Wanted: Financial Peace

Having to deal with managing money in today's culture is a difficult task. Trying to figure and follow a budget is something that I know in my head is vital to living a life of financial peace. In practice, however, it is so difficult to follow through on. Life just seems to get in the way.

My wife and I were snagged by the thinking that getting student loans for college is essentially a mandatory situation. Both of us went to a private Christian school (expensive) and both of us paid for most of it with student loans. I want desperately to pay off these loans. The biggest problem with that is the fact that she is a public school teacher and I work for a church.

Now we feel so strapped to these loans (along with some relatively minor, but still annoyingly pesky credit card bills). Dave Ramsey, a nationally syndicated financial radio guy always talks about being in debt in Biblical terms of the borrower being slave to the lender. This sort of enslavement is very subtle and wears you down gradually, but wears you down nonetheless.

My church is starting a new Financial Peace University course -- written by Dave Ramsey, the Christian financial guy I mentioned before -- and Heidi and I are thinking of going. We took the course a number of years ago, but the fire to get out of debt that we had after taking it the first time has fizzled.

I very much want to take better control of my financial situation. I fear for the many people in America today who are living a borrowed life -- a life owned by their bank and leased to them at 24% interest. This system of spending money we don't have is not one to benefit the consumer in the long run, it is designed to benefit the banks, and the banks are winning.

I want out of this hamster wheel. I want to live a debt-free financial life that keeps me free from being enslaved to anyone else. I want to call Dave's show and scream, "I'm debt freeeeeeee!" What a day of true freedom that will be. Accomplishing this will be a tremendous feat because the biggest battle will be against my most formidable enemy: me.

I look forward to the day that I can blog about how I was able to get out of debt. I'm ready for a change.

A Life ~ Disconnected

Heidi and I have spent about a year and a half trying to get pregnant. Last month, we visited her doctor to consult with him about starting infertility testing. We were all set up to begin with Heidi having a -- get ready for this -- hysterosalpingogram (HSG), which is a test to help her doctor see if the issue of our infertility lie with her.

On the day of her appointment, we found out she was pregnant.

We were overjoyed at this because 1) we have been trying and praying for a pregnancy for so long, and 2) if we had not taken the pregnancy test, the HSG would have surely destroyed the embryo already growing inside her. On Tuesday 9/5, Heidi went in for a blood test and her hormone levels confirmed that she was pregnant. The nurse at her doctor's office congratulated us, set us up for our first sonogram, and set our due date at May 4.

This date could not have been more perfect for us. It would allow Heidi to finish the school year and leave with enough maternity time that she would not need to go back after the baby was born.

We commented to each other on how good God has always been to us. We were amazed at God's timing.

But what we thought was God's timing was not His timing at all.

On Friday of the same week, her blood test showed a decrease in hormone levels -- an indication of a possible miscarriage. No bleeding took place over the weekend, so she went in for her third blood test on Monday 9/11. We were trying to be hopeful and were praying that the dip in her levels would right itself in this test. Today, we got the results. An even lower hormone level -- an indication of a complete miscarriage.

We don't know if she will physically miscarry in the next few days, or if she did earlier in the month. The only thing we know is that the doctor indicated that Heidi was no longer pregnant.

This has taken a toll on both of us, but on Heidi more so. She went from preparing for an infertility test to learning she was pregnant for the very first time to having a miscarriage, all in the course of about a week. We went from thanking God for finally answering our prayers to dealing with the painful disappointment that He seemingly took His "yes" answer away from us.

But God is still good, and his timing is infinitely perfect -- even when we are blinded with discouragement.

We thought his "yes" was for a baby and we focused on that. When we found out that we would not be having a baby from this pregnancy, it seemed a bit like a cruel trick. But He did answer "yes" and He remains faithful to that response.

His "yes" answer was to let us know that we are capable of getting pregnant.

The timing was perfectly precise. We no longer need to spend hundreds of dollars to see if we can get pregnant; we now know we can get pregnant. While it still hurts to have our hopes rise and fall with such ferocity, what a blessing it is to know that God continues to keep our best interests in mind, that He deals with us in delicately powerful ways.

Thank you, God, for answering our real prayers, even though we are sometimes too farsighted to actually pray them.

MinistryCOM Conference

I just attended the second annual MinistryCOM Conference here in Phoenix. This conference was designed for church communications professionals (and amateurs alike). Since I am relatively new to the church communications scene, my church sent me to glean as much knowledge from the bigwigs that my brain capacity would allow.

I enjoyed the chance to meet people from all over the nation from all sorts of churches. The first day, I sat at a table with 3 women from Presbyterian churches in Florida and Texas, and one from a Lutheran church in Oklahoma. It was interesting for me to see that long-time traditional churches were investing money in sending their staff to a very forward-thinking conference.

The most worth-while sessions I attended were led by Dawn Nicole Baldwin with AspireOne, Jon Edmiston of CCV, and Kem Meyer of Granger Community Church. I think I liked Jon's session best because he gave us a great look into the specific target marketing practices that have been in place at CCV for about 16 years, and have helped make that church a successful ministry to the Peoria area.

I also spent some time talking to two guys with National Community Church in Washington D.C. These guys (Dave and David) do a good job on print, website, and video projects for their very media-heavy church. They helped me out by giving me advice for planning, organizing, and follow-through methods for large projects. I'm looking forward to streamlining my design process at Palm Valley using some tips from them.

Even though I enjoyed my time at the MinistryCOM Conference, I felt a bit like a senior taking a freshman-level college course. I'm not saying that I am an expert at all of this, but Palm Valley has presented me with an opportunity to work with a very cutting-edge church, and much of what I heard seemed like pretty basic stuff.

My goal is to simply find three specific things from the conference that I can take with me and implement in my job. After a bit of rest and time for reflection, I will try to outline the three most important things I learned in a new entry.