My Greatest Vacation Ever

What's your greatest vacation destination ever? Aruba? Hawaii? Camping at Yellowstone? Fly fishing in Alaska? For me, it was Jenison, MI a small community just outside the city limits of Grand Rapids - I spent three days there. I took three vacation days from work to hang out in my home office and work on our family's finances. Sound's fun, eh?

Several years ago, when I was still working in the marketplace, we found ourselves in a financial bind. Because of our son's autism and my career we needed to make several moves over a short period of time. If you have moved, you probably know that moving is ridiculously expensive. Also, so that I don't paint a picture that we were merely victims of circumstance, I must tell you we were also undisciplined in our spending habits and savings practices. Financially, like many Americans, we spent more than we made and saved very little. After many years of living like this, we had accumulated many and massive debts. The stress of that was immense. To make matters worse, we didn't even know financially where we stood. Wave after wave of bills came and were paid haphazardly sometimes a little late or sometimes skipped because we were so unorganized. We occasionally bounced a check because Chris and I were not communicating or bought something we didn't plan. We were playing a lot of interest because we were opening many accounts at stores to save 15% on purchases we didn't need.

Although we were making a good income, it was a crazy and out of control time for us. The worst part of it, we were financially contributing to our church but not truly tithing. We were, in fact, robbing God. I found that the stress of it all was not only hurting my relationship with my wife and children it was also hurting my relationship with God. After several sleepless nights, God convicted me to lead my family out of this lifestyle. So, I scheduled my financial vacation.

Three days in my office, running credit reports, cutting up credit cards, calling credit card companies. I also used those days to make a detailed budget using an excel spreadsheet I still use every week. I titled the spreadsheet "Financial Freedom by Forty" because I wanted to be free of any debt (other than my home) I had by the time I was forty.

The budget told us where we were financially and that was a blessing in itself. It's almost impossible to get to a destination unless you know where you are.

The debt we had was so large that being debt free by the time I was forty was not mathematically possible - it was a dream. But we started anyway. We began paying down debt, we started giving more to our church, and a while later began to tithe.

I am uncomfortable talking about miracles because they are often so much about individual perspective. But I have experienced a few miracles in my life and what happened to us after we started tithing was to us, nothing short of one. I won't go into detail about all the unusual financial blessing that started falling into place after we began to tithe, but they were unusual and many. And, we reached our goal when I was 38. I went into full time ministry the next year.

Today I am 42. Chris and I have been gladly giving well beyond a tithe and we find ourselves as financially at peace as ever. It is a blessing I would wish on everyone. This weekend, Mark encouraged our church to join in that blessing. I pray that everyone will trust God in this area of their lives.

I am glad I took that vacation in Jenison that year because it got us on track with God and it made so many better vacations possible for us.