On Stewardship

My relationship with my parents is continually changing. I think this is good, but it often feels like a bad thing or like I am somehow evil for not turning out to be the person they quite expected or think that I should be. I’ve recently been hearing a lot of different things from them, most of which seem intended to precipitate crisis in order to force me to make some changes that they deem necessary. I can understand why they think that I am at a vital point in my life where some really important choices need to get made or my will needs to be adjusted even more severely. I think, however, much of the criticism I am receiving from them is rooted in their fundamental distrust of me. I know that I acted very foolishly as a child and teenager, often scorning their help and failing to hear the lessons that they would teach me, and while I still don’t necessarily think that I’ve learned the lessons that they think I need to learn, I do think I’m in process of learning a different set of lessons that will have a similar effect on my life.

I have real difficulty making myself get up and search for work. My parents have been convinced all along that if I worked more then my life would be complete and I would have it together as a person. This makes sense to me immediately. When I think about it, however, it makes less sense because of the life I had before I moved back to California. I was working all the time when I lived in Wheaton, making plenty of money, but foolishly making excuses to justify my lifestyle. I was drinking, buying lots of stuff that I didn’t need (like a Nintendo Wii), going out to dinner all the time, going to movies, etc. I had no concept of the provision of God. More and more I realize, that the Lord will continually provide for me. He has until now, and I remain confident that if I walk in his will, he is going to provide me only with what I need. I don’t think that I will ever have enough to travel (unless he wants me to), to support a family (unless he wants me to), or to go back to school (unless he wants me to). The point is, however, that the Lord will provide for me what I need and no more than that. If I choose to spend it wastefully, however, that is up to me.

I look at my parents, both of whom are extremely successful and good at who they are, and it makes perfect sense to me why my previous negligence drove them nuts, and why they perceive my current state as similar. Marianne and I have been talking about my life (obviously) and she has been saying that it seems like I have the “vow of poverty” on me. I guess I understand that. I am not someone who is impressed by wealth or turned off by a lack of it. Money is just not something I really have a way of thinking about. Trying to do so stresses me out. I don’t mean that it stresses me out in the way that studying for a test or something necessary might give a normal degree of anxiety, but in a way that is filled with satanic influence. This is not to say that I think money is evil or anything like that, but only that I’m not someone who needs to think of it in a concentrated way. It will come if I pursue God. The closer I draw to him (which is of the utmost importance, and ultimately the only thing that is important), the money will come in. What’s more important is that I learn to pray, work, love God and others. Fr Patrick said something interesting to me today, and I guess I never had really thought of it the way he put it before. We need to work because we aren’t angels, we aren’t just spirits. We have bodies, and work is to the body what prayer is to the soul. We tame our souls through prayer and discipline our bodies through work. Without either we fall easily into the passions. We work for our salvation. It is for that reason that I find myself wanting to pursue work. The conversation before of how I needed to work because I needed to make money so I could one day become a father and support a family is useless to me. I firmly believe that the Lord will provide whatever he needs to for me to be where he wants me to be. As I seek to love him above all else, both in and out of the workplace, he will make the specific steps of my life more clear to me. The Lord provides. I can’t provide for anyone. I can only manage what the Lord provides for me.

I guess part of the thing about this time in my life where I don’t have a job is that I feel like I really need to take advantage of it. I had fallen so far away from the Lord and his Church, that I couldn’t even see straight. In this time, though, he has given me freedom to seek him alone. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the economy failed right before I decided to come home. Again, I was doing fine in Wheaton in terms of amount of money I was making, but because I had no foundation in the Lord, I was squandering my life. I came home because Christ pretty much led me to the doorstep of my parents, and they opened their house to me. I’m grateful for this, and firmly believe that the four months that I have had minimal employment have been the Lord’s way of reminding me that I need to pursue him alone, whether or not I have a job. If I don’t have a job to work at, I need to find or make work for myself. I’m not going to pretend that I have used all my free time to pursue God and his mercy, but I understand now that this is what it was given to me for. I become increasingly convinced that the Lord is preparing me for a life of minimal income and intense service to him and those whom he loves, and really, this is all I want to do anyway. The hard part of this is going to be maintaining that desire, and remembering that I have time and again asked the Lord to grant it to me. He has, but in the same way that he provided enough money for me in Wheaton, it is my duty to put it to proper use. If I do, he will continue to provide enough for me.

My trust is in the Lord.