Born Again and Again by Megan K. Westra

Author:Megan K. Westra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MennoMedia
Published: 2020-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

6

Forgive Us Our Debts

Connection over Consumption in Finances

The number one thing couples fight over is money,” warned our premarital counselor. He spit out the word money as if it were bitter and handed us a sleek binder full of CDs and a book that matched. “These will teach you to manage your money God’s way.” A couple of weeks later, on a road trip from our then-home in West Virginia to Wisconsin, we listened to the entire series of CDs.

I hated it.

The bright man with a southern drawl talked about how reckless debt was and how people who spent years paying off debts were paying a “stupid tax.” He advocated for using only cash for large purchases. “Cash is king!” he insisted. “Isn’t Jesus supposed to be king?” I smirked at my fiancé.

To be fair, it wasn’t all bad advice. One lesson gave instructions for making a budget and another talked about the importance of speaking openly with your spouse about finances, especially before making large purchases. The speaker talked about the price point—a few hundred dollars—at which he committed to talking with his wife before buying something. My fiancé and I looked at each other wide-eyed. “Anything over twenty bucks?” he suggested. Given how significant twenty dollars was in our bank accounts at the time, I agreed.

We muddled our way through our first few years of marriage. Some months we sat down faithfully, as instructed by the man on the CD, for a “budget meeting.” Unlike the man on the CD, I insisted this meeting happen at a coffee shop where I could order a latte and cookies to ease the pain of being forced to look at our finances.

We worked hard to live within our means, and we both had the privilege of graduating from college without a significant amount of student loan debt. My job at our church, while not salaried at the time, did provide our housing. Our family members and many friends also had enough economic privilege to offer us their used furniture when they were updating, which we gratefully accepted.

I had no reason to hate talking about money as much as I did. I had been afforded every privilege growing up—parents who taught me how to track a bank account (and who helped bail me out when I incurred overdraft fees in high school), college scholarships that covered a large chunk of my tuition, and rent-free housing in young adulthood. Even with all that, scarcity plagued my thoughts. It seemed there would never be enough. Our furniture remained mismatched, and not always the style I would have liked, unlike our friends whose living rooms were well coordinated and Pinterest-worthy. Our cars were ten-plus years old and required regular repairs.

“Debt is dumb,” the man’s voice from the CD echoed in my mind. I agreed with that statement. Friends were often stressed about how long they were going to be paying off their loans. Others were working in jobs they hated to make minimum payments on loans they’d acquired in order to learn skills they were now unable to use in the workplace.

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