One of the hazards of living on the income we do, is that one tiny mistake in the paperwork and you are left holding the rope waiting for the trap door to drop beneath your feet.
Take today for instance. My husband awoke and seemed a bit upset. When I asked what was wrong he told me that he had made a mistake in the budget and that we were now short money. Nothing more coming until the 10th and then the 20th would be the next source.
At first I felt unsettled about it, I mean after all that means no more groceries or anything until the 20th. The 10th money is already spoken for by another bill. I was all set to get upset but then I realized...we'd had just as hard a time before when we were cut off for a month in December of last year...and we somehow managed to make it through. It took some creativity on our part to have a Winter Solstice, but celebrate we did with homemade gifts.
It is amazing to me just how bad my husband can feel when he feels like he has let us down. I appreciate that he doesn't feel right about the mistake, but it IS just that....a mistake. Getting upset won't magically make more money appear. Besides...it is true that we have had more difficult times than this, at least this time we managed to buy a few groceries first. We won't starve in the time it takes for more money to come, we've already visited the food bank and figured out how to make the food we have last. Sure there isn't as much meat in the freezer as we'd normally like, but we have plenty of other things to eat, and I can get pretty creative at times.
Perhaps sometime I will share some of these creative things with you. For now, let us just say that unless you are prepared to get creative...you won't survive. If you aren't prepared to deal with the downside of things, you might let despair take you and make you into something you are not.
The key to living like we do....is to wait and do what we can while we wait.
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