A Jail of My Own Making

I had the strangest dream last night. It was a wierd dream. I went to jail. By my own choice.

I remember bits and pieces of the dream. Being at the computer and doing something on the computer - in what seemed to be a gesture of turning myself in online - and then just sitting there and waiting for the police to show up at my door a few minutes later to take me away. I remember looking at My Marine and saying that I have to do this and that it's for my own good. I remember telling him that he had to call a friend of ours to help with the girls while I was gone - which was only going to be for 45 days. (45 days?) I remember the "jail" being more of a glorified dormitory where I basically did some hard labor and was able to see my family every once in awhile.

Why did I have this dream?

I'm certainly no expert on dream interpretation, I'm sure I can give you my interpretation. I've been so incredibly out of sorts lately. I feel like I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders. Our finances are so out of whack and we just had an unexpected car repair earlier this week to the tune of $667 that pretty much wiped us out until our next pay period.

Yes, we have debt. Yes, we live paycheck to paycheck. No, we really don't have much of a savings cushion - not any more, not in this economy. Yes, I stress every single day about paying bills, putting food on the table, stretching every single little thing so that it lasts just a little bit longer.

My worries and stresses have put me into an emotional jail -- a jail of my own making. I can't get through the day without thinking about the upcoming bills and where we're going to get the cash to pay for them.

Sure, I can hear it now -- well, why don't you go get a job? Sure, I could do that. But you figure out daycare for two kids on a paycheck of minimum wage and what's left wouldn't even get me a cup of coffee and a danish.

The worst part is that I feel that because I'm a failure when it comes to our finances that somehow that makes me a bad person, a bad wife, and a bad mom. If I can't get a hold of something so simple as money and debt management (and it really is a simple concept if you boil it down to the basics), how can I be a good person. I look around and all my other friends seem to have it together. And I know that the situation we're in is my fault.

You see, I'm a recovering compulsive shopper. It's a real, deep-seated problem that I deal with every single day. It was at it's worst right after I first got married and was living in a state other than my homestate, with no family, while My Marine was gone 9 months out of the year. I shopped to fill the void - the loneliness, the anger, the sadness. I'm still paying for those mistakes - and now that I have kids, I struggle every day with not falling into that trap of shopping for them.

But I'm trying to be positive. I'm trying so hard to keep the faith that God will provide - somehow, someway, He will provide. I'm trying to remember all the good that I have right now -- I have two beautiful, healthy girls, My Marine has a job, we have a roof over our head, a vehicle that now works, and food in our fridge.

If I focus on that every day, instead of stressing about my bank balance every single hour of the day, then maybe, just maybe, I can break free of this emotional jail that I find myself in and dreaming about at night.