The Plan vs. My Plan

It has been a long past week.

Today was the first day in a while that I haven't been running all over the country following up on job leads. Rather, I focused on cleaning the disaster of a mess we've left at our house in our absence and I've been finding more job leads online so that I can have more follow-ups tomorrow.

Sheria and I have a little bit of money coming in tomorrow from side jobs I've been undertaking that will keep the first week of october from being a financial loss for us. As of right now, my top job leads all point to next week for my ever-anticipated definitive answer. Tomorrow I have another job lead which would actually be exactly what we need right now...it won't be pleasant work, much less my ideal work environment, but it pays well and it will be second shift which, in our particular circumstance, would make child care a non-issue. In other words, another answer to prayer and sigh of relief, but I have to make it happen.
It was my plan that I would have something definitive for a job this week, but my plan didn't turn out the way I wanted. I can maintain consistency in my effort and follow-ups, but if there's one thing the debt plus job scarcity will do, it is bring out impatience in me that I didn't know I had. Enter the plan vs. my plan. Proverbs 16:9. At first I thought that getting out of debt was my plan. And I guess it was and still is. But I'm finding more and more that getting out of debt is God's plan for me and everyday I have to tweak my own overtly human version of it to look more like His.


Today I read an article about Sprint. Sprint is my current carrier, so I was interested.
Sprint is about to start offering the iPhone, but they're going over the top with it, they're prepared to invest 20 billion dollars in this endeavor, a gamble for them considering that they are already about 17 billion in the hole and still waiting on some other risky investments to pay off.

This investment decision assumes that they will move just as many iPhones as AT&T or Verizon, the two leading carriers in the nation. I understand now why this is a extremely bad decision for them. Whether or not they are able to pull it off is irrelevant, it's not a smart move. If I play with a rattle snake and avoid getting fatally wounded on the first go-round, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to play with rattle snakes. They could potentially make outstanding profit from this, but is the promise of that profit worth risking the integrity of your entire organization?


Suddenly, all the poor financial decisions we've made don't seem so impossible to fix.

My dad is in ministry. Something he always said when talking to students is "There are two ways you can learn wisdom. 1) Through personal experience or 2) through the mistakes of others."

I feel as though I've gotten a little bit of both. It's not enough to just make a lot of money anymore, not for me. What am I going to do with it? That is the crucial question that is changing the way I look at things. If all you intend to do with money is buy stuff and/or let it sit in the bank, you will most likely end up like me...as soon as you lose a job, you will nearly give yourself an aneurysm trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage. If generosity were a person, I cut his legs out from under him and beat him senseless...not because I was greedy but because I managed my money poorly...which in turn, disabled me from being able to give how I wanted, just as an example. Plus, it also sucks not being able to buy Christmas presents for christmas parties. But I think this is a necessary consequence. This is us learning from our mistakes and gaining wisdom.

Is there a time where the pain you felt was one of the most necessary things for your character? What did it teach you?