First of the month

It’s programming. All my life, I have lived from hand to mouth. I remember as a child, the end of the month was brutal. Food stamps came on the first of every month, so the week leading to the first was famine. We ate whatever was left or given to us by the neighborhood food pantry. This was programmed in me from an early age.

The first of the month was like a holiday in the hood. My mom would curl her hair and get dressed in her only pair of gray dress pants and white eyelet sweater. She and my dad would walk up to the currency exchange together to get their checks and food stamps and go shopping.

The first was the one day I was excited to come home from school. It was the one day we had a full refrigerator—complete with a 2-liter RC, Sunny Delight, and a bucket of ice cream. Sometimes, we would have cookies, ramen noodles, and chips. Sadly, this feast only lasted a couple of weeks, and then we were back to food pantry handouts.

Until this very moment, I didn’t know I carried all of this into my adult life. My rent is due on the 1st of the month. The whole month would be fine, then the week before the first, I would just run out of money. Some unforeseen vet bill, something with my car, or my appointment book would fall apart. THINK ABOUT THAT! I would SUDDENLY have more month than money when the first came.

It suddenly clicked TODAY when I heard a woman say that’s how her childhood was. EVERY MONTH, without fail, my internal programming would make me comfortable with severe lack on the first. THAT is programming.

Do you know that much of what you’re experiencing is programming? We’ve all been programmed as children. This is why the Bible says we have to renew our minds to the Word of God. It says, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The Bible also says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Do you see yourself struggling to pay bills? Late with the rent? Never happily married? Always using credit cards? WHATEVER it is, notice it and then trace it back to where it came from. There is a picture in you that you may not have put there.

I am literally shaking typing this. I feel SICK to my stomach that I have carried this “first of the month” mentality for DECADES! I’ve been in bondage! I’ve been in lack, need, and want! Because I never changed the picture or script inside of me.

I’m not mad at my parents—they did the best they could with the picture they had. I’m not mad at anyone. I’m just disgusted that I didn’t know.

Now that I do know, I declare this with certainty: I WILL NEVER BE BROKE ANOTHER DAY IN MY LIFE!