enough is enough?

if you've read my blog for any amount of time, you know i struggle with wanting more and wanting to need less. as we're getting started on building the new house (we're talking to our mortgage broker today to get the wheels in motion. it's really happening. we're building a new house.), it's getting more acute.

i love the new house. it is a fantastic floor plan for our family and has lots of features we wish we had in our current house. this is a house we can live in until the kids go to college (and beyond, really). but we don't NEED the house. our current house is perfectly fine. sure, it's not our dream house, but what right do we have to make all our dreams come true when so many other people in our country (and the world!) have so little?

is it selfish to buy something you don't need just because you can? is there a difference between buying a shirt you don't need and say, a car? a house? a luxury vacation? buying this house won't stop us from giving to charities and donating our time and efforts to causes we believe in, so is it ok? (i'm asking that rhetorically. i know i'm the only one who can figure out the answer.) if we didn't buy this house, we could give more. but is that what we need to do?

i'm a fairly black and white person: things are right or wrong. good or bad. easy or hard. it's hard for me to live in the grey areas in between; i struggle with it. and not just when it comes to money issues. i was very religous in college and i struggled with my faith - was i enough of a believer? was i doing the things i should do? was i going to church enough? was i donating enough money and time?

it's always a question of enough. i don't know if i'll ever find the balance. have you? how? (ok, that totally sounds like something mike meyers would say on SNL: "discuss amongst yourselves")