My wife tearfully took the Golden to the vet yesterday morning. The dog was sedated and x-rayed and no surprise, she had torn her ACL. the vet seems to think that the ACL had been stressed a few weeks ago and finally gave out the other day. My wife told the vet that she did not want the dog to live her, that if she was suffering she wanted to put her down as painful as that would be. The vet smiled at her and told her that even though she had hip issues the Golden was still very strong and she did not recommend putting the animal down. That made my wife happy, but then she came to the realization of the cost. The vet told her that the Golden did not have to have the surgery since dogs have 4 legs and can carry themselves on three of them, but she would be more comfortable later on if we did. the last surgery we had performed on her (the other ACL) was the more expensive of the two surgeries and we borrowed the money to have it done. We have discussed it and prefer to have the less expensive surgery this time for two reasons. 1) we still owe on the last surger (about another year) and 2) we will have the cash to have the other one done in about a week or so. While our finances are getting better, they are far from rosy. Anyhoo...my wife has scheduled an appointment for a Friday morning appointment at the pet surgery center wit ha possible Friday afternoon operating time. Please, if you pray, pray for emotional peace for my wife and that the surgeon performs to the best of their ability. It is not really fair to pray for the dog to come through without a hitch because we do not know when it is time for any of us (including our pets) to leave this earth.
I have received some encouraging words from Landshark, who now appears to be a regular reader if my web logs are correct. His dog is in need of surgery as well and since they are sans children, the pets in their home hold special places in his and his wife's heart. I appreciate the caring words.
Last night at our care group, we had guests attending. The associate pastor and his wife (who actually were part of our group one time) joined us for a meal and a biblical lesson on finance. It seems then faith and finances are spoken in the same sentence, many of us get the wrong impression. "Oh, boy, it looks like $Pastor is going to give us the "we need your money" speech again." Actually, if that is the mindset, then one of two things is wrong, but I will cover that later...
The lesson is part of a video series pertaining to margin. Every day we live life as if there are 25 hours in a day. We do this in almost all aspects of our life (time, money, etc). The premise is that if we cut back on things that are not important, we create margin so we can do other things. For those (like myself) who are workaholics, this can be difficult because we feel everything is important. The idea is to start off every morning to let God guide your day and put those things in your path that he wants you to focus on and the discernment to avoid the fluff. DOing so will give you more time to share with family and spend on the important things in your life.
In regards to finance, the lesson was very simple, very scriptural. He gave a long series of formulas for all the math/finance geeks but at the end he broke it down to a simple demonstration. He held up ten, $1 bills, representing our wages. Christian or Jew, you know the Torah/pentatuch/Old Testament well enough that God asked us to give him 1/10, save 1/10, pay our taxes, pay our debts, then live on the rest. He took one of the bills and put it God's pile, he took one and put it in the savings pile, he took two and put it in the tax pile (oddly enough, if you give to the church and save properly, your taxes go down), and finally took out one for debt (debt defined as money you borrow - Credit cards, car loans, mortgage, student loans, etc) and that left five bills left to live on (monthly expenses, etc). The man on the DVD was explaining that we have as a people (Christian, Jew, and unchurched) live our financial lives with little margin. We do not give God his share, we tend not to save as much as God wants us to, we cheat on our taxes and we augment that by borrowing a lot more money for stuff we do not need. That in turn throws all of God's plan out of balance.
That video in turn led to a spirited debate over tithing (tithe means 1/10). Many people do not tithe...they give an offering. One comment was "well, it is plain to see that we are to tithe. Scripture says give unto Caesar what is his and give to the lord what belongs to him." I spoke up and told the person that while I admired his heart, that scripture did not endorse tithing. God is not interested in our money, he is interested in our heart. It has been said that you can tell where a person's heart is by looking at what they spend their money on. Now that can be a little confusing so let me break it down a little. If I made $100,000 and gave CHEERFULLY $10,000 a year to our church, then my heart is in line with God's spirit. If I only gave $5,000 but spent the other $5,000 on a plasma TV, then what am I saying? I am saying that "stuff" and my entertainment is more important to me.
With that in mind, I went home and looked at where our money went last year (finance programs are great at helping us do this). We gave just a smidgen less than 10% of our (mine and my wife's) gross income. We spent 18% towards our home (less than the national average) and about 18% towards other debt. That is almost half our salary and that is not counting taxes. We effectively pay about 10% in taxes and I save about 6% each year. That comes to about 62%. Not bad. That means that my wife and I can live on 38% of of our salary on month to month items (food, car insurance, utilities, gasoline, etc). Interesting, no? How about you?
I said earlier that if you have negative thoughts when money and faith are mentioned together that one of two things is wrong. One is that the person who is bringing it up is not doing so in a Christian manner. The other is that we are not right with God. We are called to be cheerful givers. While the idea is to give 10%, if you can only give 5% due to an abnormally heavy debt load and you can give it cheerfully, it means more to God than giving 10% and moaning about it.
I challenge you to give spiritual finance management a try (if you are a Christian who is a member of a church). First, look at what you spend your money on. If you do not have any idea, then start tracking it using the categories I gave earlier (God, savings, taxes, debt, and normal monthly expenses) and see how you stack up with God's plan (10% for him, 10% savings, 10-20% taxes, 10% debt, and the rest is what you live on). As you can see my wife and I need to make a few changes. We need to give a little more, save more, and decrease debt but I am happy to say that we are doing better. If all things go as planned, we will only have a house payment this time next year. If we stay true to God's plan, it can happen.
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