simple things

Why are the simple things often so complicated?

I long for more simplicity in my life. 

It should be simple to stay married to your spouse. 
But marriage is hard work and many people are lazy. And many people get married for the wrong reasons.

It should be simple to take care of your children. 
But many are not ready to be parents and their children have to suffer. Many parents continue to make their children pawns in their games of life, jockeying for power and status, often at the detriment of their children.

It should be simple to make a living. 
But too many live beyond their means. Unemployment is skyrocketing, and since so many just live for the moment, never thinking about tomorrow, we are all in trouble.

I'm not saying that divorce is ALWAYS wrong. I'm not saying that all people that get divorced were lazy. I'm just saying it has way too commonplace in our nation. I am a minority with my parents being married 36 years. Instead of arguing about whether the gay couples can have the same legal rights as married people, why don't we work on strengthen our own unions? People tell me that gay people getting married will destroy the American family. Really? You mean, it will destroy the less than half of American couples that actually stayed married anyway. I think the American institution of marriage has already shot itself in the foot.

I used to say, "Some people just should not reproduce." But I cannot say that. It is not fair to say that. There are too many beautiful, wonderful children in our world that just had the unfortunate fate to be born to parents that were not ready for them or could not handle the responsibility. Many of these children will have the fortunate fate of having foster and adoptive parents who can, will, and do take care of them, allowing that the parents and the child are open to loving homes that are out there. Unfortunately, sometimes the parents will not allow others to love their children, keeping the child in constant limbo for years and years. And this is nothing new. Orphanages have existed for many years. When I think of simple times, I often think of "Little House on the Prairie." But even Charles Ingalls had an adopted son - Albert.

I, too, am guilty of the last complication of life. Throughout my early to mid-twenties, I lived way beyond my means. Now I am paying the consequences. Fortunately I do have a job. I am eternally grateful for this, especially in a time when so many do not. My desire is that when I get out of debt this time, I will not go back. I really cannot believe I am in this situation again. We got in this place by some necessary things (car repairs) and some unnecessary things (clothes, home decor, eating out, lots of junk...) I have been on credit consolidation once before and we have paid off both credit cards that I possess at least once. The only option I currently have is to consolidate again and pay them off. We are going old school and saving change in a large bucket for our next large purchases, a new sofa and television. Our sofa is a hand-me-down and slowly losing its comfort factor - who knows how old it was before it came to live with us? Our television's age is comfortably in the double-digit years. With the switch to digital transmission, we have already noticed that when the switch happens, we will only be seeing half of our television shows, because half of the screen will be cut off. It already happens when we watch NBC shows, like Saturday Night Live. Unless everything also goes to online availability, we will be watching absolutely nothing after June. It some ways this will be a good thing. We were watching way too much TV anyway. Sometimes I think this digital switch is kinda a blessing in disguise. 

Hopefully we have learned our lesson and will not spend money on junk anymore...hopefully now that we have switched our TV off, it will stay off and we spend more time actually doing stuff together, besides staring at a screen...hopefully we can channel some Ingalls family faith, hope and love and learn to live simple...