All I need

I officially leave for Las Vegas in 2.5 hours.  Yay!
My family is going on a vacation and my loving and adoring, over the top, mother got us all flights and hotels in Vegas for our yearly vacation.  Thanks mom!

I’m getting pretty excited.  I get to spend some quality time with some quality people and I’m pumped about it.  However, I think I’d be pumped about that even if we weren’t going to Las Vegas.

When people find out I’m going to Las Vegas, I always get the same responses: Have you ever been?  Here is where you need to go. . . and . . . Are you going to win big money?  I always smile and chuckle about the latter of those responses, I think because it makes me a little uncomfortable.

I’ve never been completely secure in discussing finances, but I would say that I’ve also not ever been unsure what to say when it comes to finances.  You see I’m blessed.  I know I’m blessed.  I don’t mean that I’m rich by any stretch of the imagination but I was raised with a value and responsibility for money.  

Bear with me here, I know this seems like a weird thing to blog about but I have had a lot of run ins with thinking about/reading about/and discussing money lately.

I grew up on a farm and I have to say, I think that environment taught be a lot about finances.  Maybe it was just my parents that taught me a lot, I don’t know.  We didn’t live extravagantly, we did what we could to sustain ourselves with a garden, raising chickens and pigs and working on the farm.  It was a really good experience.  My dad was financially responsible to say the least.  He was on top of all things that had to do with money and I remember specifically one time we were all eating supper together and my dad called a ‘family meeting’.  He told us that the church was asking for a commitment from our family to help with renovations and that he wanted us to decide together to make some sacrifices.  I think that act of financial leadership and trust has always stuck with me.

In the time that my dad passed away we found out just how amazing he was at being financially prepared and equally how well my mom did being handed the reigns.  It was a hard time emotionally and I’m thankful that my dad planned for it to be an easier time financially.

Anyway, now to my thoughts and feelings about this more recently, I’m pretty average for a person being on my own just out of college.  I still have student loans and car insurance, etc., etc.  That is just the way life is, but I want to go back to something I said earlier.

I’m blessed.
I know I’m blessed.

I have more than enough.  I mean that financially and in many other senses of the word, I’m sure many of you can relate.

I just watched a video by Francis Chan that he posted as a little food for thought and it is on Proverbs 30: 7-9.  He talks about praying for your portion.  Praying for just enough.  Praying that God would not give you more than just what you need.  Some people probably think this is crazy.  Why wouldn’t you pray for blessing beyond imagination?  It goes back to the proverb about a rich man getting into heaven, it is easier for a camel to got through the eye of a needle.  In my own life when things are easy, when things are going my way, when I have more than enough, sometimes I forget that I need God.  I forget that He is ALL I need.

That is really what I was taught growing up and I appreciate that now more than I ever have.

I pray that what I’m blessed with I can use to bless others and I pray that I remember, even as I go to a city where money is a god, that no riches compare to the width and depth of love that has rescued us.