At what point does a person’s dim financial situation reflect his or her own choices and shortcomings as opposed to a societal indication of trouble? Or at what point is it no longer the fault of the individual if they are being beaten by the system?
We're having a rough time right now, financially speaking. I have a great part-time job with pretty good pay, but I only get paid once a month and not always in a timely way. Even so, it's only part time, so there's limited income potential. Adam's self-employed, but there haven't been enough medium to large sized jobs, and the little ones don't pay very well. So he's looking for employment.
I guess we'll join the ranks of families who attemped to be self-employed, and then our small business will go out of business after just a few years. This in itself isn't such a big deal, really. We both knew it wasn't probably going to be a long-term situation. It's just frustrating that Adam's working his way through school to get his degree, but now due to our economic situation we're being forced into looking for a job anyway - about 2 years before his degree will guide him to employment.
So I've been thinking a lot about jobs and the economy.
Whenever I read about universal health care I am highly interested, because we're in that pot of people who need it. We make little enough to qualify for Medicaid and most sliding scale situations, but we don't have the right sort of documentation to prove our meager income, so we can't get it. We can show our tax information from last year, but that's not really accurate to this year at all. So we get stuck.
And I'm not trying to get out of taking personal responsibility for our tight and stressful situation, but since taking it on myself & trying to fix it comes all TOO naturally for me, I thought I'd try a different approach.
What if I let go a little?
What if it's not completely something that we have control over? What if we are simply an unfortunate product of our small town economy? What if we are a symptom of a national illness - a widening gap between the rich and all the rest of us? I used to be upper middle class, or at least middle class. I'm clearly now very much lower middle class, if there is such a thing as a middle class. And is this something we can change on a person or family level? Or is it more systemic?
Do I just have to learn to get better at the rules of the game, and then play to win like the rich do? Is there another option?
And then I think of another way for me to step back a little and let go. What about trusting the Divine? When we first moved here to Silver City most of our friends practised a very earth-centric spiritual life. The Universe provided for our greatest needs - and it always did. Since that time I have come back to my familiar home within the great, diverse, welcoming family of Christianity. So maybe I can learn somehow to trust God.
Then my question becomes - at what point can I just step back and trust God to provide for us, and at what point is God shaking her head and saying "I've given you the tools to pull yourself out of this - don't give up!"
I'm reminded of this story:
A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says "get in, get in!" The religous man replies, "no, I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle."
Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in God and God will give him a miracle. With the water about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again because "God will grant him a miracle."
With the water chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to climb up. Mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help for the faith of God. The man drowns. He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, "I thought God would grant me a miracle and I have been let down." St. Peter chuckles and responds, "I don't know what you're complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter."
So now I'm wondering - what boat is right in front of me that I'm failing to climb into?
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