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This week the Mathews family took my parents, Max and Marilyn Goins, on a week of vacation to Southern California. The trip was partly business, partly pleasure, and hopefully lesson-time for the Mathews Brothers.

We live an average life for America. The American dream of having wealth and perfection is miles down the road. (It's actually not even on our map.) We have two cars, a 1990 Nissan and a 1998 GMC Suburban. We have a 1600 square-foot-house with a spa that was here when we purchased the house. We spend money for our boys to play football in the fall, and we eat at the drive-through once a week. We buy the boys' clothes on the sale rack at Old Navy and sometimes at garage sales. I absolutely love hand-me-downs. The boys usually own one good pair of shoes to wear to school, and a really tacky pair to play in the mud on my sister's 20 acres. And when necessary, we buy cheaper-end dress shoes for that sporadic special occasion. The boys have an X-box, yet our furniture strikes me as more than just a little worn.

We have tried not to spoil our kids, but we must be doing something wrong because they still complain of being deprived and poor at times. (Maybe you look at what we have and agree with my boys!) While in Southern California, we wanted to take a day trip into Mexico so the boys would know how fortunate they really are.

So, on Tuesday this week, armed with passports and birth certificates, we drove about 95 kilometers into Mexico to a town called Ensenada to see some houses that my husband had helped build. As a former youth minister, Scott has made several trips to Ensenada to replace shelters made from scraps of wood and cardboard with simple 16 x 24 foot houses with three rooms, four windows, and no running water.

I thought seeing these houses would prove a point to the boys: in terms of material possessions, we are rich beyond belief. We arrived too late at the little settlement to do much more than drive by and gawk, so I was afraid it didn't have the effect on the boys that I was looking for.

When we got home, I quizzed my oldest son. "What did you learn in Mexico?"
"We're only poor in America?"
I laughed. "What do you need to be happy," I asked.
"Contentment," he said. That's a little better, I thought.
"What do you need to be content?" I asked.
"God" he said.
Maybe we did make a little progress.

Maybe we are moving toward Paul's philosophy: "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it." (1 Timothy 6:6-7)

It's a profound lesson that I'm glad to learn, and I plan on teaching my kids. I don't want the pursuit of the America dream, with its ever increasing drive for more, to become the American nightmare. Instead of dreaming for more, I would rather dream of being content with less.

"'Winging It" from Stan Smith

Washed by the Water of the Word