A Bad Economy is Good

Lest you think I've lost my mind, let me tell you about a dream I just had.

I dreamed I was getting married and I had a groom and a dress. That was it. It was snowy and it was hard to drive around.  I was teaching a class and so I had a few potential guests, my students, the ones that might feel like showing up. I had a place to get married. I hadn't booked it but I felt that some room or porch would do. It was a beautiful, very large house that was a meeting place and I was sure I could use a corner.

I had no cake or other food. I had no chairs for guests to sit on and I had no advance planning.

What did I have besides the groom and the dress? I had God, I had love, and I had time. I was also excited because I had confidence that it would work out. And it did.

The people in the house were thrown into a tizzy. Why did I take it for granted that I could have a room, a closet or a porch to use? They were hanging onto what they had and no rule breaker was going to invade their space.

I persevered and it all worked out.

You see you can have a wedding without much. You can also have a life without lots of amenities.

Most people are focused most of the time on what they don't have. How can I get what I don't have? Why can't we focus on what we do have?

It would be a huge shift for Americans to learn to do that. Our lifestyles, our economy, our hopes and dreams are based on what we don't have. And yet, the less we have, we still chug on, doing what we can with what we have.

I love to read about people who grew up poor but didn't know it. Their parents never told them. Whatever they ate at dinner, they gave thanks for. They weren't focused on the food they didn't have.

I remember taking a big bag of outgrown, used clothing to Goodwill when my boys were little. Son #2, in the car with me, asked, "Where are we going?" "To Goodwill, to give the clothes to the poor." I'll never forget his response, "But mom, we are the poor!"

What had I done wrong? How did he know he was poor, that we were poor, a divorced mom with 3 kids scrambling to make ends meet? Of course, I must have told him. I must have been focused on what we didn't have instead of what we had. That was my mistake and I am passionate about sharing my mistakes so you don't have to make them too.

Times of lack, like today, are good for us. It gives us an opportunity to practice being rich without the money, amenities and lifestyle that we think we should have. We are still richer than 80% of the world. We need to start being grateful for what we have and act grateful as well. Our happy future depends on it.

We need to learn the secret that Paul discovered more than 2000 years ago. "I know what it is to be in want, and I know what it is to have more than enough - in everything and in every way I have learned the secret of being full and being hungry, of having abundance and being in need. I can do all things through him who gives me power."

Remove Temptation

How do we stop spending and thinking about spending?

The answer is a little know fact: remove temptation.

Oh, you already knew that? Then how come we watch TV and see ads all the time. We surf the internet and have ads all over the pages. We get emails tempting us to buy almost everything at a discount.

I have taken a bold step. I have "unsubscribed" to almost all the cool deals that used to be delivered to my inbox daily: ebates, groupon, livingsocial, daily swirl, Kohls, Ralph Lauren, Macy's, Nordstroms, Neiman Marcus, Kodak, Replacements, Williamsburg Marketplace, and much more.

When you want to resist temptation, you need to replace the tempting thing with another, more satisfying pleasure. So I made a list of those things that I will do instead of internet browsing and just musing on what would be fun to buy if I ever had enough money.

Here's my list: lengthen my Bible Study time or even have more than one a day, create meal plans and prepare food, watch some Food prep DVD's I own, work on my book, write and shop for publishers and/or literary agents, and write my blogs.

This is more than enough. But in case I need more, I can exercise more than once a day, I can just hang out with my husband, and I can nap.

What's on your replacement list?