Letting Go is Hard to Do

It's tough out there these days. Money is tight and getting tighter. For most of you out there,
no need to explain or go on about it; you already know it.

Late last year, we took a trip to Rochester, MN to see the Mayo Clinic people about my health issues. We had exhausted our local docs and needed some new direction. We were hoping to get a firm dx. In early 2007 I suddenly started having allergic reactions to alot of stuff I had never been allergic to before. I was visiting the emergency room pretty often with breathing problems with hives and I was taking Benedryl like candy. After about a million tests they didn't get any further than our local docs. It was disappointing and expensive. After we got home they did send us a letter saying it could possibly by mastocytosis. I will leave that for another post but I mention it now because it is relevant to what this post is about today because it was expensive.

We needed to find homes for some of our animals. The horses are a beautiful scene in the morning with the mists at sunrise. They are fun to watch when they are playing and running around. But with the sudden allergy problems, at the least they can be difficult to care for, and deadly to be around at worst. They were also very expensive to feed and we needed to make a
choice to pay our bills or feed our pets.

We found a very good forever home for our Donkey (donkey) and Vixen (pony). It was really hard to let them go. When the trailer showed up to load them, my heart jumped up in my throat and I couldn't swallow hard enough to make it go back down. No goodbye is enough when your love is going down the driveway to a new home. I cried and cried. I didn't think I would. I was making the hard choice of my family's survival over the wants of my heart. I was tough enough to make the choice but it sure hurt.

After the last few months, I can look back now and see I did the right thing. Donkey and Vixen are pampered pets. They are not working in a circus or fair. They aren't in a truck headed for a meat market. They have a happy and content life as a companion to another older horse with a beautiful open pasture. They are loved by their new owners. They have enough food and water to never worry. I know all this because I know who I gave them to.

If you ever have to give up a pet, make sure who you give them to. Make sure they won't sell them to someone who would mistreat or harm them.

Soon we will give 2 of the other ponies to the people we got them from. For the same reason. We can't afford them anymore either. Each year we make a little more than the last but it seems
like it is less and less. So we are setting ourselves to answering a this question: Is it possible to
live on the same income, pay off our considerable debt and save money for retirement?

I've looked around the net and have seen several places that will help us with the task. Because of my health problems it would be pretty much impossible to work a job like normal people do. My DH is already working all he can. It won't be a matter of making more money by getting more work. It will have to be the way we live and the choices we make that turn our lives around. We don't have a lot to sell off to pay things off either.

We will have to be creative, courageous and determined. We will have to utilize all the ingenuity of the mavericks that have gone before. The stories of these down to earth heroes that tamed the debt tiger and have flourished in spite of limited income. Ordinary folks that are even more heroic because they dared to tell others in a time of keeping up with the Jones, about saving, living debt free, and being happy with less. They dare to be thankful and content with what they have; without living each day saying, " When I get this or that, then I will be happy."

I will write about the changes we make. Maybe someday someone will stumble onto this blog and find inspiration to change their lives and work toward living with less and be debt free.

Letting go is hard...whether it is letting go of a beloved pet or letting go of a lifestyle that doesn't work anymore. I think that with the distance of time, that we will think it was worth the
effort to change, new ideas need to be embraced. I believe that, when I see the things that I think I can't live without "going down the driveway" , with time, I will have a new perspective and see that it was for the better.