God grant me the
serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
To me, this means that I need to find peace in knowing that my debt did not accumulate in one month and it will not disappear in one month either. Honestly, I have no hard feelings or ill will towards ANY of my student loan debt. My parents sacrificed and put me and my siblings through 13 years each of private school on their very small salaries. I am completely fine with the fact that I had to take out loans to pay for college. Each time I make a loan payment I think about the classes I took, the friends I made, and the experiences college allowed me to enjoy. I think that I am lucky to have a job (even if I don't make a lot) and lucky to have met my husband in college as well. The ill-will that I have towards my debt is my credit card. Let me rephrase that, I hold no ill will towards the debt or the numbers themselves. I blame myself. It's kind of like the argument of the gun debate over "evil" guns. Honestly, my husband is a gun owner and in the military and my father is a recently new gun owner and retired military. I've shot guns and I feel comfortable around them. A gun is an inanimate object that cannot do anything on its own-it takes a human factor to cause them to go off. We can at least agree on that, right? What's the point of this? Well I relate guns to credit cards. Haha. Hear me out. Credit cards don't magically get swiped-a human-(me) is the one that has to swipe the card or input the numbers on the computer to purchase an online item. The card itself is not bad or guilty of the actions that take place. I am. However, I need to find peace in knowing that I can't change how the numbers accumulated but I CAN change how they will go down.
courage to change the things I can;
I know that getting out of debt will not be easy and it will take time. I need to be able to believe in myself and know that eventually if I keep working hard on paying down my debt and making snowball payments that it will go down.
and wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom to know the difference. I may want to change things as quickly as possible and this means putting all of my available money towards debt. However, I don't do this for two reasons. One-this is no way to live. If you deny yourself little treats like McDonald's coffee every once in a while or grabbing lunch out even if it just once or twice a month-you will begin to resent the debt and in turn resent yourself for the decisions that you are not happy that you made. The wisdom comes in knowing that you shouldn't allow yourself to burn out or become depressed. Would I feel better knowing that I could have put ten-fifteen extra dollars towards my debt that month? Maybe. But when you are already putting pretty much every paycheck towards your debt-it's ok to give yourself some leeway-once in a while.
.....To be continued.
Living one day
at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
