red, white and blue

Hope that you all had a wonderful 4th of July. Our plans always include hanging at PawPaw and MawMaw’s house with bbq, watermelon, swimming, and fireworks. It was a fabulous day. It also included some political chit chat too {I promise that this won’t be a rant about my political views}.

But, it made me reflect a little on the fact that we truly can’t control the world that we live in, and we can’t control the people around us. Oh, but, don’t we all secretly wish that we could.

BUT, what can you and I control??

The only kind of control that God ever put into our hands is SELF CONTROL.

We have the ability to control our attitude, our time management, our words, our actions.

“Focus on what you can change.”

Mike and I have this control talk often. We both can suffer from that “I want you to do it my way” syndrome. So, if you didn’t already know, Mike and I are complete opposites. It’s a beautiful thing {most of the time. HA}. We have been on a cash budget since January. It has been great because it frees us both. He doesn’t have to worry about not having enough money to pay bills, and I have the ability to become more disciplined with shopping. In this detailed budget, my honey {he’s 100% type A} has to daily choose to let me make right choices within our budget. He has learned that he can’t micro manage this budget. But, what he can control is how he encourages me in making those right choices {his words}. I can’t control our paycheck amount or how much that is allotted for each category, but I can control how I shop for groceries and how I plan out my days {my actions}. It’s been a learning process and has brought a deeper level of self control and trust personally and in our marriage. Sheesh, it only took us 18 years. LOL.

“Don’t let the things that you can’t control affect the things that you can control.”