It's a bright Monday morning. I feel alert, confident, and ready to fly through new job postings and email a bunch of resumes to prospective employers.

In my enthusiasm, I o.d. on caffeine.

Suddenly it's an overcast Monday afternoon. Hands quivering, heart palpitating, my cover letter sounds like I'm on speed.

A week ago I handed in my last assignment of the winter term. The last time I felt this kind of freedom was in August, which was the last time I had absolutely no school-related work on my plate. But this feeling will be painfully short: Spring term begins tomorrow, and I have SO much to do yet before jumping back into class. I've been wanting to attack spring cleaning around the house, indulge in the pleasure of reading anything unrelated to school, pick the fruits and vegetables I want to plant in our little community plot, evaluate the budget with my husband, sit outdoors in the warm breeze listening to the birds and processing everything that's happened over the last few months. In short, I need a vacation... but school continues, as does work. I don't have the luxury of getting away from it all quite yet.

It's great to be able to wake up each morning with a reasonable assurance that I won't come down with nausea at any point during the day. This was my life from January to March, making me a stranger to my fellow students, to colleagues at work, my church family, and even to the sun itself. It wasn't fun. But now I'm back with somewhat more spunk, even though I still feel as though I'm running out of steam. I've achieved something amazing over the last few weeks - I've kept a pretty regular schedule with Admin tasks at the website I administer, I've emerged from my cave to feel the sun on my face, I've eaten more regularly, had the privilege of planning another publication with colleagues at work, visited with some friends face-to-face again (as opposed to screen-to-face), and enjoyed our pastor's sermons *live* on Sunday morning!

What's really been therapeutic for me this last week was my brother's vacation! I needed a change of scenery so badly that I offered to pick him up in the city where he's studying, and bring him home the same day - an eight hour round trip. My husband came along for the ride last Wednesday. The sun was bright and beautiful that day. We took a short tour of the campus, grabbed a Cantonese red and green curry lunch with BBQ chicken, then loaded up the van, and headed for home. My brother's goal during this vacation was to veg, pure and simple, and I let myself fall into this new, relaxed pace in spite of my ongoing work schedule. This weekend was a highlight for us, as our good friend Pete spent the night from Saturday to Sunday. Our cousins joined us Saturday night for a BBQ on our deck, which was the first time our BBQ had been used in at least two years! On Saturday evening we also visited with some church friends and their bright, loving little puppy, and again Sunday afternoon at a local park where the sun seemed to have beckoned half the city to bring their dogs, kids, and even cats for an afternoon stroll. My bro will be home for another couple days, and on Tuesday afternoon we drive him back to university. My husband and I will help my brother move into his summer residence, we'll spend the night, and explore the city a little more before heading back to our usual schedule back home. I don't mind studying and working through summer... my only disappointment will be my family's separation during this time, as my brother will be four stinkin' hours away. *sigh* =(

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others." — Saint Augustine

There's no doubt each of us defines "need" differently, but Saint Augustine's sentiment can still inspire us to reconsider our 'needs' and 'wants' from day to day. An old conversation about money was recently revived at an online community at which I'm a member, which forced me to further evaluate my take on the matter. The member who originally started the topic wrote:

how & what did your parents teach you about the value of money?

My parents taught me to be responsible, not to put something on credit if we can't already afford it (that's assuming one isn't in a desperate situation with no other option), to treat ourselves once in a while without going overboard, to keep the cheque-book balanced and to pay bills on time, that extravagance is waste (i.e. *our* definition of extravagance, which is still very subjective), to tithe regularly, to be generous in helping others while saving for the future... My Grandpa actually taught me that last point by example too - he owned his own business for many years, and as a result he would often pay people above and beyond their fee for services (i.e. if they did a great job) and did on occasion offer someone a job specifically because he knew that person was in need. :)

However, through my parents' situation of long-term illness and subsequent unemployment over the last three years I've learned a whole *new* batch of lessons about money, possessions, and materialism. It's a new time of growth for me, because it's really the first time I've taken a good, long look at my beliefs on this. My family has recently learned to live without many things that we used to take for granted (e.g. cable tv, vacations and travelling, heat to keep us warm during Canadian winters, renting movies, expensive groceries like cheese and honey, new CDs, going to theatres, eating out at restaurants, and more). Sometimes we weren't able to pay our monthly bills, and during those dark days I had times where I felt as though I was drowning or almost as if I was being squeezed and was running out of oxygen. Very frightening at times. :(

Meanwhile, we heard how wealthier Christians were spending their money and I wondered: If they could just be happy with what they already have, pass up buying that next new whatever, and gift those savings to my parents instead... they have no idea how they could reduce my family's anxiety, restless nights, and tears.

I've been forced to face my own views on spending, and have slowly come to the decision to live with less - not to feel morally superior, but to prevent others from feeling as though they're drowning or running out of air in a situation they cannot escape on their own. Unfortunately these thoughts have taken a long time for me to learn, but I'm glad to have the chance to learn them at all!

Back to the original question, the same member asked us:

how do you view:
money - in general,
opportunities in which much money is earned,
ambition...what's healthy?

Considering everything I've learned over the years, especially through the hand my family has recently been dealt, my answer would have to be:

a) money is a gift and a tool we've been given, which is to be used wisely

b) opportunities to earn money - great! go for it! work hard, earn the big bucks (Schillings, Pounds, Euros, Yen, or whatever the case may be), take what you need, as St. Augustine wrote, and be generous with the rest

c) regarding ambition, if God gives us skills, knowledge, and opportunities to use them - then go for it! Dedicate them to work and to *other* pursuits as well (e.g. volunteering), and keep Love as the primary motivation behind it all.

Was it all just a dream? Or maybe a vision? No, it was real...

...last night around 1:00am I woke up with a sore stomach (what else is new), so I decided to get a glass of juice in the kitchen. I heard a shuffling noise coming from inside the fridge. When I opened the door I saw two furry hamsters rapaciously chomping at our romaine lettuce. I gasped in shock. They squeaked in surprise and scampered onto the floor, down the stairs and into our basement. Should I go after them? I wondered, Or maybe I should wake my husband first-

Just then I felt a defiant tap-tap-tap on my arm. I must be dreaming, I thought. Before me stood an old, melancholy dwarf, and above him hovered a bellicose fairy. You fool! spat the fairy, Now look what you've done!

Huh?!!

Mr. & Mrs. Hamster operate your furnace, and since YOU cut the heat they've been out of work. They have FIFTEEN hungry kids, don't you know!

As it turns out, our attempts to cut costs at home have had an unforeseen effect on Mr. & Mrs. Hamster and their undernourished children, not to mention the melancholy Dwarf who lives in our clothes dryer, and of course the furious Fairy that runs our dishwasher, as I found out when he slapped me with a rubber water tube. All have been out of work for weeks, and have organized a collective strike. Good thing my brother's in labour relations - we'll need him to take over negotiations.

Serious health issues can lead to unemployment, which can lead to having more bills than money to pay for them, which can lead some toward creative money-saving outlets. My family has developed a respectable repertoire of options, many of which we're employing simultaneously. One of them is to keep our home's heat as low as we can possibly stand it - it's been hovering around 15 degrees Celsius for two or three weeks now, and we've already forgotten what it's like to feel warm. In fact, the other day Mom made a comment about the butter, which we keep in our pantry, and seems to remain as solid as the butter we keep in our fridge. We're confident that with sheer determination and sustained apathy about physical comfort we can keep our temperature here for the remainder of winter.

Another creative debt outlet I've devised is the Sock Contest: "How many socks am I wearing?" Guess the number of socks correctly, and you win the opportunity to buy each of my family members a brand new pair of moccasin boot-slippers! What a deal!!

Somewhere in Africa there's a little girl who's starving. Her parents have died from AIDS, and she has no one to take care of her. There are hundreds of millions of christians who could easily help her. But they've already given God the tenth they think they owe him, and the next thing they want to buy is worth more to them than her life. One week from today, her lifeless body will lie in the street, completely forgotten.
Source

What bothers me is the fact is there are too many Christians who value the typical consumeristic lifestyle and typical western toys (i.e. computers, games, movies, hair and make-up, cars, big houses, multiple houses, vacations, cameras, designer clothing, club memberships, jewelry, gourmet coffee, sweets and junk food, and other sorts of adventures, entertainment, and fun fun fun) over the life of that starving girl in Africa. I've struggled with this immensely, especially since my family's primary breadwinner became an "unemployment" statistic three years ago, since the line between 'want' and 'need' began to blur, and becomes increasingly unrecognizable as time goes on.

Months if not years of not quite being able to pay the bills has really gotten to me. At first we tried to hide it from the world, to pretend as though we weren't really in trouble. It was easy at first to go out with others, pay for the same things they were paying for, and otherwise maintain 'our' standard of living. We wanted to portray that valued Western image of 'having it all together', a world view that has grown increasingly annoying to me over the span of my family's continuing misadventures in the world of financial need. It took a year or so for me to realize that we were clinging to a spoiled, Middle-class sense of entitlement: 'We deserve our current lifestyle because we've worked hard for it and sacrificed a lot along the way. We deserve to keep buying clothes, consuming expensive gourmet drinks at Starbucks or Second Cup, eating out, and going to movies because it's always been this way and we can't imagine anything different. We've been raised with a certain standard of living and we deserve to maintain it, frankly, because we like it. We deserve it because we don't want others thinking we're cheap, unsociable, or (heaven forbid) poor.' ...Does everybody think this way?

But for us the feelings of entitlement didn't stop there. After finally making those initial sacrifices we realized that our situation would get worse if we didn't also sacrifice more basic Middle-class 'rights'. Here's a short-list of things some or all of us have recently given up:

Lifestyle Basics:
- basic cable TV
- warmth (we're keeping our thermostat set to 15 decrees Celsius this winter; to survive we've brought out blankets, sweaters, long-johns, and hot water bottles)
- the dishwasher (we're washing our dishes by hand to see if it saves in water and electricity expenses)
- one vehicle (I've become familiar with our public transportation system, while Mom and Dad use the van for work; our car will soon need a repair that we cannot afford)
- our regular long distance plan (we use a cheaper plan now, but we're still making fewer long-distance calls)
- our dryer (we're air-drying as much as we can)
- renting movies (we'll stick to what we already have, what's on non-cable TV, or what we can borrow)
- hair cuts (i.e. anything pricier than $15CDN per cut, not a big deal for men but a bigger deal for women whose cuts are normally around $30)
- Christmas trees (if it weren't for our Christmas wedding, we would not have had a tree this year, as in previous years)
- weekly newspapers
- real travel/vacations (for our honeymoon my husband and I rented a car, since my parents' car was dead at the time, and travelled a grand 2 hours east of here)
- an apartment for my husband & me (b/c my husband doesn't yet have a job and Mom and Dad can't afford their house on their own, we're all here together making payments which none of us can afford)
- our normal social lives (we've had to bow out of events with our church, family, and friends that required money, or where we were required to bring something that required an expense)
- concerts and plays (one of my most-loved groups of all time, the Rankin Family, is on their first tour in a very long time and I don't know whether they will ever tour together again, but tickets are $60CDN each, which is still breaking my heart)

Food and Groceries:
- cheese
- honey
- pizza (and other pre-made meals)
- meat (most of the time)
- bread (if it costs more than a dollar)
- 'gourmet' fruits and veggies (e.g. avocados, fresh berries, and any other produce only the fully employed can afford)
- Tim Horton's tea/coffee
- eating out

Sacrifices on the Horizon:
- health insurance
- our house
- retirement

You know, there are some things about unemployment and debt that leave a lasting, bitter sting. The toll it takes on our social lives is one example. I've had to decline invitations to church events because I could not afford the registration fee, and there is some shame involved in that because it does affect how people view me, whether or not they know about my family's situation. There are times when friends express a need and I feel like I may as well be wearing a big name tag that says "Scrooge" as I tell them that I don't have the money to help them out. I'm afraid I'll be seen as a moocher when asking for rides here and there if our car is out of order. I'm afraid people will be inclined to avoid helping us for fear we will become 'dependent' on them in short order. What's more humiliating is when friends/family, because they know our financial situation, don't tell us about social events or trips they're planning or costly items they've purchased for themselves. Are they trying not to hurt our feelings? Are they trying to elude feelings of guilt for being able to afford these luxuries while we cannot? Why do we get pushed to the margins of their lives when our income is significantly less than theirs? And why, for some people, does money determine whether and how we can spend time building relationships with them, since it's maintaining our relationships with them during these hard times that matters most?

But I can't solely focus on those who are much more comfortable and secure than we are. I think about folks I know who live in subsidized housing around town, people who live in shelters or on the street. I think about the African girl who has no food and will soon become a mortality statistic. Why do we need any of our Middle-class privileges when giving up just a fraction of them would save her life? What rights do we have to anything at all?

Which brings me back to what I've been struggling with lately. Entitlement: Feeling as though I deserve my own apartment, my own vehicle, new clothes, entertainment with church/friends/family, or trips to Europe and other places around the world. Comparisons: Seeing Christians who are rich and wondering why they bother to thank God for their gourmet dinner while that girl in Africa starves to death. Conviction: Wondering if we, even with little work, student debt, and bills hanging over our heads, are any different than the rich?

Somewhere in China, in a sickly, underfunded and overflowing orphanage, an infant is locked in a room, waiting. She can't be more than a year old, just a tiny thing. Her mother left her on the orphanage's doorstep that afternoon, their second baby of the day. But there's a problem - every creaky, old bed in that building is already crammed full of children. They have absolutely no room for her. They could feed her a little, but that would mean leaving other children more malnourished than they already are. No, they simply cannot keep her. So into the room she goes, where the last human face she will ever see is the one closing and locking the door. She may cry the first few days, perhaps fit her tiny hand between the door and the cement floor when she hears people walk by, but soon she will be too hungry to reach out, too hungry to cry... and the room will fall silent.

On Saturday I attended a seminar led by David, the founder of International China Concern. I was blown away by the contrast between this gentleman's soft-spoken demeanor and his sharp, uncompromising challenge to each person in the room: The statistics in China are beyond staggering. Children are sick, starving, and dying daily. Be the hands and the feet of Jesus, and bless the orphans, the hungry, the sick, the lonely. "I wonder what your occupation is?" he asked. "I could find a place for each and every one of you in China to minister to others, to start changing lives. If you're a builder, a computer technician, a social worker, a therapist, a project manager, and engineer, there is a place for you." The depth of his compassion was evident. And I don't blame him - he's seen children die of causes that we, the privileged, can so easily change.

I always leave these kinds of seminars with a heart that's both heavy and optimistically determined to bring change to the world. I know there are many little ways I can contribute, even today...

Above: Chinese orphans that Dave's organization, International China Concern, has rescued.