Shame Brings Silence

At least it does with me.

If you've been around here for any length of time at all, you'll notice that I've been unusually quiet here on the homefront.  Life gets busy and there are things that I have to let slide for a little while and that has been this blog for the last few weeks.

Here's the deal though - things are a bit better as far as the chaos of life goes, but I'm still quiet.  Why?  I'm embarrassed.

Our finances are a mess right now.  I've been using the credit card on things lately - things like groceries and gasoline that I swore I would never use a credit card for again. The credit card is supposed to be for emergencies, like the car repairs that were going to send our emergency fund into disarray when we needed to have cash available for other purposes. 

We've added a lot of expenses lately to our life without a huge increase in income.  The plan is to add income via Chip.  He just got paid yesterday for being on orders with the National Guard for the last two weeks, but that gig is over and the search for a full-time job will commence next week.  I thought we'd be fine - even with the added expenses - for a few weeks until something came through for him. 

I was wrong.  So the credit card came out.  And out of stress I resort to things like wanting to eat out with friends at lunch to "make myself feel better."  In the end, I just feel bad for spending money I don't need to spend for a lunch that will be digested within a few hours. Stupid.

I know I'm not a financial professional and you don't come here expecting perfection, but I'm probably much harder on myself than you might be and I feel total shame for the current status of our bank and credit card accounts. So I've holed up for a while hoping when it clears up I will feel like talking again and be able to pick up where I left off like nothing ever happened.

But I wanted to come out and tell you that really isn't realistic.  We all screw up.  We all succumb to our weaknesses.  We all have plans that don't feel unfold the way we expected. We all fail sometimes.

And I wanted to let you know that I am real.  And you are too.  And it's okay.  We're just going to have to start from where we are now and pick up and move forward. 

This isn't a sentence to going back to the problems we used to have.  This doesn't mean I am going to pile up all of that debt that we've paid off over the last 3 years.  This doesn't mean that I have to keep acting this way for the rest of today.

I'm starting over again.  Do you need to join me?  If not, just pray for me then that I will have the strength to face this head-on and fight this beast called debt.