my money! my money... my money?

There are two groups of people in the world who are extremely annoying in their inexplicably urgent necessity to share their wealth of knowledge. These two groups share two traits. First, they both are truly learning at huge rates and their world view is constantly expanding because everyday is filled with incessant teaching moments. The second trait, while their lessons are true and valid, these people are completely void of the ability to see the world with any candid experience, because they have little life lived. These people are grad students and newly-weds.

So I am a newly-wed, I have been married 214 days. In my time I have come to recognize a lesson I have yapped about endlessly, but only understand practically now. For centuries the Church has reminded us our money is not our own, oddly enough these reminders apex during fund raising times. My mom joined a church when she moved to a new town and they sent her tithing envelopes before any sort of correspondence from the leadership to welcome her...she left pretty promptly. As a humorous side note, my mom is a terrible person to ride in a car with because she lets everyone pass her and cut in front of her, so traffic is exacerbated when riding with her. This lifestyle translates to her checkbook, so that church made an ironic error.

In our marriage, my wife Erin does the books. She does a lot of things, but especially the books, because I am a writer, so it is for the sake of our future that I am not allowed to touch the money. She is a grad student, I work at a coffee shop while making music and writing for no money, so we have no money. For the first four or five months of marriage, I was so scared of spending our money, that I never ate out once unless Erin was with me and sanctioned it.

So here is the lesson I have learned. I not only have no money, but what money I do have, I do not even feel free to spend on guitar strings or a book, because I know my beautiful accountant will know and understand with more objectivity the priority. I feel a completely new sensation when I hear the phrase "our money is not our own." I understood the practicality of tithing and the idea that God provides for us and therefore he is the ultimate giver of our finances. What I understand now is the complex metaphor marriage is for the body of Christ (the global Church) and its relationship to God. If Jesus' teaching that if we are asked to walk a mile, we should walk two, and his command to love others as we would want to be loved, implies a far greater weight. When I was single, I understood my responsibility to share my income with the less-fortunate, but I understood my savings as mine, funds accounted for as surplus, and therefore free for disposal towards unfrivelous, but recreational things, like guitar strings, CD's, a cup of coffee. Those accounts have died. I may have a few extra dollars in my pocket, that I can use to buy something small, but when I get home I find out what my wife needs, and I realize even the guitar strings need to wait.

My lesson may seem elementary, but I realize now that even if Erin and I had money to spend, we would not, even if we had money in our pockets, we would have to wait until we got home, home to our community, and find out what they need, and realize even the guitar strings can wait. Saying our money is not our own has little do with where it came from and more with where it needs to go.