The Poor

I have never been poor.

There was a time when, as a single mother of two, I struggled to make ends meet.
But I made 3 times what our congress had determined to be the poverty level for a family of three.
So I wasn't poor.  But I couldn't imagine how anyone could live on 1/3 of what I made.

There was another, earlier time when I had to move in with my folks after having a baby.
I had to quit work to be with my son who was so, so sick. 
My parents paid for my COBRA insurance and the rest of our bills.
And I took food from the WIC program and the Earned Income Credit on my tax return.
So I wasn't poor.  But I couldn't imagine how anyone else made it without the help of a loving family or my government.
I have never been poor.
But that's only because other people helped me when I was young and because I had some excellent job skills later.

Becuz I saw how easy it could be to become poor, I do NOT understand our country's current obsession with blaming everything on poor people.  According to the current political mantra, it's not only their fault they're poor, it's their fault that our country is in this condition. 
Nevermind the crimes committed by wall street. 
Nevermind the unfunded wars, tax reductions, war on drugs and prison system. 
Nevermind the greedy or the hateful. 
It's all the fault of the poor.
Oh.  And of single moms. 
Especially poor single moms. 
(Couldn't single parenthood be a SYMPTOM of our society's failures instead of the CAUSE of them?
And shouldn't those condemning abortion, praise and support the women who choose to continue their pregnancies?)

I hit a breaking point yesterday when I heard this mantra at church.
AT CHURCH!!!!! 
The body of Christ that is supposed to love everyone becuz He loved us.
ESPECIALLY the poor. 

So I wrote a pretty long post on Facebook about what I believe is wrong with our country's view on poverty and, more importantly, why it's wrong for the church to follow the world on this one instead of following Jesus. 

You are more than welcome to read it there.
Thank you.

One or None

When my son was a toddler we had this little routine we would go thru almost every time he wanted a snack:

Him: Can I have some cookies?
Me: You can have one.
Him: I want two.
Me: You can have one.
Him: I want two.
Me: You can have one.
Him: I want two.
Me (slightly exasperated):  You can have one.  Or none.

And, get this, most of the time he would walk away with zero cookies, thinking HE had taught ME a lesson.*

I'm not really sure what got me thinking about this today while I walked. Maybe it's because I ordered two breakfast sandwiches at Chick-fil-A yesterday (hey, one was spicy, one wasn't - it's perfectly logical!).  Maybe I was just hungry so I thought about cookies.  I'm not sure why I thought of it but the story made me realize how often I do this with other things in life. 

How often have I wanted MORE so much that I did not appreciate NOW? 

I think this lack of satisfaction & contentment is ultra-common.  Why do/did we have the home-loan fiasco, cheating spouses, wars?  People not being satisfied with what they have and going to great lengths to get bigger, newer, more.

But I'm not here to solve housing crises or wars, large or small.  I'm here to tell you some things I've learned.  The hard way.  After multiple lessons.  And this is a biggie:

Be satisfied.

In her song Soak Up the Sun, Sheryl Crow put it this way:

It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got

I mean, seriously, how great would I look in there????

In Hebrews 12:5 the writer says:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have.

When we're not satisfied, when we don't live in gratitude for what we have, when we're not content:

• Our spouses & our children infer that they're not enough - not that we're ungrateful.
• Our children learn that greed is good.
• We complain and people don't want to be around us.
• We infect our entire lives with bitterness.

Yes, there are times when some of us do not have enough money for both food & medicine, gas & the rent.  Times when wanting more means needing enough.  When you're afraid that your kids could end up living in a cardboard box or somewhere you are not.  (Of course there are lots of times we think we're desperate but we're really not.) 

If we've practiced contentment before this then we can be at peace while we're doing what we have to do to provide. But if we've been ungrateful when times are good, what is left for us during the hard times?
Depression.  Despair.

* sooooooooooooo in the long run, Nate did teach me a lesson - by walking away with no cookies all those times, he never developed a love of sweets.  The little skinny toot.