Doing alright, even when it looks ugly

Sometimes it looks like everything is falling down and nothing is going right.  And you’re right.  Until you look closer. Underneath all the clutter, things are still doing alright.  Maybe the clutter is the problem, maybe not.  But for the most part, things are just fine.

We’ve made no secret of the fact that we’ve been struggling financially for the most of this year.  We made the decision last March that we would start paying off bills and planning for me to come home off the road.  Less than a week later a job opening fell in my lap and I was home within the month.  That means we didn’t have the time to adjust to the new situation where I made significantly less than I did before and after a few months, we got real scared that we really screwed up bad enough that we were going to lose our new house and everything.  But we stuck out the hard times and come February, we’ll be back to acceptable living standards.

Along the way we felt especially bad for Becca, we hated having to make her suffer along with us.  As a thirteen year old girl, this is the time when she starts going out with friends to movies, doing larger projects at school, expressing herself with her clothes… etc.  It was hard to tell her “we can’t afford it” all year long.  The worst thing was her big school trip to Washington DC.  She looked forward to it all last year (when we had plenty of money) and suddenly it looked like she was going to stay behind.  Sure, she’s been to DC on another trip but this one is with all her schoolmates and her teachers.  She would be one of the only kids staying behind, sitting in a classroom doing busywork with a substitute.  Hey, don’t get me wrong, I know she’s a spoiled kid who gets most everything she wants, but I just imagined being that kid… and I didn’t want it to be her.

So we tightened the belt even further and went without all the little things we allowed ourselves, like soda pop in my packed lunch.  Water will do just fine…  We cut all the fat and with the over-generous assistance of all her grandparents, Becca will be going on the DC trip with her class.  Hey Jerry, my mom and dad made her put in a little effort and earn the money if she wanted it so badly…  Maybe she needs to wash your truck or something?

And so, in a financial situation where we had to identify priorities, that’s what we’re getting for Christmas this year.  We’ll put a few small things under the tree but all Teresa and I wanted was to be able to get her on this trip.  We got our present early.  See?  If things were as bad off as they look, we wouldn’t have been able to pull this off.  So we’re doing alright, but this means we’re going to skate by lightly on Christmas.

We’re not “going big” on Christmas, we’re probably not even going to “go medium”.  The way the paydays fall, we won’t have a nickle to even begin shopping until the 24th.  I’m so depressed that Christmas has become such a “gift” centered holiday.  We feel bad that we don’t have gifts for everyone we care about.  It would be a huge list because we love you all.  And when we hit it big, you’re all getting new cars!  But until then, we’re hiding in our cave because we don’t want to be embarrassed by not giving out tokens of our affection.  There is not much worse in this world when someone you love gives you a gift and you have nothing for them.  Our affection is there in spades, the tokens, not so much…

So when you look closely, we’re doing alright.  Things are not as bad as they can be and because we’re doing without things here and there, we’re well on the road to getting back on track.  You have to make priorities.  Do I want to go out to dinner tonight or do I want to know that the bills are paid up?  That’s a harder decision than it sounds when you’re down on the ground level and not looking at the big picture.  Now we’ve come to another decision, do we want to send Becca to DC with her class or do we want to have lots of stuff for Christmas?  We trust that we’re doing the right thing.  And really, why not?  When you look closely at what counts; love, family and friends, we really are doing alright.