Adding It All Up

I think I’ve told you before that I read blogs to which I am not linked here.  I read two blogs religiously and look forward to hearing about what is going on in these women’s lives as if they were my sisters.  I don’t tell you about them because of the cursing (of course you’ve read the words before and all that, but oh my lands, those are some things I cannot lead you to…in spite of my intense love for these women, or maybe because of it), but I can readily overlook anything offensive when I’m laughing that much or crying that hard or simply identifying with their perspectives.

This week I read a post that touched a nerve in me.  It was well written.  It was emotional, and she was expressing things I’ve thought before, things with which I can identify, things that I have thought and felt.  And it made me nervous. 

Mostly she had written down her self-confessed neurotic thoughts about being a financial drain on her husband and how dependent she now is on him.  She’s pregnant with her second child, so quite a bit of what occurred can be chalked up to the hormones that are currently employed in the effort of making lungs and eyes and the like, but there is also that part that is not irrational.  It is the part that does math. 

She works part time.  She stays at home.  They aren’t hurting for money, but there just isn’t that cushy savings account that once was due to some unexpected expenses and the future ones that she knows exist. 

And all of that anxiety and stress and those little touches of crazy didn’t really mix well on that particular day.  And she stepped back and complained a little bit.  She ate a meal on her own and she took a bath by herself and she climbed into her bed to watch a favorite television show and she composed this post without hiding the ugly.  It’s the honesty that is so commendable.

But math is the wrong discipline for these kinds of thoughts.  It’s not that money doesn’t matter, because everyone knows that dollars count, but it’s just the wrong way to measure one’s importance.  It can’t be the weighs and means for life and it certainly isn’t for happiness.  If it were we wouldn’t have TMZ and celebrity rehab. 

Resenting the person who earns the money for their supposed freedom or resenting yourself for your lack of monetary contribution to your family’s well being does no one any good.  If my husband made a trillion dollars a year and came home to a nagging wife, a home in disarray and a child who was perpetually out of sorts, what good would that be? But what should any of us do with those thoughts and emotions and feelings about our seeming lack of equality?

I know what I am doing about it. I’m not feeding the wolf that sympathizes with the resentment.  I’m not going to listen to the voice that lets me feel sorry for myself or overwhelmed by questions for which I don’t have answers or angry over things that I think should be different.  I’m going to feed the wolf of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, kindness and self control. I’m going to feed it so that it is the only one that grows. And then when the battle comes, we know which one will win.