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| View of downtown from on top of Mount Bridgeport (photo by Steve Vance) |
It was such a pretty day in Chicago. The July heat had
broken, and October-like cool had moved in, much to my pleasure. My fiancée and
walked up to the top of a hill in Palmisano Park in the South Side Bridgeport
neighborhood (a place I’ve also heard people call Stearns Quarry Park for the
quarry that formerly occupied the site or Mount Bridgeport for the rare change
in elevation). Cotton-ball cumulus clouds drifted above us toward Lake
Michigan. Children flew kites around us. It doesn’t get prettier than that in
Chicago.
And then Kacie asked me what I was thinking about. For some
reason, I mentioned how I was worried about money. Suddenly frowny-face clouds
rushed in, covering the happy-face sun, and all the kites immediately dropped
to the ground with no wind and only suffocating humidity to keep them afloat. A
child started softly crying, “Why is it ALWAYS personal finances? Why?” It
wasn’t very pretty now.
After some uncomfortable conversation, Kacie started to get
visibly upset. She expressed that she didn’t know why I didn’t trust her to
help us to achieve our dreams together—careers in ministry and fashion design
(respectively) with a strong emphasis on advocacy for the poor and
marginalized, traveling around the world to experience different cultures,
eventually have a couple of kids (eventually).
I felt distance between us.
I took a deep breath for a bit of self-reflection, and I
stepped in to the confession booth with my fiancée on the other side of the
screen. See, I wasn’t so concerned about how our dreams were too idealistic or
grand. I was concerned about how I, and I alone, would resource those dreams.
After all, as the husband of an American family unit, it will be my
responsibility to make sure that everyone’s dreams come true. Unfortunately, I
have a couple more years of grad school and internships before I could come
anywhere close to fulfilling that role. And then there’s that student debt I
accumulated so that I could break into a generally low-paying profession. The
central Pennsylvania realist in me recoils at these thoughts, and suddenly all
I want to see on the menu is ketchup sandwiches (preferably complimentary
ketchup snatched from the nearest McDonald’s franchise). I would do anything to
avoid becoming dependent on other people’s charity.
One can see this reaction to personal finances as either
incredibly ironic or deeply hypocritical. After all, when I preach, I preach
about a God who provides for her children with abundance, and then I go on to
denounce austerity policies in various legislatures. And full disclosure, I
survive off of the generous support of my home church in Pennsylvania, family
all over the country, and my stipend for one of my internships (yes, I said one of them). My personal austere
attitudes simply matched neither my theology nor my lived experience.
These attitudes run deep in the American psyche. Patriarchy.
Rugged individualism. Meritocracy through sheer grit and determination. And
they run deep in my psyche, too.
The problem is that these attitudes are counter to my
Christian faith and the kind of relationships I want to have with
people—especially with my fiancée. I want to base my relationships on mutual
love and respect. We trust that we will do what we say will, but we also share
responsibilities, whether financial, household, or social. Together we worship
God who gives abundant provisions to her children, and then we earnestly look
where God is touching our world.
The scary part is that we can’t depend on just ourselves any
more. While we are individual agents of creation in God’s world, we are meant
to work together for the reign of God. Period. We give up control of our lives
to God, and God works through ordinary events and ordinary folks around us to
make sure we’re all okay. Because of our fallen nature, that system of communal
care breaks down a lot. However, God still calls us to trust God and each
other, even through the cloudy and stormy days.
The confession on top of Mount Bridgeport helped the two of
us quite a bit. We were able to enjoy the beautiful weather and the prairie
flowers and the flying kites all over
again. After all, isn’t that the surest sign that God still provides
abundantly?
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