Red Robin's Siren Song

I cheated on Friday. We went out to Red Robin for lunch. No reason. In fact, many reasons NOT to go: I had food at home, my husband had brought a lunch to his office, and my kid was recovering from a stomach bug. But it was fun to have lunch together on the spur of the moment, and it was a nice family outing.

But as soon as I saw the picture of the Whiskey BBQ Burger, I was a goner. I tried to talk myself into a nice salad, a garden burger, and a cup of soup, but no go. I really really really wanted that burger.

And you know what? There was no one to stop me. No one to say, "But Tienne, you've committed yourself to eating only vegetarian meals when you eat out." Or, "Isn't it bad enough that you're eating out when you have food at home? Are you really going to compound it by ordering a meal that harms the earth, exploits farm workers and exacerbates the global food crisis?" My conscience did say all these things, but I squashed it and looked at the picture again. Everyone around me was eating their burgers. My son was getting a cheeseburger. My husband was getting a turkey burger with avocado and goat cheese. My daughter was sleeping, so she's exempt, but the point is, I was alone and surrounded by temptation.

So I fell. And man, was it a tasty burger. I'm beating myself up about it, now, of course. I know better. It's not like I just forgot about my pledge to forgo meat when dining out. It's not like I was at a party where they only served hot dogs and brats. It's not like someone took me out to a steakhouse to celebrate their promotion and there weren't any vegetarian options on the menu. I deliberately tossed aside my values and embraced the pleasure of the moment, for no other reason than that I wanted to.

Everyone sins, of course. This website chronicles my journey because that's what I'm on. I don't have mastery over this by any stretch of the imagination. What saddens me most, though, is how easy it was to ignore my convictions. There's no accountability in my efforts to take the poor with me. Except for this website, which is faceless and (let's be honest here) only as transparent I as choose it to be, no one would know if I lived perfectly according to the philosophies I espouse or if I turned my back on every single one of them.

Well, God would know. And I believe my pricking conscience is His way of letting me know that he knows, and that I ought to know better. But in the moment of temptation itself, I can too easily ignore His voice.

It drives home to me the importance of community and fellowship. I learned in college how easy it is to sink to the lowest common denominator, and how proud and happy those denominators are when you join them. Pursuing virtue leaves you mostly alone, mocked at best and often accused of being judgmental, closed minded, or intolerant, of forcing your beliefs on others or considering yourself superior.

It's just SO EASY to give in to consumerism and indulgence. From TV commercials to billboards to advertisements in newspapers and magazines, our entire society is aimed at getting us to buy something we don't need. There's always a sale on somewhere, always a special discount if you buy more (Get one in each color! Stock up and save! Buy in bulk for maximum value!), always a drink special to go with that appetizer that looks so appetizing. And did you save room for dessert? When we do gather the willpower to resist the thousands of suggestions around us, too often our companions look at us askance, or make us feel as though we're making a statement about them and their decisions.

My parents came to visit a couple weekends ago. While they were here, my mother insisted on taking me to the grocery store because she wasn't happy with the state of my fridge. I'd just been shopping and had plenty of food, but I didn't have a few things she considered staples, like raspberries, yogurt, and bottled water. When I reminded her that we were trying to live simply, she got hostile. "Who are you trying to beat, Tienne? People starving in wooden huts? Because you'll never match them, no matter how austere you make your life."

It was hard to get her to understand that this isn't a competition. The point of taking the poor with me is not to live in abject poverty, starving myself and my family because there are people in the world who don't have basic needs. The point is to turn a hard eye on my spending and ask myself, "Do I really need this?"

One of the main challenges is that my eye is so skewed. To me, it feels like a huge sacrifice to go out to eat and NOT get the whiskey BBQ burger with onion crisps and cheddar cheese. Never mind that an entire menu of delicious options has just been presented to me, any one of which would amply satisfy my hunger and serve as an indulgence. Then to increase the challenge, those closest to me (like my mother) often hinder rather than help my efforts. As hard as it is to ignore the siren song of advertising, it is even harder to ignore the well-meaning but misguided pressure of friends and family.

How do we respond when a friend writes or calls to talk excitedly about the new flat screen TV they've just bought? Or when our newly engaged relative waggles her ring-finger proudly? Or the woman sitting next to us in church has a pair of the most beautiful open-toed pumps we've ever seen? When those around us are focusing on the fad of the moment, it's all the more difficult to keep our eyes and our interest on what truly matters.

Now Christmas approaches, the beautiful holy-day when we commemorate God's greatest gift to us: Himself, made flesh to dwell among us. But likely the only place we'll hear anything about that is at Mass. The rest of the time our senses will be bombarded with the dreaded countdown -- Only 17 shopping days left till Christmas! -- along with more incarnations of Santa than any sane person can stand. Katerina Ivanovna has a great post on this at Civilization of Love that contains some excellent suggestions for simplifying the season.

In the meantime, I'm working on a system to strengthen my resolve and enable me to turn away from temptation when it presents itself. I find it easier to give extra than to sacrifice something I want, so I need to counter these petty indulgences by giving something up. In return for eating that burger at Red Robin on Friday, I ordered nothing but a drink when we went to the bar to watch the Michigan game on Saturday. That was hard, let me tell you. Especially when my husband got his lunch and offered me a bite (which he never does under normal circumstances! I think he felt bad for me.) And because my mom spent so much on us while she was here, I'm trying to cut my weekly grocery budget to $50 for the next month.

It's supposed to have a bit of a punitive effect. Hopefully, next time I'm tempted I'll think about what I'll have to give up if I indulge myself, and will have the courage and conviction to order the soup and salad instead.

Monday's Gospel

Reflections on Scripture:

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He said in reply, 'You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He replied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live."

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, 'Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.' Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers' victim?" He answered, "The one who treated him with mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Luke, 10 25-37

I was struck, first of all, by the order of God's commandment. Love God first, with all your soul, being, mind and strength. Then love your neighbor as yourself. As a child, I struggled with understanding why God would ask first that we love Him, when there are so many people in need in the world. Surely, as many agnostics and atheists claim, the service of others is the highest form of giving, the most noble exercise of our human faculties. And the parable of the Good Samaritan seems to underscore this. Isn't the point that if I'm on my way to church and happen across an accident, I should skip Mass and tend to the victims of the crash? Or if I have limited funds, aren't they better spent feeding the homeless than contributing to the fund my opulent Catholic cathedral has set up to clean and maintain its mosaics?

Well, yes. And no.

Now that I have children of my own, I understand a bit more the love God has for us, and His desire that we form a relationship with Him. I think about how I would feel if my son grew up, became a priest and went to Kenya, but we were estranged. He would be doing exactly what I want, living according to the values I'm trying to instill in him, and serving the world in the way I most desire. Yet how can it make me happy for him to do all this and shut me entirely out of his life? I would be proud of him, of course, and very, very happy if he found fulfillment in his vocation. But it would be an empty sort of feeling because I couldn't share in it with him.

God must feel the same way when we put anything else before our relationship with him. Yes, we are called to both love God and serve one another, but first and foremost we must love God. We have to be sure that the rituals and requirements of our faith don't prevent us from doing God's will. That's the point of the parable, where the Levite and priest allowed the strict regulations governing ritual washing to keep them from tending to the man in need. But that doesn't mean we're meant to disregard our obligation to put God first. So yes, if I'm on my way to Mass and see an accident, I should stop and help. And then I should give up my lunch, or my football game, so I can attend a later Mass. If my cathedral, which is the house of God, is in need of repair, then I should forgo buying a new coffee table to help repair it. Then I will have money both for God's house and for the homeless.

The second part of Jesus' commandment resonates with me the most powerfully: love your neighbor as yourself. Every time I think about that, I'm amazed again by the level of love God's asking of us. Not just be nice to people, or refrain from hurting them, but LOVE them. Love them in the same way you love yourself.

I love myself pretty darn much, gotta tell you. I buy myself things for no other reason than just to make me happy. I'm concerned with my health, I surround myself with friends and comfort and beauty. I make sure to give myself as much sleep as I need (though my kids sometimes thwart this effort.) I take myself on vacations to the mountains and drink wine at every opportunity. I foster my relationship with God often throughout the day. This is how much I'm supposed to love others. I'm supposed to be as consumed with their health, comfort, salvation and happiness as I am with my own. That's a really, really big love God asks of us.

Finally, I'm always humbled by the fact that even though the scholar knew the law extremely well (so well as to encapsulate it in one perfect, brief, commandment) he had no idea what the law was really about. Jesus told him all he had to do was to act in accordance with his beliefs "Go and do this and you will live." and immediately he "seeks to justify himself." In other words, to find a loophole or exemption that wouldn't require him to actually change his lifestyle or interactions.

I identify so strongly with him. Aren't I sitting here, asking God for guidance, and then making excuses whenever He prompts me?

God is always calling us to better ourselves, to sacrifice more, pray more, serve more. What are the excuses we're making? I've been meaning for weeks now to make a trip to my local nursing home and see if they need volunteers. And what's been running through my mind? I don't know where a nursing home is (as though I couldn't look in the book and find one.) I don't want to take my 4-year old until he learns how to behave better (as though I couldn't go when he's at Montessori.) I don't want my daughter to catch an illness (as though the elderly have more germs than the kids in the cry room at Mass!) Isn't there always an excuse not to do something? Isn't there always a way we can justify our inaction or our sins?

Nike doesn't have a bad answer to this: Just do it.

3 Things My Parents Did Right

Jen at Et Tu? has posted a blogging challenge that has been inspiring me this past week: to post three things my parents did right in raising me. I had trouble getting started, until I thought about the ways in which they've helped me onto my current path. Suddenly the answers I should write became clear.

1. They taught me to be grateful for fresh, healthy food.
My mom grew up on a farm and my father grew up poor, so between the two of them they have always appreciated wholesome food. We had two different vegetables with every meal and were taught from the start to be thankful for the food on our plates. My mom never bought us junk food. Never. I remember whining in the store for Lucky Charms and going home with Raisin Bran. Dessert was more often than not some bread with honey or a piece of fruit. Now that I'm dedicated to living simply, I find that I have a good background for preparing my family simple, healthy meals from scratch. My recipes for ricotta, mayonnaise, yogurt and applesauce come right from my mother, as does everything I know about gardening. Obviously, I still want wine and salami and creme brulee, but I am nonetheless satisfied with a nutritious, humble meal.

2. They denied me things I wanted but provided everything I needed.
My parents only became wealthy once I graduated high school and my father's business began turning a real profit. While I was growing up, we lived in a modest three-bedroom townhouse near the train tracks in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Chicago area. My parents had chosen it for the schools (education is perhaps THE most important thing to my dad) and I recall how it seemed that every kid in my third grade class had a cornsilk Cabbage Patch kid while I was stuck with Suzy, the yarn-haired Cabbage Patch doll I'd received at Christmas the year before. I simply had to learn to appreciate what I had and stop yearning for new things all the time. It was an important lesson for me to learn at a young age, and I thank them wholeheartedly for instilling it in me.

3. They moved our family to Indonesia.
When my father's pharmaceutical company sent him to Indonesia in 1982, my mother, sister and I went with him. Those two and a half years were instrumental in developing my love for the poor and opening my eyes to the dichotomy between my blessings and their needs. In Indonesia we were part of the expatriate community, so my playmates were mostly British. My sister and I went to an international school, taught in English by white teachers and Indonesian teachers aides. Our mansion had a gated entrance and a pool, a chauffeur, night watchman, maid and cook, all of whom were all Indonesian. And across the street from us was a slum, where people lived in plastic shacks. The entire experience was eye-opening for me: living in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language taught me to respect the difficulties faced by immigrants, seeing the depths of poverty contrasted with comfort and luxury taught me how lucky I am and how little separates us from the fate of the poor, and experiencing the unique aspects of Indonesian culture gave me an appreciation for the many different nations that make up our world. The experience has never left me.

There are, of course, many many other things my parents did right. Even at my most cynical I could probably list a dozen or more. These, though, are the ones I appreciate the most.

Ambition and Kairos

I had an interesting conversation with my mom a few days ago. I sent her this link from Et Tu, Jen?'s Weekly Favorites and while discussing it we broached the subject of feminine ambition.

Though I hadn't really thought too much about it, I immediately said that I wasn't ambitious. I did well in school because I was expected to and because I liked being in the honors classes with my friends. It didn't hurt that I liked to read, so at least English, History, French and Religion were interesting and fairly easy for me. Still, I didn't work as hard as I could have (especially in college) and I performed up to the standards other people set for me rather than aiming for greatness in myself. Once I graduated, I cared only that my job be in the nonprofit sector where I could do some good; I had little interest in climbing the corporate ladder and even within the organizations where I worked, I never sought to gain management or leadership positions.

"I mean really, the only thing I've ever cared about is serving God. "

Immediately my mom replied, "Well, that's more than most people aim for."

I shrugged. "I don't know. Isn't it just the minimum expected of us as Christians?" And we moved on to other things.

But I've thought about the conversation more since then and come to realize that I am highly ambitious. Deeply, thoroughly, loftily ambitious. Serving God is an ambition, perhaps one of the most difficult and exhausting goals that exist in this world. And it's something I've always aspired to, even when I've fallen pathetically short. Which I have. Often.

If my primary ambition then is to serve God, and if I am serving Him in humility and obedience, then why do I allow myself to feel small because I'm not out there doing something for the world? Am I sure that what I want is really what God wants from me?

For years now I've felt that I failed God, that I gave up on my dreams of serving the poor in Africa because of weakness and selfishness. I wanted to get married. And so that's what I did. Had I possessed ambition or strength of will, I would have trusted God and followed Him instead of grabbing at the best man I could find and working on him until he proposed (after I'd booked the hall and Church, btw.)

It's true that I didn't follow my plan to live in Africa and work with the poor. That doesn't mean I'm not serving God. It doesn't mean I've given up on my dreams. The manner in which I serve God may be different than I had originally planned, but I am no less His.

Nor have my ambitions been compromised. I still want nothing less than to dedicate my entire self to Him. Wherever He wants me to go, I'll go. Whatever He wants me to do, I'll do. Even when I don't want to do it. Even when the very thought of it makes me cry.

My husband sent me a beautiful, bittersweet email the other day. He had to sell some stock to cover our debt, and discovered it's twice the amount we'd feared it was. He proposed setting up a separate account into which we could dump any money we saved by spending less on groceries, giving up eating out, canceling our cable, etc., etc. until we'd paid off the debt. At that point, he pledged, he'd be much more open to giving to charity.

Part of me rejoiced. A plan! Wonderful! A committment to really saving money! Tremendous! A promise to be charitable! Praise God!

Then I did some calculations. Years. That's what we're talking here. YEARS of limiting our grocery bills, living without new clothes or furniture, scrimping as much as possible in hopes of paying down this debt. The scrimping I can handle. We've always lived simply. But years to go before I can give anything to help the hungry? I was thinking a year at the most, just to get us back on our feet from the move and give my husband some time to reflect on the many blessings we have to share with others. When I decided to stop pressuring my husband to give to charity and instead focus all my efforts on paying down our debt, I certainly wasn't thinking years...

What annoys me so much is that we haven't accumulated this debt with any sort of excessive living. This is the result of adhering to our values. Had my husband taken a job with a big defense firm in Chicago when he graduated law school, he would have made four times the salary he got at the small, consumer rights firm at which he did take a position. Even his salary now is half what it would be if he practiced corporate law instead of consumer law. Part of me is wondering what God's up to. We're in this debt because we were trying to do the right thing, and because of this debt we can't give any money to charity and we can't adopt a child from Kazakhstan and we can't afford wine which God quite CLEARLY wants us to consume great quantities of. (Wedding Feast at Cana anyone? Last Supper? Drinking wine is practically a commandment!)

It took me a while to calm my soul and see that I'm trying to over-control things again. There are things I desperately want to do, like adopt a child and send money to Africa. I want to do these things NOW. But God is saying no. I don't know why. I don't know if it's temporary, or if it's something I'm never meant to have and never meant to do. Only God knows that.

My response now must be to wait on Kairos -- His time. If God wills that I go to Africa someday (and I pray He does) then it will happen when HE wants it to, in the appointed time that He decides. If it is God's will that we expand our family through adoption, then that, too, will happen when the time is right. If it is God's will that we give generously to those in need, then I must wait for the opportunity He will provide.

I've been angry that the things I'm reaching for remain so firmly out of my reach. I try a ladder and it's knocked away from me. I ask for help and am met with indifference. But all my stretching won't get me somewhere God doesn't want me to be. When things don't come together despite my best attempts, I need to stop, back away, and turn to God.

I'm listening, Lord. Show me what You want me to do.


Picture credit.

My All for You, My God

In some ways, this money saving experiment is bringing me closer to my husband. When we first got married, we'd do everything together, including grocery shopping. Come Saturday, there we'd be at our local Safeway, me with the cart and him with the calculator.

Yes, you read that right. My penny-pincher brought a calculator with him every shopping trip so we could tally up our purchases and know before we got to the checkout line exactly how much we'd be spending.

I didn't get it. Not at all. My mother never did that. Even when my parents had two mortgages, a struggling business and a daughter in private high school, my mom still went to the most expensive grocery store and put whatever she wanted in her cart: papayas, red leaf lettuce, wild-caught salmon, imported Genoan salami. In fact, the grocery store she shopped at was so snooty they carried the bags out to your car for you.

When I was in college, I realized how naive I was in the ideas of price comparing or choosing an item that's on sale. My roommate and I took a trip to Meijers, where she happily put a generic brand of shampoo in her cart. "I love it when they have these," she smiled. I looked at her in utter confusion and she explained, "They take the formula of the name brand stuff and bottle it themselves to save you money."

I remember looking at her cart, then at the shelf, and reaching for the Pantene. She got annoyed with me. "Tienne, it's the SAME thing." I shook my head. "I don't want to risk it. I'll pay more for the real stuff."

So you can imagine that walking around the store with my calculator-toting husband was an alien experience for me. He taught me how to read the labels on the shelf. That "price per unit" thing? Wow! You can really tell which item is the cheapest. I'd never even looked at it before. If I needed canned tomatoes, I went and bought the Del Monte brand. Contadina might have been cheaper, but who cared?

My husband. And now that I've made the committment to keep our weekly food bill under $100, I care, too. It's been so much harder than I thought it would. Turns out that $106 bill I was getting didn't include running out for bananas, jam and milk midweek, or eating out at CiCi's Pizza with the kids, or deciding I wanted a bottle of wine for our dinner guests. I now carry a calculator with me to the grocery store and I am fastidious about recording every item that goes into my cart.

Some things I've discovered (which will no doubt be obvious to anyone who's ever been on a budget): Name brand stuff is ridiculously overpriced. I try to buy the store brand every time. I'm not letting go of my preference for organic, though. Luckily, my store has lots of organic items, including among their own line. I think I'd be able to buy alcohol if I didn't buy organic. The difference is amazing. Organic cheddar is $6.99. The Kraft brand is $2.39. Vegetables are the same way, often twice as much for the organic as for the conventional. But I know too much about our agricultural industry to be swayed by the price. When it's available, I always pick organic. I just have to save money elsewhere.

Meat is more expensive than beans. This is a big no-brainer, of course, but it really hammers home to me how much money we save by eating mostly vegetarian. This week I bought a family pack of 8 chicken thighs (cheaper than the breasts) for $7.41. That'll give us two meat-meals. An equivalent poundage of lentils would cost me $3.38, and let me tell you, 3 lbs of lentils would last for 8, maybe 9 meals. There's no way I could do this if we ate meat at every meal, as when we were first married.

Substitutions are your friend. I haven't had the money to buy chili powder for weeks now. I don't know when it's ever going to happen; a jar costs $6 and there's very little wiggle room in my weekly budget. So whenever a recipe calls for chili powder, I substitute a roasted, canned chipotle pepper. A can of chipotles in adobo sauce costs $.59 at the Albertsons and contains around 9 chipotles. One is more than enough to add flavor and spice to any Mexican dish I'm cooking, and they last forever in the freezer. Cheese is another expense where I've discovered ways to cut back. Ricotta is $7, but an equivalent amount of low fat cottage cheese is only $2.69. I'm sticking it into a veggie lasagna anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Make it at home whenever you can. The list of things I no longer buy at the store is growing each week, mainly because I don't have money to spend on prepared food and thus must prepare it myself. I make my own yogurt, mayonnaise, salsa, chocolate sauce, peanut butter, applesauce and breadcrumbs (you knew there was a use for the ends of bread loaves, right?) Really, I should make my own bread, but I have issues with yeast. For whatever reason, I can't seem to buy any that's still active, whether I try the refrigerated glass jar or the little packets.

Anyway, it's hard, but I'm learning a lot and doing well so far.

I'm not doing as well with my attitude. Simply put, I resent this. I want to buy wine. Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling. Sonoma Valley Chardonnay. Bella Rossi Chianti. I miss my wine. I want to buy goat cheese and fresh herbs and sun dried tomatoes packed in flavored olive oil. I miss the fun sides I used to put out with all my meals. If I made a lasagna, I'd have garlic bread and salad, too, and the salad would have two different kinds of lettuce and roasted pine nuts and golden raisins tossed in with it. Now we just have the lasagna.

I miss going through my cookbooks and being inspired by a picture and saying, "Oooh. I want to try that," then going to the store and getting everything it calls for. I miss having chips and dip to snack on during the week. I miss having whipped cream and pecans on hand to jazz up my desserts.

Nothing has changed between now and three weeks ago except that now these sufferings are designed to pay down our debt. Am I really so petty? When I choose a sacrifice, I do it with joy, but when it's imposed upon me I am resentful, complaining, sulky and depressed. Perhaps more than anything, God wants me to learn how to do joyfully what He wants. Perhaps this is so hard for me not because I'm giving up alcohol, but because I'm giving up control.

Well, sacrifice is not meant to be easy. What is it to say "Okay, God, my husband's out of town this weekend and I've got both these kids to myself, so tonight I'm going out for pizza. I'm going to eat this pizza for you, God, to glorify and praise you." If only God wanted us to eat pizza for Him! Darnit. I could do that easily.

Real sacrifice, true sacrifice, ought to be painful. If it's not difficult, we're not doing it right.

So I can take heart at least that I'm on the right path now. Because this is difficult. And painful. The reward in it isn't so much happiness and fulfillment as much as it's the satisfaction of knowing that I am obedient to God's will. It doesn't feel good, but I know it is good.

Still, I'm annoyed every time I have to deny myself something I want.

Less self. More God. That's what I need.

Picture credit.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

I want to thank everyone for their insightful and supportive comments, especially for the recommendations to read up on St. Frances of Rome (could there be a more perfect patron saint for my situation!) and to wait for God's time in finding a solution to my problem.

For a while now I've been praying that God will guide me, and He has. Through Scripture, through the words of the priest at daily Mass, through conversations with people, the insights on my friends' blogs and the inspiration of the Saints, He's spoken to me.

My son's Godparents, both good Catholics and close friends of mine, gave me The Story of a Soul by St. Therese of the Little Flower, which I've been reading off and on. (It's one of the books by my nursing chair, so it entirely depends how cooperative my youngest decides to be as to whether or not I get to read any of it each day.) So many things have struck me in her story, but foremost above all is the simple, faithful, all-encompassing love she had for God, even as a very young child. She wanted nothing so much as to love Him and serve Him. Loving Him and serving Him brought her joy.

That's how I feel about the poor. I have an inherent love for them within me that's been there since I was a child. I don't try to help the poor because I believe that it's good and right to do so (though it is,) or because God instructs us to care for those in need (though He does.) I do it because my love for the poor rises up and shakes me into action. I recognize this now as a gift. God wants me to serve the poor, of that I'm certain. He would not have put this drive in me for no purpose.

But the key is that I serve Him in the way HE wants, not the way I want. Some of you have touched on this in your comments to me, and I've really taken them to heart. I think it's telling that my gut reaction to Jen's idea of fundraising was "God no, NO! Anything but that." and to Anna's suggestion to step back was "But then my husband WINS."

This isn't the reaction of someone who's seeking to serve God and follow His will. It's the reaction of a hyper-controlling, uptight, Type-A personality. My way obviously isn't working right now, so I need to find a new way. God's way.

I read once that the Mongols (or perhaps the Huns?) were so successful in battle because they were taught to fight like water, finding cracks in the defense and working their way through bit by bit until they overcame. This image has been churning around in my head the past week or so. I feel like my desire to help the poor is the current of a river -- it's flowing intensely within me right now, urging me on. And I keep running up against the dam of my marriage. It's making me frustrated and swelling my resentment of my husband. The force of my drive to help is causing me harm.

And God is gently trying to redirect this river, opening up channels to provide relief and continue the flow of water to where it's needed. Am I really going to keep butting up against the dam when other avenues exist?

I've talked again with my husband about our money situation. We had the exact same circular argument we always have, just with different words. For him, it all comes down to our debt. For me, it all comes down to our choices. We can't work together unless we're on the same page, and he's made it quite clear that he can't change to meet me.

So I must take on his focus as my own.

I can commit myself to doing everything in my power to pay down our debt. I can forgo all things for myself, including pizza (woe!) and gifts. I can do my best to save money wherever and whenever I can, including on our grocery bills and clothes for the kids. After all, I'm doing all that stuff anyway. But instead of fighting my husband to send the money we "save" to the poor, I can turn it over to him for our debt.

In some ways, this is all semantics because I don't really have a choice as to what I do. I have to save money. I can't give money to the poor. So it seems almost self-delusional to now claim that I'm doing these things for God. But a true Christian spirit is to take the things God gives us and turn them back over to Him, to accept with love and grace the burdens He places on us and to carry them cheerfully for Him. I cannot change my situation, so I will instead change my attitude. What a beautiful gift for God -- my heart and will instead of my money!

The hardest part, and I still don't know how I'm going to handle this, is what I do when my husband makes a decision I completely disagree with. These don't come very often, thankfully. I'm blessed that my husband is even more frugal than I am and would never just go out and buy $20,000 of home entertainment equipment on a whim (yes, I do know someone who has done this.) But I can't force this commitment on him. If he wants to spend five hundred dollars traveling to our alma mater for a football game, my sacrifice is to say nothing to him about it and go on quietly working to save money on my own.

I feel this is where I'm really going to have problems. I'm not very good at letting things go. Or with trusting God. Or with patiently waiting. And the underlying marital disconnect is still there. I just need to find a way that it doesn't affect me as much. I think making this sacrifice will help. I'm doing it partly for my husband -- this debt is obviously very important to him. I'm doing it partly for the poor, in the hopes that once the debt is gone we can move towards a lifestyle that incorporates giving generously to charity. But I'm mostly doing it for God, in obedience to the path He's setting out for me.

It's here that I'm so inspired by the example of St. Frances of Rome. What she wanted most in life was to be a nun, yet she spent all but 4 years of her life carrying out the domestic tasks required of a noblewoman's wife. Through it all she found ways to serve God, often doing things she hated, like attending a party with her mother in law. Like it or not, this is my path. I can choose to go where God directs me, or stagnate and grow angry forcing my own way. I choose God's path.

I have a new mantra, in addition to the one I say to help me be a better mother ("Mary, my model, be with me and guide me.") It is "My all for you, my God." I hope the frequent repetition of it helps remind me that everything I'm doing is for Him and worthy of being done with joy.

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An Embarassment of Riches

It's hard to say where I am...well, where we are in terms of unity in our marriage. I'm struggling to discern God's design for me. On the one hand, I feel so strongly called to take care of the poor, but on the other, I've already made a commitment to take care of my marriage. I can't help one at the expense of the other.

Last week I ran an experiment. My husband and I had both watched the 60 Minutes documentary on Darfur, and we discovered that we fundamentally disagreed as to whether there was money in our budget for a donation. Rather than argue about whether we could afford it, I asked him what we could sacrifice. After some thought, he replied that he didn't want to make any sacrifices right now.

"You're kidding, right?"

"I know my limitations," he replied.

I was at a loss. We've had this discussion so many times and never get anywhere with it. So I simply said, "I'll find the money." And we went to bed. As I lay there praying and thinking, wondering how I could find an extra $100 without having the family sacrifice anything, it occurred to me that I spend $106 every week on groceries. (I don't really know how that number comes about; it just happens to be the total every time the cashier rings me up.)

I wondered...could I go a whole week without grocery shopping? What did we have? There was ground beef in the freezer, a cornish hen from when I bought three and only two would fit in the crock pot at a time, some homemade chicken soup I'd frozen months ago, a head of broccoli, some green beans, 1/2 an eggplant, a red pepper or two, a bag of carrots, a couple onions, 6 eggs and plenty of rice, beans, condiments, pasta and spices. Would it last a week?

I realized right away I'd have to buy something. Every morning my husband has a bowl of cereal with banana, and every afternoon he has an apple with peanut butter. I'd have to buy milk, apples and peanut butter or he would definitely feel that he was sacrificing. And the point was to do something for Darfur without affecting my family. Ideally, I would come to him after a week and say, "I didn't grocery shop this week. We did okay, didn't we? How about we give the money we saved to Darfur?"

I don't know whether to characterize it as hard or not. It was different. Almost immediately, I started to run out of things. Chili powder. Butter. Flour. Onions. Sugar. Eggs. Tomatoes. We'd invited guests for dinner on Friday night, so I had to entertain in the middle of this whole experiment. Overall, it was a success -- we ate a balanced, healthy, satisfying meal every night and I provided my husband with lunch to take to work every day. We were never hungry. It wasn't until Monday when he ran out of cereal that I brought him in on the whole idea, and he agreed to eat oatmeal for three days until I next went to the store.

I did things I'd never done before, like grate up a broccoli stalk and add it to chicken broth for our lunch. Normally I just throw the stalks out. Instead of cheese and crackers for a midafternoon snack, I popped some corn kernels. I substituted for lots of things I didn't have and tried new recipes when my usual ones wouldn't work. The thing that struck me the most was how much of my time I spent worrying about food, and how diligent I was at conserving it. I sat down at the start of the week and took stock of everything we had to plan out the menu. It didn't allow for any deviation. Monday's meal was crock pot beef bourguignon with a handful of green beans and the remaining 1/2 bag of egg noodles. So I couldn't touch any of that until Monday, even though Sunday's dinner could have used it.

And in so many ways, God provided. I'd planned to attend a prayer rally at my church on Saturday night. They advertised a "light supper" in between the 5:30 Mass and the speaker, so I planned it into our week. No cooking Saturday night. We'd just make do with whatever they served. Hot dogs? Pasta salad? Cheese and fruit? I hoped it'd be enough to satisfy our family and count as a meal. To my astonished delight, the Indonesian community at our parish prepared a feast for us. We had skewered chicken with peanut satay sauce, beef and vegetable crepes, rice with sweet soy sauce, salad, meatball soup, and cupcakes for desert. Not just enough food...bountiful, delicious, remarkable food. I was so grateful to God I nearly cried.

We only made it through the week, of course, because we had so much food already in the house. I think more than anything, it turned out to be a statement about how blessed we are. Even when my fridge is empty, my cupboards are still full. If we had to, we could have gone on longer, but at that point we would definitely have been compromising the nutritional content of our dinners.

Yet the success of the week wasn't the whole point of the experiment. Overarching the entire thing was my hope that it would set up another dialogue with my husband about giving to charity and where that fits into our lives. On that front, the week was less than successful.

When we talked about it, my husband agreed we could give $100 to Darfur. I'm grateful for that, and encouraged by it. But I don't know where we go from here. It's not like any time I want to give to charity I can just stop grocery shopping for a week. Besides the fact that it requires considerable reserves (and the intervention of my parish's Indonesian community) my husband doesn't consider it "saved money." To him, there is no difference between spending $50 on a skirt and spending $40 on a skirt then giving $10 to charity. We're out $50. I can't argue with his math, obviously, because that's fact. But to me, if our budget allows $50 for clothing, then buying something on sale should allow us to spend the extra on something else. Charity, for instance.

Without taking paragraphs and paragraphs to detail our fruitless, circular discussions, I'll just say that my husband feels the only things we should be spending money on right now are necessary items. However, he and I disagree on what constitutes a necessary item. In the interest of unity, and for the sake of my marriage, I want to resolve this in a way that makes both of us happy. I know we are a partnership, and therefore I can't force him to do something he doesn't want to do, but is it right for him to prevent me from the exercise of my faith?

Because that's what this is. God calls all of us to care for the poor. Stewardship is as much a requirement of my faith as Mass attendance and adherence to the doctrines of the Church. I don't know what the middle ground may be, but I know in my heart that it's not right for me to simply give up. I'm praying about this, asking God to help me discern what is pride and what is truth, for Mary and St. Elizabeth of Hungary to intercede for me, for Christ (who showed unflagging love and consideration for the poor while he was on Earth) to show me His way, and for the Holy Spirit to guide my words. I trust that God will find a way and give me the strength to follow it.