgiveness of people and incidents of the past. I have my own personal theories on why I was struggling so deeply. But that’s another post for another day
It’s not like being debt free solves all of your personal problems, but much of the shroud was lifted immediately after the debts were paid. It was like I could see the world much more clearly. Oh that, and my acne cleared. Not. even. joking.
Perhaps I’ve eased into a different pace of life. Perhaps the roughest days lie just off in the distance and this is a calm before the storm. It’s not really for me to know.
Regardless of what comes our way in the future, we are much more secure financially and emotionally with $127K+ behind us and nothing but possibilities in front of us.
Until then, I’m just hanging out here with my laptop. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. And hoping I’ll learn to abide without the ansty.
