Money and Weight…And Tears.

I’ve blogged a couple times in recent weeks to make a connection between weight management and money management.

And something hit me hard today.

Money management and weight management have yet another link. They make me cry.

Not always. And the hard works is still worth the reward. But let’s get real for a minute.

My husband and I have been Dave Ramsey followers since before we met. We even saw him live when we had only been dating a short while! Nerd alert. We’ve stuck to our cash system and sat down the first of every month to review how we did the previous month and make the plan for the upcoming month.

Today I only had $7.53 when I needed $8.47. And I had to put it on my debit card. I felt like such a failure, that I swipe quickly and got out of there. I cried all the way home.

Yes, I cried over less than a dollar.

I failed. I failed my husband. I failed Dave. I just plain blew it.

I got home and tried to gather myself and quickly started cleaning (and praying) and thinking through my feelings. What could I have done differently? And why am I not trusting God to provide?

Then something else hit me entirely. This is exactly how I feel when I gain weight. Oh yes, even I go up a few on the scale. I cry. I feel like I failed. I can’t sleep because I’m going to gain all my weight back. Then I wake up, pray and confess to someone what I’ve been feeling. There is power in that. Tell your mom, sister, friend, co-worker, husband, hair stylist that you blew it over the weekend and ate chips and salsa AND GUAC and maybe even some margarita. Their response is generally never as intense as yours is. I’ve noticed that.

So today’s post is a public confession. I had a small blunder and I cried. But I realize I have two options.

1.) Learn from my mistake. I need to buy everything I need for LifeGroup when we do our shopping on Sunday and not run out last minute for a few more things. 

-OR-

2.) Beat myself up, throw in the towel, and just forget it. Which sounds somewhat reasonable at the time, even though we all know it’s stupid. Forget budgets. Forget diets. No one around me is doing it anyway. 

Ultimately the choice is ours. But the fact of the matter…money will always need to be managed…just like our weight. It’s not going away.