Reservoir
The Universe is creating growth opportunities for me again. Let’s just admit that it never does stop. I notice, though, that after enough faith-challenging experiences I’ve started to honestly see these things as opportunities, not (just) disasters, and that’s got to count for something.
So, without going into the gory details, suffice it to say that I’ve come into some bracing financial challenges this summer. I already knew July through September were going to be trying because of the way I chose to be paid this year at DU, but yesterday I found out that my initial safety net/back up plan sort of, well, dissolved. I’m not putting this out there a plea for help. Not at all, though I welcome suggestions. But I do suspect that writing about it, rather than quietly stuffing it into my nightmares, will be useful.
The thing is, I know it’s all going to work out fine, even if it looks harrowing from here. I know because 1) it always has, and 2) I’m totally ready to embrace this lifelong challenge around finances, and the other stuff that’s connected to it. Bring it on, baby.
Now, I decided to work on this money demon 
every day for the next five weeks as part of a class at unchurch I’m taking on “Breakthroughs,” so you’ll probably have to deal with some related posts. (Never fear; I’m sure I’ll still have plenty to say about important things like ice cream too. In fact, if Mama’s gon’ be wresting that money demon, she’s gon’ need some serious ice cream. Y’all got anything to beat Rocky Road?)
Let me start with the reservoir. The image came to me last night in a meditation, and I realized I’ve never had a sense of “extra,” of “more where that came from,” of “plenty set aside if we need it” where money was concerned. In writing this, I am not blaming my parents. Life happened, divorce happened, everyone was stretched and did the best they could. And that “extra” money that Mom and Jim (my sweet stepdad) came up with to help me buy my house last year was the most wonderfully empowering windfall of my life. So I’m not saying I’m not extraordinarily blessed, because I am.
But let’s face it, my dad also grew up in a poor Iowa farming family that would bitch-slap you for throwing away a plastic bag because there might be some use for it down the road. He was so sculpted by his Midwest Protestant scarcity mentality that he would, much to my dismay, make us hang our clothes on the line in the backyard in affluent Newport Beach, not because it smelled sweet but because using the dryer cost money. Needless to say, no one in Newport hung their clothes on the line. That old cowboy worked his ass off (still does at almost 80) driving his 1970-something Ford Econoline van (like this one driven by Kojak) from construction site to construction site to make sure we had rent money, clothes to wear, food to eat. But then he’d spend Saturday afternoons polishing his Cadillac Biarritz or his swanky 1956 white Lincoln Continental in the driveway. As hard as he toiled, any sense of luxury or excess was reserved for him alone, as his gemstone-encrusted belt buckles attested. Back-to-school shopping was all about Sears and Fed-Mart, and I’m not saying I don’t partly get it now, but in a town where kids bought their Guess! jeans and Polo shirts at Neiman Marcus, it was hard to feel like I matched up.
You can imagine how helpful someone like my dad was with alimony. It seemed like he was always “saving,” but the results were rarely about reward, appreciation, or pleasure; only maintenance. At Christmas we’d have a tiny tree, and Jesus, and one present each–unless there had been something “big” we wanted earlier in the year, in which case that would count as our Christmas present. It’s not all his fault, but giving was not easy for him. Chloe offset Cowboy’s miserliness with generosity, but never was it outside my awareness that she survived on a tight teacher’s budget that was usually busting at the seams. When she happily bucked up for designer jeans I wanted to throw up at the counter, I felt so guilty and selfish. But I still really, really wanted the jeans. I wanted to fit in with my wealthy peers, at least at the baseline.
My dad’s iron grip on the green just made me want to indulge when I had it; I didn’t want to be someone who held onto money so jealously. Besides, I enjoyed exercising my autonomy once I was working to buy the stuff he wouldn’t buy me–like a phone to call my friends on. And watching my mom work to keep her head above water made me want to be cautious but also generous. And so, between them both, you see, I cannot say that money felt like a safe thing, a solid backdrop of security, or something I even understood. I never had a sense of it being a resource we had that enabled us to do other things, something that we could trust. So even though I saved up money from my after school jobs to buy my first VW Beetle, and even though I was not spoiled like a lot of kids I knew, I never had a sense of true savings, of savings-as-security, of savings-as-options-down-the-line.
No surprise, then, that money has not been a well for me so much as a mine. I may be maintaining a pretty decent garden on the topsoil for a while, but when the unexpected happens, or when I know of no other reserve source to access, money becomes a hole that I dig for costly underground resources. The diamond mines of student loans. The coal mines of credit card debt. The wasteful process and desperate experience of carving into the earth when I haven’t planned well enough how my energy should be spent, my resources protected, my future guarded.
Fortunately, I have made significant progress in these areas. I have succesfully cut away large amounts of consumer debt. I finally have an asset that will gain equity. I have been learning to save and to be more intentional. But I am still totally ill-prepared for contingencies and the unexpected. Thus, as the Universe would have it, I have manifested this recent crisis, another in a lifelong string of such crises, to raise my consciousness about how this is going to change. Which gets me back to the reservoir I want to create.
A reservoir. A place where a precious resource (yes, even money) is built up and preserved. A source that can be drawn from when needed, but always attentively replaced, so that it remains perpetually available. A well that nutures even as it exists quietly, ready. Beyond survival, beyond filling up the hole and closing the mine, beyond tilling the topsoil, building a deep, rich reservoir.
It may take awhile, it may take a revolution, but this is where I’m headed.
Gulp.
