Home with Tracy

A year ago today I received a phone call from my grandma that my youngest brother had taken his life. He was only 26 years old. He left behind a wife, who was 8 months pregnant, and an 18 month old son. When I first heard of my brother's passing, I was filled with shock and disbelief. Since then I have gone through periods of sadness, anger and finally acceptance. As I sat at his funeral, and I saw all the people that loved him fill the room from corner to corner and out into the hall, I couldn't help but wonder if he had known, truly known, how much he was loved and how many loved him, would he have changed his mind? I kept hearing how he always had a smile on his face, that he was always happy, and that he would be the last person anyone would expect to take his own life. I don't know why he thought that taking his life was the only answer. I will never know. If you are in a place where you think suicide is the only way to relieve the pain, make you forg...

Earlier this week I read a wonderful blog post from Keeper Of The Home titled The Great Debate: Is it Wrong for Christians to Be Wealthy? I must admit, at first, I was not going to read it because I don't think of us as wealthy. We don't go on vacations, we don't have expensive cars, we have a small house, we don't shop at expensive stores, the list (and excuses) goes on and on. Boy, was I wrong. We are wealthy. We are wealthy with stuff! One of the reasons I used to justify that I felt we weren't wealthy was because we live paycheck to paycheck. It is our own fault, we have a lot of debt. My husband and I were not raised to save, nor were we raised to not use credit in order to get things. We have since learned that our debts weigh heavily on us and it is something we want to pay off as soon as we can. Because we live paycheck to paycheck, I always thought there was nothing we could give. I was wrong. We have clothes hanging in our closets that we haven't...