———— Not All Bad ————.

“a diagnostic look at the average American household,” showing that consumers are digesting higher prices of food and essentials by lowering spending on discretionary categories such as apparel, according to Jefferies analysts.

I see God working through these difficult times and giving us reason to be thankful in our trials.

I learned the difference between needs and wants when I was young, not merely through some college course including “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” or even Larry Burkett’s Biblical course “Christian Financial Concepts” (later called “Crown Financial Management” ), but through life’s application from the time I was a young boy. I grew up in a family of 4 children and a Mother who did her best with $400/mo in a time of interest rates in the teens. We never went hungry, but we also didn’t have all the stuff or even do all the stuff most of our peers did. However, we learned a lot of valuable lessons I wouldn’t trade for the world. I learned how to “pinch a penny until it screamed” from my mother, but most importantly I learned the concept of “Needs vs Wants”. Like most of my peers I started off thinking needs were just wants you really, really wanted. It didn’t take long hearing, “you won’t die if you don’t get to go to that camp, but the family will still have enough money to buy food for your next meal” before I started to understand that needs were things without which I would die and those wants will fade.

We haven’t struggled with money for many years now, and I attribute that to the fact that God has had His hand in our lives even through those tight decades and beyond. He taught us many other lessons too and all those lessons led to success in life. The difficulties through which He taught us all these most valuable lessons didn’t always seem like blessings, but I learned to thank Him in all these things.

I noticed that trying to teach my children the God taught me was thwarted by society’s lack of self-control. When I was a Captain, we had one 10 Ur old vehicle to use for all three generations (our in-laws didn’t drive). Our eldest daughter was in her Junior year in High School and her best friend was driving a brand new SUV to school from the first day she got her driver’s license. When she totaled it, Daddy bought her another one. He had done the same for all her siblings too. He was a Tech Sgt making a little over half my pay. She couldn’t understand how he could afford to do it for his kids but I couldn’t. I told her I didn’t base my spending upon the spending of others, but upon needs, followed by prioritized desires. Later the stresses of her best friend’s family’s spending habits led to the breaking up of the family. (Their Mom was working 2 jobs and their Dad was working a second job after his military day was complete.) This was a sadly familiar story that seemed totally unnecessary.

This trend, as defined in the opening paragraph (by the Jefferies analysts), gives hope that God hasn’t stopped blessing this country even as we haven’t stopped cursing Him. What an amazing and merciful God full of Grace we have.