Well we did yesterday, literally. Every paycheck, my husband takes cash out. We use this for our grocery, gas & tithe money. So it is money we depend on, a lot. My husband brought home the cash in an envelope from the bank last night & handed it to me. I was organizing coupons & laid it down on top of the pile I was working on. Well, my husband decided to make dinner, so I got up to go entertain the girls & Lil’ Man until it was time to eat. My hubby cleared off the table for dinner and I know you can see where this is going…

So tonight before we left for our life group, I was looking for the money envelope so I could get some cash out. I wanted to stop by Walgreen’s on our way home & pick up some Huggies diapers (since they’re having a crazy good sale on them this week). I couldn’t find the envelope anywhere in the kitchen, not even in the pile of coupons my husband had laid aside the night before. He said he’d help me look after we got back from our life group.

So once we were home & had all the kiddies in bed, we got to looking. I went through all the different areas in the kitchen that I had already been through three times. I brought the recycling bin in and started to look through it. My husband moved items from the trash can to a new trash bag one at a time, looking for the envelope. At this point, I’m getting a little frantic (okay, I was super frantic when I couldn’t find it earlier, but had calmed down on the way to our life group, knowing that there wasn’t anything I could do until we were back home). So, I’m starting to get a little worked up again (didn’t help that I opened the hospital bill while looking for the missing money).

I’m still going through the recycling bin. Hubby has finished going through the trash in the kitchen and has started looking through the trash he took out to the garage last night. A couple minutes go by & he walks over to the dining room table and lays down a crumpled envelope in front of me. As relief washed over me, I asked “Where was it?” and looked up at my husband. One glance at his face confirmed my suspicion. He has his head hanged down and looked like a guilty little boy, “In the trash.” I resisted every temptation to say “I knew it!” After a few minutes passed, I had cooled down & thanked him for finding it.

Can you imagine? Surely we would have realized it was missing before setting the trash out next Monday… but what if we hadn’t? With our tight budget, that would be a lot of money to “lose”. It really put things in perspective for me and made me realize that sometimes I spend too “frivolously”, and that is just like throwing our money in the trash. God definitely taught me a multi-faceted lesson tonight.