#27 – What We Had to Unlearn About Money

We all have a money story—most of us just haven’t named it yet. In this episode, we open up about our own journeys with money, the beliefs we didn’t realize we were carrying, and the moments that changed everything. If you’ve ever wondered why money feels the way it does for you, this conversation will help you start connecting the dots, and give you hope for your own financial future.

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Transcript

Unveiling Personal Stories

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Road Back Podcast. We're so glad you're here. I'm Melissa and I'm Desiree. We're two trauma-informed coaches and real life friends.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

If you're returning to yourself, your dreams, or your sense of belovedness, this podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

We'll pull from our own stories and hard-earned wisdom to support your journey. So take a breath and remember, you belong exactly as you are.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

One of the biggest points of feedback that we get from our listeners is that they want to hear more of our personal stories. And today's episode, we are going to do just that. Our stories have shaped us into the people that we are today. One of the topics that we talk about regularly on this podcast is around abundance, around the ways that we've had to heal our relationship with not only money, but mindsets of scarcity and limiting beliefs around what was available for us, what we were worthy of. And we wanted to pull back the curtains today and give you a snapshot into our money stories, especially. Listen today with the expectation that today's going to be like a story time. Doesn't I really want to share things that have shaped us into the women that we are today, specifically around money, abundance, and why we're passionate about helping people expand their beliefs about what is possible for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah. I love this type of episode, especially because we're allowed to bring context and a story that help us make sense. And I think on the road back, personally, one of the most healing aspects has been getting a different perspective and bringing in a little bit more of that story to understand parts of me in order to heal and nurture her back to the original design to restore that sense of

Childhood Influences on Money Mindset

SPEAKER_01 2:02

coming home to myself. I think when you think about abundance, whether it's money related or how we become the people we are today, a lot of story begins in our childhood and then even generationally. So this is my inside. Just speaking a little bit to the context of my family of origin and the stories around that, this is, you know, quite vulnerable. Sharing it in a setting like this. Um, I think most people, when they grow up, they're just like, this is my childhood. Like, this is how family is. Isn't everyone's mom and dad like this? Doesn't everyone divorce? And so a lot of the things I've had to look at and notice to sort of heal and redeem in my life, a lot of this is come from making sense of these stories, generational poverty, things that are passed down generationally, and how that impacts every generation and what it takes to break out of those norms and the things that have been passed down to you. And so for me, money always felt very scarce. Like it was really hard to cut by. My mother was a teenage mom and she became a mom at 15. And her and my dad worked really hard and they were amazing parents, but it was a struggle. The pressure my mom had to be able to have $5 to buy two or three pairs of shoes from the thrift store for us was intense. We all felt it. And so when it comes to how money feels to you, a lot of these things are a lot about worth. And I think about am I even worth the $2 for the shoes? Am I worth it? There is a lot of worth that's connected to money and how you approach me and relate to money. And even relational things like um, you know, I think of my dad and his family, the substance abuse that was a part of his family story and what that's like for him to now parent me, and then for me to have been impacted by his own journey. These things all stack and connect and interweave. And really, it's rare for a child to kind of bust out of that norm. It's not impossible, it's totally possible. But oftentimes, if I don't have context for a different life, they're not able to pass that to my kids. And, you know, my husband grew up in a completely different culture during communism, his mother did finish high school, but they didn't have the context on how to advise him how to go to school. He was like, I think I want to go to college. He was the first in the whole family to ever do that. But they wouldn't even know how to help him because they've never experienced that. And so when we talk about limitings, it's not good or bad, it's just a fact. It's like part of understanding this story is to not create a victim or a villain from this context, but to help you understand yourself so much more. He ended up being in school for 15 to 20 years. Wow. Um yeah, it's quite remarkable. He's more of the exception to the rule of like being able to break out of that belief of what you can attain or how you should educate yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

You're really touching on something that happens when we get married, which is not only our money story, but then our spouse's money story as well. And so it's interesting to hear just a little bit of your husband's backstory in addition to your own. How did that impact the

Financial Perspectives in Marriage

SPEAKER_00 5:21

early years of your marriage? My goodness, so much.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

It's impacted decades of our marriage, actually. So his morning story, and he came from an extreme poverty situation where they didn't know where they're gonna eat food for prolonged periods of time as well. So unfortunately, it's a norm uh in a lot of the world. That was part of my childhood and my husband's childhood to a certain extent. Living before the poverty line, food stamps, taking our coupons in to get food, that's kind of how we survived. So now you're taking two humans in their context of money and the ability to make money, to hold money, to um steward money. And we came in and it was loaded. I mean, it was loaded. And I would say a lot of my self-worth and his self-worth, they showed up differently. We responded differently to those feelings of worth around money. And it pulled at us. Like it was extremely stretching. When when we moved home from the country, so I lived in Romania for five years. That's where I met and married my husband. So I had immigrated there. Well, then he came and immigrated to America. And so we both had an immigration context, but it was very different. We had we owned four suitcases. That's all we had. And I was pregnant. And it was quite humbling. I had my first son in my childhood bedroom. I lived in my bedroom for about a year after we came home from Romania, but it showed up very differently and how we worked that

Finding Identity Through Work and Parenting

SPEAKER_01 6:47

out.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Let's talk about what that was and how that showed up for each of you. Yeah. And the ways you dealt with it.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

I think for me, that felt normal. I didn't actually think that things were ever gonna change or there was a chance for change. There was a lot of kindness towards us. So people donated a, you know, they would they gave us a dresser and we got a mattress. And I remember I had someone gave me silverware and I had the silverware until four years ago. I very much with myself worth, I felt like I didn't have choice, I didn't have power, I didn't have the worth to believe that I could go for something. And my husband, I think he responded in a completely different way. He was like, I am gonna work as hard as I can to make something happen to prove that I can do this. I don't know how he would articulate it, but I think the pressure that he felt

Getting By on the Bare Minimum

SPEAKER_01 7:38

to provide, he became very ultra focused and he was like, it's do or die. And that was both beautiful and it cost us. Like, and my choices, how I how I handled it, cost us too. Like they both had pros and cons to it. But I think a lot of the our sense of worth was wrapped in the ability to either for me to accept and to allow that this would be enough. Be being a former missionary, a lot of my value or sense of self was like, what can I live without? I mean, deeply. I would I went with the Romanians and I was like, okay, how much money do they make? I was like, I'm gonna try to live in this exact same amount of money. So what can I go without? I'm hungry, okay, I'm gonna skip a meal because that's how it, how it is. And I sort of be that became my go-to. And my husband was obviously already really good at it because he lived in that kind of culture, anyways. And he put his head down and worked hard. So we kind of handled it and approached things really differently. And so when um we got up on our own, and you know, I was raising small kids, and then we would go to school and then he would work several jobs, and then when he was studying, I would go clean houses and we were just hustling. And had you moved past the poverty limit at that point? Or no, okay, not at all. I was still on food stamps, I was still on WIC. So our family lived in that way because we couldn't make enough money with him in full-time school, and then he would work several jobs with me. We he was working all the time, and then I would work, but it just wasn't very much money. I would do what I knew to do, which is very much what my mom was doing as a kid. She was hustling and I was kind of living at that level. Because we're talking about generational. Like I thought that was kind of what I thought was how to you. That was your normal. How do you survive what you're going through, not like how do you change what's going through?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Was there anything specific that felt really catalytic to you? Because it sounds like, for all intents and purposes, you were on track to continue the cycle that had been handed down to you. Obviously, things have changed. Can you pinpoint any stories where you're like this moment, this decision, this aha?

The Journey to Self-Worth and Empowerment

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Yeah, it was it was quite unique for me. That was a great question because oftentimes the catalytic moments were how can I support my husband to do the transformative work? I never really saw myself as powerful to do that. So my husband's like, I'm gonna go be a nurse and then I'm gonna go become a nurse anesthetist.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So my role became- Did you see him as the path to money then? Did you see it like if I can empower him, he can make more money for the family? 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

And it made sense because I had young kids and I was nursing, but that was really my role was a supportive role. How do I make those dreams happen as a pathway out? And it was it was hard because we had lots and lots of years of it based on the information I had.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

You mean empowering, are you talking about empowering your husband to follow this dream?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Never once it occurred to me to put my kids in like daycare and go get a job. Isn't that weird?

SPEAKER_03 10:47

And I don't think it's weird.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Yeah. I don't think you knew me differently. I didn't. Yeah.

Transformative Moments and Personal Growth

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yeah. And I don't even think that I would change it really.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Because I love to spend time with my kids. But the idea is that I didn't understand I had the options, and that's where your ceiling is. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Is that you don't understand the options available. What changed for you? Because a lot of people don't break out of this.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Like you said, you said that from the beginning. The cycle continues for many, many, many people. And something broke. I think it was both your husband's decisions because there was a fire lit in him that he it sounds to me that part of the reason he wanted to go to school is because he was really determined to do something different. So there was his drive, but we're not interviewing him. So I'm curious to know where there's some key moments that stand out.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah. So when he uh went back for nurse anesthesiology, was very intense. I had been homeschooling the kids before that. So when he went back to school, I put my kids in public school. And then I got back into the work field. And at that time, I was like, well, I know nonprofits. Um, and so I went back into looking for ministries. And I think for me, what changed was I had been parenting for about 10 or 12 years, and I didn't really think that I had anything valuable to give. And I was terrified that I wanted to probably provide for the kids and um help support Libyu in his school.

Lessons Learned and Wisdom to Share

SPEAKER_01 12:36

So when I got back into doing that, I felt like I reconnected with myself. I was like, I actually really like doing this. And um, I felt really fulfilled to be able to support my family, and I wasn't making a lot of money. I think it kind of helped me be like, oh, there's more in here. Like, there's more to me. I enjoy like having a sense of me again, which I had think I had definitely lost. And I think that's what released, just I got connected to I was a little bit. I had a lot of experience from living overseas, learning a foreign language, pioneering nonprofits, starting projects and cross-cultural work and just life experience. So that that's what really helped me, I think. Um kind of reconnect to that worth, sense of worth.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah. That it sounds like you're saying that set you on the trajectory of fast-forwarding to where you are today. What would you say about maybe connecting that experience to where you are now, running your own successful business? From the outside looking in, people would say this is a self-made successful woman. And that's why I love the fact that we're pulling back the curtain a little bit to see some of where you're coming from because it's so it's so easy for us to see the Instagram present moment, what we present to the world. And if we're not careful, we slip into the comparison game and go, oh, well, did they ever have anything hard that they had to walk through? We compare our early story sometimes with somebody who is five, ten, fifteen, twenty years into their story. And so I think it's beautiful that you've been able to shed some spotlight on it. Wasn't always roses and buttercups for you. I mean, it was a lot of hard. Yeah. What would you like to add to that? Is there anything like from where you are today where you're going, I'd want this person to know who maybe is in that either single parent role or that difficult financial state? What are some of the nuggets that you have for them? Because you you have a lived experience that is full of hard fought wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah. Just to bring um full disclosure to everyone. When I had that moment of like reconnecting, I was like, oh, maybe, maybe there's more. Maybe there's something that I could do, then maybe there's something that I have after right after that time. I went through a complete nervous breakdown. I guess I would just want to tell you that that happened, and then I I went to a dark night of my soul right after that. And that was a lot to that was a lot to recover from.

unknown 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

But because this is the road back, and we're talking about my journey and the context around it, is I began to

Unhooking Self-Worth from External Validation

SPEAKER_01 15:18

go after and to look at my childhood trauma. I began to look at origin stories. I had to decide if I was lovable. I had to decide if I was worthy of receiving God's love. That was a huge, huge barrier that I had had. I understood everyone else was, but personally, so in doing this work and in doing this healing, so many things changed. I think one of the most radical things I would just leave with people is like when I can't, when it comes to abundance, when it comes to my business and just me actually supporting myself, is I had to get on my own team.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Like I had to sort of feel in that main character energy was like your worth having your own life, your own sense of self, your own autonomy to have this own purpose. And in that, I renewed so many beliefs about abundance. And there's more where that came from. And why not me? And so many things that make me who I am and help me in the work that I'm doing. This has given me a lot of traction, a lot of stability in healing my sense of worth and my sense of self that helps me show up in the way I am today.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Practically, were there any specifics that for somebody hearing going, oh yeah, gosh, I do need to get on my own team. Were there any practicals that you'd say, oh yeah, this step, that step, I I implemented some fundamentals into my life, my routine, my habits, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

A couple things I would just say. I think for mothers, I I had to start to see myself as an equal member of the family.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

That was a real stretch. I'm still working on that. Because I was like, even if I just take up my 20%, there's five of us, so the 20% of the pie. And I'm not always there. You know, sometimes some people take a little more pie than other people, but I'm just like, okay, from this whole context of the family, I need to take up that right amount of the family time, of my space.

The Power of Not Disqualifying Yourself

SPEAKER_01 17:17

I'd say the other one that was a really powerful self-worth building experience. Like one of my number one rules is I'm not gonna disqualify myself. Speak to that a little bit. What is that? So in my business, in my life, in my dreaming, or if I have an idea, I don't disqualify myself. And that has supported the sense of worth so deeply. Because I'm like, I'm not gonna disqualify you. Let's let this play out. I don't know how this is gonna go, but I'm not gonna tell you no. I'm not gonna convince you that you're not good enough, that you don't have what it takes. That's a commitment that I've made to myself.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

I think it's one of those things that if if the listener took one nugget from the episode today, which is I'm going to learn to be on my own team and not disqualify myself, tell myself all the reasons why I can't do it or why it won't work out for me. That in itself is a transformational key right there. Yeah. Because for so many of us, we have so much negative self-talk going on that our dreams don't even have a chance to verbalize themselves. The desires don't even get a chance to poke their head above the soil because we're stomping it down every time. For so many people, we don't even let our desires see the light of day before we've disqualified ourselves into the 50 reasons why it won't work.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Exactly. And if you're thinking like this is so much about abundance, like the context is how we got here to this more abundant thinking. It's like, if I don't even allow myself the process, how can I even prove that abundance is available to me? That's how I felt. I was just so stuck in that container of of limitations because I was first and foremost limiting myself. And so if we can just get out of those boxes and be like, okay, I'm not gonna disqualify myself, the listener might be so amazed to see what they can achieve, what's possible if you don't stop yourself, how much abundance, how many opportunities, how many options you have.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

And what's beautiful is that it that's within my control. Yes. You can't always control what opportunities are gonna come to you. You can't control who's gonna see you, some of those externals that we can trick ourselves into thinking that that's the key. Just get me in front of the right person, or if I can just make this video go viral and then I

Creating Opportunities Through Self-Empowerment

SPEAKER_00 19:39

the right person sees it, or I just need to get discovered. I love how much I've even seen you getting on your own team and kind of getting out of your own way. I've seen fruit. You're creating your own opportunities by choosing to be on your team. And no external people were needed. It's not that they didn't come along to help you, but you focused on what I can control rather than getting hung up on disqualifying yourself and from the powerless womans you were 15, 20 years ago. Yes, where you didn't believe anything could happen unless God swooped in from the sky and gave it to you. Is that a fair assessment?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I was asking him to do that all the time. Yeah. But I never had that empowerment where it's like I can actually go and do this. I can support myself and the things that I'm inclined to do to make this happen. That's the huge switch.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

That's the transformation right there. A woman who was waiting for the miracle from heaven, not that God doesn't move through those ways, but from the powerless person who is like, I can't do anything unless God does it for me, to now going, huh? Well, if nobody else is on my team, I can be on my team. And what has opened up for you as a result for actually getting radically on your own team? And then I've watched without saying, God helps those who help themselves, or what's the other one? Like bow your head and move your feet. That's another one I've heard of, like pray, do what you can, but then move towards it. And I feel like you embody that really well. It's not that you don't pull God or others into it, but you're no longer spending your life in a perpetual state of I can't move until God does something. It's like, oh, actually, I can be proactive, step out, I'll be on my team. And amazing doors and opportunities have opened for you as a result. It's so exciting to watch. Thank you, sweetie.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Thank you so,

Melissa's Defining Moments in Financial Struggles

SPEAKER_02 21:36

so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Melissa, would you like to share with us some of the defining moments for you around your money story or or how you've become the woman rooted in abundance that you are now?

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Uh brief overview of my childhood. I actually grew up middle class. So I always Appreciate hearing other people's stories and experiences. But just because I grew up in, I would have said, a pretty stable financial home didn't mean that I didn't pick up my own limiting beliefs. I share that because I think no matter where you grow up, without money, with some money, with a lot of money, still have limiting beliefs, which I love that we have a little bit of we have overlap and we have differences. And we both had money beliefs that we have had to work through and challenge. I do think that growing up in faith-based environments, many churches, not all, but many have a lot of poverty mindsets woven into it. And you touched on it even sharing on your missions experience of like, if I can live on less than I should, what's the minimal I can get by on? I definitely had picked up some of those beliefs from the ministry work. I did, especially, I think when we're in places where we rely on support from other people, it's like, yes, I don't want to handle my money in any way that would make it look like I am somehow taking advantage or not being a good steward. So I think, you know, to pivot a little bit, I mean, that's just a little bit of backstory. Definitely had some weird beliefs, but I think the defining story that I want to share is actually from early in my marriage and links to my husband as well. See, here's another example. He grew up in a wealthy family. Wow. He brought his own beliefs in, but it's interesting just to show that, again, money in the bank doesn't equal abundance mindset. Yes. And so early in our marriage, we had both read some books on investing. We wanted to begin growing investments for the future. And one of the things my husband especially was passionate about was getting into some property investments. And on paper, it looked like, oh, we do this, we do that. But in reality, we bit off more than we could chew. And it just so happened that we started investing in the property market. And then within months or years after that, uh 2008 happened, which was a massive crash in the market. Yes. And we're only two or three years into our marriage, and we suddenly found ourselves having to sell some of these properties that we had invested in at a loss. And to add to that, I had stepped out of my well-paying job because I was on maternity leave. I'm not bringing any money in. We're having to sell some of these properties we'd invested in that the goal had been to set us up for financial freedom. And all of a sudden, it's like the dominoes start falling, and it was just one after another, after another, after another. And financially, we are in the most intense financial pressure we've ever been in. We had creditors knocking on the door, threatening us with bankruptcy. We were finding that because we were selling properties at a loss, we no longer owned the property, but we still owed money to the bank. We were living in New Zealand at the time, and their tax structure is different to here in the States. So we were finding that there were certain taxes we were owing after selling these properties. And I will tell people it was like the perfect storm season for us. It was just pressure on all levels. Part of the reason I say it was such a defining moment was for me being a young mom, back-to-back pregnancies, facing financial challenges. And then you'll have the core challenge, but then you have the peripheral challenges that are coming up. Yes. Being a mom, my mental health was taking a hit. My marriage was under pressure. What I noticed is for me, I had a big wake-up call because it was one of the first times in my life that things had gotten so challenging that I really had to take a step back and go, the coping mechanisms that I had had in place were no longer working. Coming face to face with some of the challenges I was experiencing is I realized at some point, I thought, I'm, I think I'm gonna have a nervous breakdown if I don't take a step back and start investing in my mental health. And I say coping mechanisms, but some of these spiritual beliefs that I had had that I had thought would protect me from hardship, I had kind of thought, oh, I'm a good Christian girl. I should be protected from all these hard things going wrong. And so I would pray these prayers of like, God, um, if we could just sell this one property for a hundred thousand dollars profit, you know, can we just have that, please? You know, you're asking about like God, could you do this? God, could you do that? I'm like, God, if we could just sell this and make a hundred thousand dollars and that would pay off this debt, this debt, this debt. And then, you know, it didn't happen. And so all of a sudden, these hell Marys I'm throwing out, like, well, God's supposed to deliver me and this is supposed to happen. Right. Why isn't it working? Yeah. It forced me to really take a personal look inward and go, huh, some of these things that I've built my life on, some of these foundations. If you say that the kingdom can't be shaken, that's what the Bible says, the kingdom of God can't be shaken. Well, things in my life were shaking left, right, and center. And I was like, oh, all these beliefs and doctrines that

Investing in Personal Growth and Inner Healing

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I had embraced weren't holding up under the pressure. And they were crumbling. I was like, wait, this wasn't supposed to happen like this. God was supposed to rescue me like this, and it was supposed to happen like that. And all these assumptions about what I thought faith looked like, like hope looked like, what good theology looked like, they just weren't holding up under the pressure. So important, so relatable. I think we have those moments where we are invited to confront what has worked for a season. But when we're really honest about it, how much was fear and the performance? You know, even touched on worthiness. So much of my life was performance driven at that time. Right. If I can just do the if I can just do the good Christian girl thing, then that will qualify me for protection or that will qualify me to not have to walk through this. But so much of what was my identity was wrapped up in can I, can I jump through the right hoop and check the right box and pray the right prayer? And when that ceased to work anymore, I was forced to really get honest about, oh yeah, this isn't working. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

And then what changed? Like after you asked that question, and you're just seeing, wait, something's gotta give, you know, what changed?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, I remember my second son was probably, I mean, my boys were born 10 and a half months apart. So my second son, I remember being under one. He was probably out about nine months old, and my sec my first son was about 19 months old. And I remember sitting on my couch one day in this house that we had bought to renovate and flip. And of course, the project was supposed to take a few months, and we'd already been there like two years. It was one of those like never-ending fix and flip projects. And we're living there. I I remember sitting on my couch one day and thinking, I've got to start investing in myself. I have to get myself back on the agenda. And you touched on this, Des was saying if you're 20% of the family, I was spending so much time trying to take care of everything else. I realized that my heart was something that needed to be invested in. It was a way that I could start to rewire my beliefs. I understood that my beliefs were on a heart level.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

And so if I could start investing in my heart, then there was going to be change in my outer world. And honestly, I didn't have money for therapy at that time. So there was a lot of listening to teachings and doing a lot of soul searching. And I I made a decision. I remember September 2009, I made a decision and I wrote a contract with myself. And I said, okay, I, Melissa, Run Acres, for the next 365 days, I'm going to learn how to invest and sew into my own inner world. And I still credit that. I mean, that season, as wildly hard as it was, that single decision that I made when kind of my back was against the wall and I was like, it's sink or swim time because I've got to show up for these kids. And I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills and I don't know how we're going to pay off these debts in that moment of realizing, but I do have control over how I invest in myself with the resources I have. And it might be very, very little. Yes. I can't pay for a

Making Powerful Decisions

SPEAKER_00 30:31

therapist, but I can take what I have in my hand. And I think something that both you and I are highlighting is there comes this moment where we have to snap out of powerless thinking. And we have to go, even if it looks like, for all intents and purposes, we didn't have enough to get by. Yeah. My decision to invest in myself was a very pivotal moment for me because I'm like, I will take what I do have. I had spent all this time wanting, like, let this Hail Mary happen over here, or let that house sell for this and let this happen here. But it was all these things that I couldn't control. And then I was getting disappointed when my fantasy wasn't playing out. But when I turned my attention to what I could control, that was the game changer. Yes. And I think you're highlighting the same thing. And to flow on from that, my husband and I actually made some powerful decisions together, which is part of the reason that I'm really passionate about helping people with their money journey because it's something that, I mean, we were well over a million dollars in debt. Wow. And then as we sold properties off, we managed to start paying some of those off, but we would still have residual debt left over. But we made a decision together that we would not go into any more debt because we had credit cards. It's like, okay, well, we could keep maxing, you know, we could try to max out the credit cards just to carry ourselves through. We made a decision, and this isn't financial advice. I'm not telling anybody to do this, but we made a decision, one, that we were not going to go into any more debt. We said, okay, we are nixing, putting any more charges on the credit card. Yes. We need to actually just draw a line in the sand and go, if we take this away as an option, then we are going to be forced to find a way forward. And in conjunction with that, I remember the same house we were in. I remember standing in my kitchen one day and I remember praying to God. I was like, I'm either going to trust the banks to get me out of this, or I'm going to trust God to get me out of this. And I made this decision in my heart and I said, okay, God, you're Jehovah Jira. You're either my provider or you're not. But I'm going to throw myself onto the fact that I'm going to believe that you are a God who delivers, you are God who provides. I am going to say no to the bank providing for me. Wow. And it was a scary decision because going to the credit cards, going and using that as a backup was a convenient, like, oh,

Trusting in a Higher Power

SPEAKER_00 32:56

okay, we could just charge this or we could just charge that. We don't know how we're going to pay it. But drawing that line in the sand for us felt like the next right decision. And that's why I say it's not financial advice to anybody else. But we said, okay, this is what we have to do. And I said, okay, God, you're you're either who you say you are or you're not. Right. And I need to burn the bridges, so to speak, and set my heart towards this because otherwise I'm going to have one foot in and one foot out. And if there's this backup plan all the time, I needed to not have a plan B.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Right. Ooh, that's good. Because a plan B, well, having a plan B is sort of like foregoing ownership a little bit. What I'm hearing you say is that you restored your own power and trust in God. Before it was just like trusting God and I'm powerless to do anything. And then you restored that sense of power. No, I can choose powerfully, and I'm taking ownership for what's happening. And there was God. So it's like you're kind of restoring that part where you're powerful. God was always powerful.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

There was some agency there. I had been somebody who let a lot of things happen. And there was something about making the decision. Same. This is why I'm not saying to people who were in financial hardship, make this decision. What we did is we made a decision. Yes. And we did it to the best of what we knew how. And for me, I had had enough history with God where it felt like it was actually the decision. Another decision we made is we made the decision to not go bankrupt. And we had people telling us, just file for bankruptcy, take the hit, you know, you'll get these debts canceled. And both my husband and I had a really strong conviction of we can't control if a creditor decides to take us to court and bankrupt us. Yeah. But we are not going to file for bankruptcy ourselves. We felt the conviction of no, God can get us out of this. And so we're going to walk as far as we can. And if the end result is bankruptcy, because if somebody owes me money, I can choose to take them to court and be like, I want to bankrupt them. But as far as we were concerned, we're like, that is not the path we are going to choose. Now, for some people, that was the right decision. And for some people telling us, they're like, just file for bankruptcy, save yourself the drama, take the hit for a few years, rebuild. And we're like, no, for me, I was like, I need to see whether or not I can walk this out with God. And if I fail, it's not because I took that as the option. I put all my chips on the table and said, God, you're either going to get us out or we're going to die trying. And there was something radical about that. I think when I hear about people who have significant breakthroughs, it's often because they took all other options off the table. It's true. Yeah, I can see that. We had months where we did not know. We would do a budget every month. We'd sit down at the beginning of the month. We'd be like, okay, living on the most shoestring budget possible, we're still hundreds of dollars down. Like we cannot see how we are going to get to the end of the month with the amount of

Stewardship and Resourcefulness

SPEAKER_00 35:58

deficits. We made it through every month. And we would get to the end of the month and we'd be like, how did that happen? And we were resourceful. We stewarded the best we knew how with what we had in our hands. Wow. Yeah. And that is something that I share with working with people in different states of financial status is how do you steward what you have in your hand? I'm not responsible for what you have. I'm not responsible for what I don't have. Yeah. But how do I learn to steward what I have? And one of the other things that I think it really pushed me towards was learning to not future trip all the time because it was so easy to spiral into fear about, oh, this could go wrong and that could go wrong. And you can spend so much of your precious life, energy, emotional bandwidth freaking out about eventualities that you actually can't control. This is so relatable to so many of us. Preaching role, yeah. I didn't do this perfectly, but learning to come back to a place where I was like, I can only do what I have can do today. And so we would reach out to our creditors and we owed people for, you know, work that they'd done on houses. We would like, okay, to the best of our ability, we're going to pay these people back. And we might owe them thousands of dollars. And we're like, we don't have the $7,000 we owe you for this thing, but what we can do is we can pay you back $50 a week.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

We will do what we can. And it was humbling. It was so humbling to be like, we don't have the means to do this. I was somebody who had always paid my bills. I never had credit card debt. I paid my bills off every month. So to find myself suddenly in a situation where we're like, my husband and I could have gotten five jobs each and we still couldn't have paid back the debts. You know, there was a point where you're like, we're so far in the hole and we're making a tiny bit, and what we need is a mountain. There's something about being in a place where you're like, it wouldn't matter how hard I hustled, I couldn't fix this.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

That also invites you to fall on the mercy of God in a way where you're like, well, I can't fix this. I can't hustle enough to fix this. I can't hustle enough to work this out. There's a beauty in just being able to go, well, we made a big mess. And totally Jesus, you're gonna have to help us get out. We will do what we can. We're not gonna sit here and bury our heads in the sand. But you are going to have to fill in what we couldn't do on our own. Yeah. And I mean, it is wild the ways we didn't know how often how we would pay our bills each month, and we would get to the end of each month and we hadn't starved, and somehow the bills had been paid. What I noticed happened after a while is it started happening so consistently that there was a level of faith that was built in me that even when I would see a month where I was like, I don't know how to pay that,

Financial Miracles

SPEAKER_00 38:38

I would just remember, I don't know how we're gonna pay that, but that's gonna get paid. And the next day our tax return came in way earlier than we expected it to be. And I just remember having this confidence that was built in me as we're walking this out hand in hand with Jesus, doing the best we can, there began to be this history that was built of just seeing provision come again and again and again and again. And we ended up having a call from the tax office one day, and we owed them a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of taxes that had come from selling these properties. And the guy of the tax department was speaking with my husband, and he said, you know, I realize that you're not gonna be able to pay this back. I'm just gonna wipe it. And he completely wiped the tax bill. Just boom, gone. He's like, I'm gonna cancel this debt for you. And we were like, whoa. There was no natural way for us to pay that back. And I I throw that out there because I mean, the moments of actual miracles where we were doing what we knew to do, and it wasn't easy every month. God didn't bail us out. I mean, that's something that I want to say. It's like we had we had contributed to this mess. And he didn't just swoop in. I wanted him to swoop in and rescue us, but he's like, hey, you know, baby girl, there's some things we're gonna walk through with this. We touch on this a lot, being the road back podcast. Is it there's a journey here. And I wanted him to rescue me. And he is like, no, there are some valuable lessons that I want to build into your character in your life. Did he make it happen? No, he was not the author of this mess, but he was so faithful to meet us where we were and say, I will help you walk it out. And there were moments like like the tax debt cancellation where it just was absolutely beyond anything that we could have figured out on our own. But a lot of it was like, no, we were paying the creditors off $50 a week. It was just one thing after another. There were things that came together. Yeah. Step by step, I think sometimes when we're in pain, we just want the pain to go away. Right. This is so true. And we're like, just fix it. I don't want to be in pain anymore. Make it stop. Make it stop, God, make it stop. I was like, I want God to rescue me. Yet when I looked back at that season, and as hard as it was, two or three years later, when actually came time for us to move back to America, it was easy for me to take that leap of faith. We moved back to America with three months' worth of living expenses. And you were saying four suitcases. I think we had four suitcases. We brought our cat and we brought my piano keyboard. That is all we moved back to America with. But there was something about having walked through the previous three years of having to see that financial challenge and then building brick by brick by brick, choosing to invest in myself. By that point, going back to America, like I had made investing in my own heart and in my own health a non-negotiable. Non-negotiable. Yep. I had to. I knew that I had to learn to put my oxygen mask on, mask on first. Because mama was gonna be out for the count if I didn't learn how to do that. So and I learned that as bad as it seemed, oh, well, actually, we made it through. You know, the the I mean, yes, it was painful. Yes, we had to recover afterwards, but there's something about walking through things that if you saw it on the other side before you walked through and you'd be like, oh, I couldn't have done that. Something about walking through and making it out the other side and isn't it amazing? Yeah. Well, I had to unpack pain from that. I mean, it was a traumatic season. It wasn't that it didn't leave a mark. Yeah.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

SPEAKER_00 42:23

But I credit some of the decisions of investing in myself, investing in my health. Maybe I would have come to that position anyway. Totally. I love that. But the choice to invest in my own heart and the value that I have for people's hearts and how our inner world creates our outer world. I mean, that was cemented in that season for me.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Well, that's one of the thoughts I was like, I wonder what would you want to leave the listener with? Like if you could meet them along their path or, you know, wherever they may, you they may find themselves. What is something that you would say to them?

SPEAKER_00 42:58

I actually want to share this as a little cherry on top of the story because I've shared a lot of the hard stuff, and then I'll link it into what I would share with people. When we came back to America from New Zealand, we had made the decision we weren't getting into debt. We're like, we're never touching debt again. Debt's bad. And one of the promises God had given me when we were going back to America, because we felt like really like God was inviting us to go back, it felt like a spiritual decision. It felt like a very intentional choice to invest in our spiritual future, which required us to leave everything behind. We left our friends, we left our family. And God had said to me before we left, if you leave houses and lands and family for my sake and for the gospel, you will reap a hundredfold in this life. Like he had said, you're going to reap this. Within four and a half years, somebody had given us a down payment for a house, which was wild. We'd gone over three months' worth of living expenses, and we did it hard for the first couple of years that we were back in America. But I remember God said, I want you to put your roots down in the city that we were in. And I was like, God, I'm never going into debt again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, Melissa, I appreciate that you've learned this lesson. You know, you got burned by this. You learned this lesson. And it's a beautiful principle to live by. But I don't want you to just live by your principles. I want you to follow my voice. I want you to follow me. And if I tell you that I want you to put your roots down here, I want you to trust that I've got something in this for you. And so what was interesting is I had learned the hard lessons. I had made some powerful decisions. But then also there was still the invitation to continue walking with Jesus through it all. And when he said, I want you to put your roots down here, I had to work through. I was like, okay, well, I didn't want to go into debt, but I hear you saying this. And literally within months, we found the house and somebody gave us the down payment. And we were suddenly in a house that we still own today. Now it's now it's actually a legitimate rental property that we make money off of when we had tried to do these things in the past. We'd been premature, we'd gotten bitten by it, it had blown up in our face. Then it there was been this full circle moment where this house was brought to us, but you know, there's a verse in the Bible that says the blessing of the Lord makes one rich and he adds no sorrow to it. And then when we move to where we are now, which is Texas, we could take the equity from that house and put the down payment on the house that we live in now. The redemption in the story, you say, what do I want to leave with people? I would say, no matter where you are financially right now, there is absolutely a path out. If you are in a difficult financial season, there is a path forward. I have so much conviction in that. It's it's one of the reasons that I care so much about helping share some of the lessons I've learned because we've had to walk this through. This has been forged in the fires

Our Holistic Relationship with Money

SPEAKER_00 45:52

of life. The other thing I would say is our our relationship with money is never just about the math. Oh, I love that. It's never just about the math. We have an emotional and a spiritual component to our relationship with money. And wherever you are, be it you are in a season of abundance or you're in a season somewhere in the middle, or you're really struggling, recognizing that we all bring a money story into the process. Now, for you and I, our faith is an integral part of our relationship with money. I'm always going to be leaning into God, how do I co-labor with you? How do I co-create my future with you? That feels really important to highlight because I do believe that in learning self-agency and learning to pick up some of the autonomy in my life that I had for so long outsourced and lived so powerlessly. That feels exciting to me now to feel like, oh, I can co-create my future with God. I actually am empowered to make creative choices. It doesn't mean I'm always going to get it right. But again, how do I steward what I have now? You're like, there no matter where you're at, you can get through this. Yeah, I feel like we've thrown a lot out with this. There's kind of a smorgasbord here to choose from.

The Power of Hope

SPEAKER_00 47:08

I had underestimated the power of hope. I think I'd always thought about faith and love, needing faith, and love is the greatest of all the three, so we need to love. But I if I could impart something to people, it would be the hope. Because there were times when I didn't have faith. I didn't, I didn't know if we were gonna get through. Yeah. I really didn't. It wasn't like I was like, oh, God's got this. I that would have been a lie. I didn't know if he did. I didn't know if we were gonna drown. I was like, I'm throwing my my lot in with you, Jesus, but I don't know if we're gonna make this through. So relatable. So I would have been lying to say I was in faith, but there was something about the anchor of hope that I I feel like it was something that I didn't even recognize was being cultivated in my life. And now I feel pretty passionate about the power of hope. Yes. Because hope is what carried me through on those days where I was like, I don't know if we're gonna sink or swim. We might be done for. But something about the hope that gets built, that's what I want the listener to recognize is your hope is so powerful. Whatever you have to do, if you are in a hard season, it doesn't even have to be money. Do what you can to fuel your hope. Faith to me is the level of conviction of this is gonna work out and I know it's gonna work out. But if you're not in that place where you know if it's gonna work out, then hope is the thing that you want to cultivate. It's the I don't know how, but it's gonna get better somehow. I don't know how, but there is going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Surround yourself with positive people. Because I didn't recognize at the time the role that hope was playing in my life. I would go so far to say that I feel like hope is one of the greatest things that I carry for people now. I carry faith too, because I've seen it work enough, but hope, nothing feels impossible to me. I am so convinced that no matter what you're facing, you can get through it. I feel that from you. Yeah, absolutely. That is that is the thing that I'm like like learn to cultivate hope. Learn to surround yourself with things that inspire a sense of possibility. That's so good. You definitely carry that. Thanks, girl. Des what would you add? Is there anything you want to leave the listener?

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Well, as you were talking about cultivating hope, this feels like a little piggyback to what you're saying, but I think this is pretty simple, pretty like fundamental, I'd say. But I think that if you're struggling to have belief that you're worthy of something, of a change or support or transformation, this could be about money or it could not be about money, but find somebody that really loves you. Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your mother or father, somebody that has inherited like they believe inherently that you're worthwhile and you're deserving and you're enough. And maybe begin to believe the way they believe about you. Really applying this created a lot of hope for my future. You know, if I could borrow from my friendships or from my mom or from my husband, if he believed I was fundamentally worthy of a good life or just fulfillment or taking up 20% of my family of my family's time. Sometimes I would borrow belief from others. So if that feels like uh the next right step for you, try it out. Let me know how it's going. We fundamentally believe that every person is worthy of love and support and connection, transformation that they for.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

So there you have it. Some snapshots from our our money abundance identity journey. Really, a lot of it's identity too.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

Yeah. So it goes hand in hand. I love I love money stuff, it's not just math. It's not a math story. Yeah. Abundance is not a math story. Well, thank you for being with us, friends, and we'll see you next week. Bye guys. Bye.