Six months ago I wanted a new purse. I have a very nice one that I got from our daughter-in-law for Christmas 5 years ago. It's a good quality purse so it is very structurally sound and will probably last another 15 years. But I was bored and the purse is looking a little scuffed. It's the kind of purse that can be repaired, so I've done that once already too. I wanted to replace it with an equally good quality bag and the same brand and that would cost a couple hundred dollars. I told myself that I would splurge on a new purse when the car was paid off - kind of as a reward for the hard work. And I would do it with no guilt because let's face it, a couple hundred dollars is a lot of money.
Then a couple weeks ago, I got an email from a ministry we support whenever we can and they have an online shop of things created by artisans in poor countries. They had a purse that I thought I would like equally, was 1/2 the price and would provide 63 meals to people in Haiti. Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! This cause means so much more to me than the name brand I like for the purse. So it was settled, I was going to buy the purse from Feed My Starving Children.
With help from family, we paid off the car yesterday. (the crowd goes wild!) And what I found when I went to put the purse purchase in our next budget was that I no longer even wanted the purse. The one I have is just fine. And when I look at it, it reminds me of our daughter-in-law's generosity. Paying off the car in less than 8 months was not something we did on our own. To borrow a phrase from my Mom, "God did the heavy lifting". And in that process so many things shifted in our lives in ways I want to last. One of those things is seeing the volume of money that can pass through our hands and now, because we have no debt except our mortgage, we can give so much more.
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