“Its only a couple months away and we are super excited to go see family!” These are the words we uttered in the middle of august 2018 as we were planning to drive to see family at the end of the month. But as we were planning, a huge conviction came over me as if to should we be going. We hadn’t seen family in a long time since our baby was born and we were craving to show him off to new family members that had not meet him. In addition, I love to travel and our plan was to stop and see new places as we drove to our home town which was a 24 hour drive away from where we live now.
Our flesh and hearts were not wrong in wanting to see others and to be with them but we realized this was not a good time to go see them. I had felt convicted every time the subject came up but as the date came around I felt we should talk more in depth about what I was thinking. We sat down one night, prayed and both heard that we should not be going. We were sad and disappointed but we knew God was wise and has the best interest for us. A couple of the reasons I suspect is that we were not financially ready as well as emotionally and physically ready for the trip.
Our plan was to use our credit cards to help get us through but after all the advice, prayer and knowledge we had been receiving using the credit cards was out of the questions. In addition we were 9,000 dollars in debt and it would have costed 2,000 dollars to have made that trip. We decided it wouldn’t have been very wise to add more debt to our existing debt at that time. The next day we dreaded the fact that we had to call all our relatives and tell them we were not going to be coming up to see them.
When we made the phone call some of them were sad but understood and then others tried to convince us why we should come up but Gods plans and words are stronger and more powerful than anyone’s ever could be and we knew we have to be obedient to Him. In the end, we were better off holding off on this trip and in reality it didn’t harm my family. It actually taught us to value family more and to be humble.
It was a hard thing to do and we were sad but God redeemed that sadness by allowing for some relatives to come down for Christmas time. We also were recently able to visit and show off our baby. We ended up adding value to our lives than adding stress to our finances and future plans. Sometimes you have to do what is necessary in order to achieve your dreams. It wasn’t our intentions to hurt or ignore anyone else’s feelings and I know we ended up hurting some. But like I said we have to look out for what’s best in our family and that takes sacrifices and hard decisions. You might be sad at that moment, long for a break or just want to travel but I will tell you the feeling of being debt free brings freedom and a reward worth while.
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Bethany Munson 
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