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September 2, 2021Thank you to everyone who welcomed me back after my vacation in August! It was a great break and full of lots of great things, but as always I am glad to be back at MQOA. I spent some time camping with family, and lots of time on my porch, reading.
One of the books I’ve been reading is Seven, by Jen Hatmaker. She’s recently published a new version of this book, retitled Simple and Free, but I stumbled across this edition before hearing about that. In it, she experiments with different ways to be more aware of the excess in her life; in the first chapter she limits herself to only 7 foods for a month, and in chapter two, 7 pieces of clothing, and on she goes. By limiting herself, she’s learning to appreciate all she actually has, and make changes around excess, according to that new appreciation. The book is pretty simple stuff, but still, I found it convicting. Makes me look around and see how much we have. Like, so much.
At the same time, Fr. Murray and I have been consulting with a generous parishioner who is a local non-profit leader, to help us do a better job at finding funding sources for the parish. She’s impressive as a leader, but also inspiring to me as a Catholic. She mentioned in one of our meetings that she tithes as an act of her faith, and that has kicked off something in me. It seems like God may be nudging.
At the same time, my husband and I have been in the process of refinancing our house, and are amazed to find that we have some money in savings for retirement, and that as a result of our refi, our monthly bills will go down. Meanwhile, my car has fully entered the dying process (Fr. Murray says I should call it a “town car” now, as in, it should only be driven around town) which is not altogether unsurprising, but… what has been surprising to me is that I am not over-worried about coming up with a down payment or monthly payments or repair costs... like, we can afford this. That feels stunning to me. I am in a good place, not needing to panic and scramble to cover my family’s bills.
And now, Seven. Jen. And the realization that we can do better. I feel like my husband and I have stored up some money almost in spite of ourselves. It was in no way due to a plan of ours, lol and we're not looking to get rid of it. But also, I get this nagging sense that now, for the first time in our existence as a couple, we can be intentionally generous, financially.
So I’ve decided to take on a 90-day tithing challenge. I don’t know, as of yet, what that even means, but I’m curious and feeling called, and so here I go. I’ll blog about it here, and I’d love to hear from you; do you tithe? What are your reasons, and what are the effects on your own faith?
