I’ve Got Gazelle Intensity

I’m fired up! Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University gets better and better each week. My husband and I have a working budget. It covers all the bases, keeps our spending in check, and will eventually allow us to live the way that we want to live without being slave to our debts.

Tonight we covered lesson 4, Dumping Debt. I think I’ve cried a bit before about how the credit card companies and the loan companies and the banks seem like they control our lives. But, like Dave says, it doesn’t have to be that way. Dayman and I are in the process of Baby Step 2 in the program. We’re on our way to becoming debt free. Using Dave’s Debt Snowball program, we pay off the smallest debt first, regardless of interest rates. Once that debt is paid off, the amount you would have spent monthly on that first debt is applied to the next debt. And so on.

We have stopped borrowing. As of two minutes ago, we’ve cut up EVERY SINGLE CREDIT CARD! We’re running from the cheetah, and we’re going to get away!!!!! I think I will probably talk more about the Dave Ramsey course in the future. I really believe that the principles set forth in this financial plan will completely change our lives. For the first time, we will control our money instead of letting it control us.

If you feel like you are drowning, and there is no hope, take comfort from Proverbs 6:1-5 (TNIV):

My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger, you have been trapped by what you said, ensnared by the words of your mouth.

So do this, my son, to free yourself, since you have fallen into your neighbors’ hands: Go — to the point of exhaustion — and give your neighbor no rest! Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.

Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.

Amen.

Peace, linden.

Staggered

Sometimes the Depression sneaks up on you.

It’s a creepy, vicious stalker. It sidles behind you at the computer desk and begins to massage cold, invisible, skeletal fingers along your temples. You rub and knead to deflect the discomfort. A nerve in your shoulder jumps and scurries to avoid the attack. You shrug it off, as yet unknowing.

Your brain begins to misfire, dragging you away from your work. You stare vacuously at the screen. Coming to, moments later, you begin your work anew. Fingertips enjoy the tactile pleasure of striking individual keys. The smart, satisfying click of each button is an encouragement to keep typing. You rub the shiny squares lightly as you process your thoughts. You chance a glance to the right, where a hefty and volatile to-do list urgently beckons. It begs you to make just one check-mark in its neatly printed boxes.

You panic. Breathing heavily, you glance about without focusing on any specific point or object in the desk nook. Your thoughts race, wander, imagine, deflect an oncoming fear. Short, sturdy fingernails find a home piercing the fleshy bits of your palms. The pain allows you to focus and regain your composure. You improve your posture, tap the keys quickly and with purpose. As you sit tall and high, you glance over your right shoulder as if to confirm that nothing lurks behind you.

But the beast’s claws are still able to clamp, vise-like around your throat. You swallow against the building pressure, working your throat muscles around the new, mysterious mass that has taken up an esophageal residence. Your stomach tenses, and your lip trembles as the realization dawns: the Depression has arrived.

Its weight settles about your shoulders and drags you to the cool tile floor. It’s comforting to have the ground hold you up as the tears fall.