Julie Gumm - Author

What Financial Freedom Brings

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So from July 2005 until fall of 2007 our financial goal was simple – PAY OFF THE HOUSE. We lived on about 60% of our income and paid about 40% of it to the mortgage company every month.

This took lots of discipline because really, we could have totally cheated here and there – splurged on a vacation, etc. But really we just sat down when we first moved in and came up with a figure. And THAT became our payment. Since I paid bills online I really didn’t even look at that pesky monthly payment coupon with the “real” mortgage payment. We treated our “new” payment as the minimum payment.

Of course had something dire happened we could have stopped paying extra, but in all honesty I don’t think we ever sent less than what we had planned. After all we had that nice big emergency fund, right 🙂

So sometime during 2007 (truthfully, probably long before that) God began working on both Mark and I and he began calling us to get involved with the orphan. Sometime in October during a lunch at Chipotle I sprung “SOOOO, what do you think about adopting?” on Mark.

Me, the gal who had joyously declared our family complete 4 years earlier. Ha ha!

Our adoption story is well chronicled here and if you want to read more of it, go here and then work your way forward – so I won’t go in to a ton of detail here.

But as we began to look at international adoption, and decide to adopt two kids, of course the dollar signs got bigger and bigger and bigger.

But then we realized something – within a couple of months the house would be paid off.

And all that money that we had been sending to Wells Fargo? Well what better place for it to go?

It was then that we began to get the first glimpse of how our new found freedom gave God more and more room to work miracles in our lives and open us up to adventures we never knew possible.

But God had another lesson he wanted us to learn even more….

…to be continued

Review: “Permission to Speak Freely”

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Part confessional. Part art. Part challenge.

That’s how I would sum up Anne Jackson’s new book “Permission to Speak Freely”.  In May 2008 Anne posted a question on her blog “What is one thing you feel you can’t say in church?”

This book is an exploration of the hundreds of responses she received, interwoven with her own personal story, poems and art.

Having spent 8 years in some sort of ministry position (either as a pastor’s wife or in working at the church) I’m sure my list would NOT be short. Because if the average person doesn’t feel like they can say it in church, then certainly a pastor’s wife shouldn’t say it.

But that’s why I especially loved Chapter 24 – “The Gift of Going Second”.

“Whenever somebody confesses something, and they’re the first to do it, it’s usually a pretty hard step to take. … What happens on the other side of that confession is something beautiful. … When you go first, you’re opening up this amazing opportunity for trust. You’re saying, ‘I’m broken.’ That trust carries so much power with it. It can give people the courage to go second. … It’s the Gift of Going Second that starts waves of confession and healing.”

In a small way I got to experience that gift, or the giving of it, three years ago when I openly talked about my first struggle with depression in front of our entire church (via video). The experience was healing not only for me, but I was amazed at the number of people who came up to me and shared their own stories – and continued to for years later.

What an incredible change would come over the church if more of us would step forward and give the gift of going second.

Anne’s book is a quick yet moving and challenging read that will cause you to re-examine your lack of willingness to be open and speak truth about your own life.

*I received a free copy of this book from booksneeze.com in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.