I fluffed the comforter over the bed as I listened to NPR’s Planet Money guys describe what was happening with the banks, how various fall-downs and adjustments were going to affect the rest of the economy. I felt a pang at the top of my stomach, a flutter, and then my blood paused in place. A lump in my throat. Tears. Tight chest. What if? And how? And what are we going to do if . . . ?
Most intuitive people experience a certain amount of friction around this gift (or tendency): You’re quick to imagine the dark scenario, and sometimes—maybe even often—you’re accurate about it. The tension is that your ability to imagine it doesn’t make it true, and no matter how accurate you were last time, you might be wrong in this round. But even when you know you might be off, it’s difficult to dismiss the dark picture. It can feel downright disingenuous to push it off. Sometimes you know what’s coming. I hoped with all myself that I was wrong this time. God is bigger than our dark scenarios—right?
Sometimes that dark scenario is wrong. But sometimes it’s right.
I saw the dark scenario accurately, and I felt afraid. I saw our jobs disintegrating, our kids’ lives disrupted after just having moved from another country. I saw a financial wreck: We were about to become poor. I suspected, despite talk of putting the firm back together after things improved, that it was permanently finished. I thought it unlikely that our partners would do very much to care for us, even though their resources significantly exceeded ours. I imagined we would have to stay in this place where we knew no one, had no friends to lean on—but that we wouldn’t stay very long before we’d have to pull up and move again.
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02.
Heart Pounding Fear
It turned out I had good reason to be afraid. Sure, I believed God is good—all the time!—and I believed that he doesn’t pick us up and move us simply to drop us on our butts somewhere for his amusement. I knew that Jesus is with us, the Holy Spirit is active, and that the Lord delights in rescuing and blessing his people. But still . . . I saw what was coming, and I was afraid. I did not say that out loud, even in my own head. But whether I admitted it or not, I felt physical, heart-pounding fear.
From day to day over the ensuing year, I fought with myself over that fear. What I knew in my head about God’s purposes and commitments and his help and hope conflicted sharply with what I saw and felt in my body. My gut had often led me to trust God and take risks as a missionary and pastor. Now it instructed me to find a way to provide for myself and my family, to protect, to get out of the hundred-year flood at any cost.
And with fear came anger, frustration, disgust. We were on our way to file for unemployment insurance when my husband mentioned to me that our partners on the investment side of the project were on their way to Mexico for a vacation. That day. Wait. What? The news added indignation to the apprehension swirling through me. “They’re using their American Express points,” my husband explained. “They figured it might be awhile before they can take another vacation.” I was flabbergasted at the brazenness of these people who were supposed to be our “partners,” who had begged us to join their wealthy world and then dropped us to run off on vacation. We didn’t possess things like American Express points.
I would’ve thought the partners would share their resources with us. After all, we were poor, relative to them; we never had their level of income. We didn’t own the seven-million-dollar houses they owned or drive the Mercedes and Audi vehicles they drove. I thought, surely God will prompt them to help us. This was the first of several rounds. I kept seeing perfect solutions to our situation—someone who might share with us, opportunities to move as far away as possible, an ideal job—I saw fixes, but nothing got fixed, nobody came to our aid, and God seemed not to be sharing his thoughts.
We arrived at the unemployment office. If you weren’t depressed before you got there, the unkempt gray building and its unkempt gray people would’ve been enough to drop your mood. When it was our turn to talk to The Unemployment Guy, we discovered that because we had lived and worked in Canada for the bulk of the preceding four quarters, we would be eligible for an insurance benefit based only on minimum wage. That was about $100 a week for me.
I stared at The Guy. “How are we supposed to cover our house payments and feed our kids?” He shrugged. “I dunno, ma’am.”
Well, I didn’t know, either. And because we were both overwhelmed, Dan and I were of little help to each another. Our friends were shocked that such a thing would happen to the two of us, who had always been the Good Kids. We’re both oldest children. We were students of the year in our high schools. We were youth group leaders. We graduated with honors, worked hard and did The Right Things. Suddenly none of that mattered. Being the People Who Play Well by the Rules, it turned out, afforded us absolutely no advantage.
We set about trying to reboot our life. But the next few months were insulting. I had never applied for a position and not gotten an interview, but now I applied for dozens and dozens of jobs and got nothing in response. I applied for jobs in grocery stores and banks. I applied for every writing job I saw, including one for a wrestling entertainment company. I applied for everything I could conceivably do. Nothing! Dan, too, my brilliant and accomplished husband. Nothing! Of course, it didn’t help that we were new there. We had no connections and no network. And a lot of other better-connected people were also out of work and looking for the same jobs.
I heard politicians complaining that people were kicking back on unemployment “entitlements” and that we should change unemployment benefits from this entitlement to a loan. I couldn’t imagine getting lazy on $100 a week. As I watched our small savings dwindle (Inter Varsity staff are essentially domes-tic missionaries who don’t make that much to start with, so we never had all that much to save), our credit card total rise, and our employment prospects falter, I wondered how anyone expected unemployed people to pay back unemployment insurance as a “loan” after months of no income. And I wondered what God expected us to do.
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03.
Keeping Things Normal
We tried to keep things as normal as possible for our kids. Dan coached basketball. Our two boys played on Little League teams. Baseball games were a particular struggle. There were new bats we couldn’t afford. And other parents showed up in their black Mercedes SUVs (de rigueur in Fairfield) with coffee from the local shop. When we first moved, I had actually been happy to drive our ’93 Geo Prism and our old minivan—it seemed like a useful stand against consumerism and an opportunity for faith in the context. But now our old cars felt like jalopies, and not being able to afford a latte made me self-conscious and left out.
Friends came to visit. I mostly wished they wouldn’t. I rarely got through a conversation without dissolving. We couldn’t go out with them. I was sad most of the time. What was there to talk about? I felt pressure to say the stuff I know you’re supposed to say about how God will come through and it’s just a matter of time and all that, but those phrases were hollow to my heart. I couldn’t be the pastor and leader people expected me to be.
I was afraid of looking poor. I was afraid of being poor, of progressively losing self-determination. I was afraid of being found stupid, even in my own eyes, for having thought this whole thing would work to begin with, for thinking that we could actually do something and develop better financial footing through jobs that paid us well. After a lifetime of working at high levels and long hours for little money, I thought we might finally be able to save for college, afford braces, make car repairs, have a nicer dinner out now and then. Now that dream appeared wrecked and without remedy. I was ashamed.