Let’s Get Real Here.

My life isn’t always hammocks and morning glories. (Though, there’s plenty of those!) Sometimes it’s long nights staring into space, trying to blink the tears away. Sometimes it’s curling up in my husband’s arms and sobbing.

It often seems like Life never stops throwing storms my way. And there have definitely been years with The Perfect Storm hitting us from three or four sides at once.

And it was just after one of those turbulent years that my husband and I took a fateful trip. Keith’s cousin was getting married in Seattle. Since we hate layovers enough to drive further away to get that direct flight, we borrowed my parent’s copy of Financial Peace University and drove to Kansas City. The whole way to KC, we didn’t talk much. We just listened.

Then, when we got to Seattle, we did all of the touristy stuff and all of the family wedding stuff. But then each night, when we got back to our hotel room, we plotted and planned. You see, we’d just failed miserably at starting a business. We had been ALMOST debt free, and suddenly we were in a lot more debt than we’d ever expected.

We realized we had to buckle down and really become focused if we were going to claw our way out. And we very quickly realized that we both had to grow in many areas, not just in our finances.

We laid out a plan for ourselves that hit a lot of different areas: our understanding of ourselves, our relationships (with each other, our kids, our families, our friends), our household, our careers. We challenged each other to some pretty lofty goals, and then figured out what we had to do to accomplish them.

It took five, long years of hard work, focus, challenges, storms, storms, storms, and more storms until we reached one of our major goals: debt free (except for mortgage). In the meantime, we both worked so many 1099 jobs, it was ridiculous. We got rid of so much stuff in our house, my kids just began to expect to see their toys back on the Awana Prize table come Christmas 😂

But we stuck to our plan. We adjusted it when need be. We didn’t give up. And we made it. On to the next financial goal. But our growth was definitely not restricted to our finances. We had to grow in many areas at the same time.

This is truly what Weathering The Storm is all about. How to grow so that when Life’s Storms hit, you won’t be blown away. You’ll have a solid foundation. You’ll have built a life with purpose and intent that can weather any storm.

Join me this Saturday the 20th at 3Central for the Live Weathering the Storm Workshop hosted by Totally Novel.

I will forever be grateful that we took the time on that life-changing, fateful trip to take control of our lives, strategize, streamline, and succeed.