Save Money, Live Generously?

There are so many things I’ve been wrestling with over the past couple months, but one of the big ones is money. Not in the way you would expect, however. Yes, I’m overwhelmed at the amount of money we’re considering spending in just one year for J’s therapy. Yes, it’s mind-boggling, and I have moments when I wonder how the heck we can possibly do it. But the issue I struggle with most goes deeper than just wondering where the money will come from. You see, over the past couple years, Chris and I have had many conversations about money. Maybe because we lived without it for so long during medical school and residency, and now suddenly we have a “real” income. Don’t get me wrong – academic physicians don’t make nearly as much as you’d expect. But for the first time in our adult lives, we have more than enough. That’s an interesting concept to ponder – more than enough. What exactly does it mean? How much is enough? When Chris was still in residency, another doctor once told us that you can never have enough money. The more you have, the more you spend, so you still end up not having enough. Chris and I both walked away from that conversation cringing inside. That’s not who we wanted to be. That’s not how we wanted our lives to be defined. So when we (finally) did end up finding ourselves with a “real” income, we thought long and hard, and talked often, about what we should do with it. Should we buy a bigger house, a nicer car, a bigger TV, a couple of iphones….just because we can? That just didn’t seem to sit well with us. It’s not that we thought it would be wrong to buy those things; it just didn’t seem like a huge priority to us at the time. Instead, we started saving, since we had zero savings after residency. And we started giving more. The more we gave, the more we wanted to give. In the past year we read the book Radical by David Platt, which was painful and beautiful at the same time. I also read Generous Justice by Tim Keller, and have read parts of Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis (a girl from Nashville who moved to Uganda and adopted like 15 kids and now runs an orphanage there, and she’s only about 22 years old!). After reading these books, we both felt pulled towards even more frugal living and generous giving. Our motto became “Save money. Live generously.” When we began to look at the world, including our family’s income and lifestyle, through the perspective of the Kingdom, it just didn’t seem important for us to have a full cable package, the newest ipad, and a pair of Uggs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ipads and Uggs, but it just wasn't a priority to us.

Even more than that, we felt God calling us to give deeper, but not necessarily with money. We felt Him calling us to sacrifice more of ourselves, to follow His call to love others, even when it’s not convenient or easy. We had talked many times in the past about adoption, but it didn’t feel like the right time for us to approach that journey. However, we felt very drawn towards foster care. The need for loving, stable, Christian foster families is so overwhelming, and that need is not being met. We wrestled with it for a while, because truly, foster care is not an easy thing to undertake. We knew it would be hard, we knew it would be painful, we knew it would be emotionally draining. But we also knew there was a need, and we could fill that need. We could love those children, we could care for them, we could immerse them in grace. And they so desperately NEED that. So we held our breath and signed up for foster parent training. About halfway through the training, we found out we were pregnant. That was great news, but a bit unexpected. We decided to go ahead and finish the foster care training, then hold off temporarily on taking in any foster kids until the new baby was at least a few months old. It would be a delay, but we still felt called to providing a home for children who need one, and we were committed to making it happen. We were looking at bigger houses and considering moving within a year, mostly so we’d have room for more kids. Then suddenly…BAM. Our son is diagnosed with a possible Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now we’re looking at literally thousands of dollars per month in treatment and dozens of hours of therapy. Our little boy is going to need intentional attention from me every minute I can give it to him. There’s no way we can take in a foster child any time soon…to give that child the emotional attention, healing, and support that he/she will need…and still focus on aggressive intervention with J. And in order to make the payments for his therapy, we probably won’t be able to continue giving as much as we have been.

So I’ve been wrestling with this. On one hand, it’s reassuring to know that if we cut back on our giving, we would probably have enough to make the therapy payments without having to use up our savings. But on the other hand, should we cut back on our giving? Should we stop supporting missionaries who we love? Should we stop sponsoring a child? Should we stop giving so much to the church? Is that the right thing to do? It’s not that I feel guilt about this. We don’t give out of guilt. We give because we want to, because it’s important to us. That’s why it hurts so much to think about not being able to give.. I still WANT to give. I WANT to be generous. I WANT to love and welcome foster children in to our family. I’ve reconciled myself with the fact that this diagnosis probably means we won’t be moving to a bigger house any time soon. That’s okay. I want J to get better much more than I want a 4-bedroom house. But I can’t understand why God would spend so much time leading Chris and me towards a desire to live generously, then suddenly take away our ability to do so. Why give us the passion in the first place, then not allow us to do it? I just don’t understand.

I don’t have an easy answer to this, but I keep coming back to the idea that God is not nearly as concerned with the dollar amount we give as He is with the heart behind our giving. And my heart wants to give. Maybe I can’t take in a foster child any time soon, but I want to. Every time I hear a story about foster care or even hear the words foster care, I want to cry. I can’t pick up the book Kisses from Katie right now, because if I do, it breaks my heart. So many children who need to be loved, so many children who I WANT to love. And instead, we’ll be pouring all of our extra resources in to just one child. But he’s OUR child. HE is the child God chose to put in our family. HE is the child God entrusted to us. And he needs us to pour everything we have in to loving him. How could we not do that? I don’t understand why God would burden me with the desire to help so many, then tell me that my calling right now is to help the ones He has already given me, and that’s all. But it seems like that’s what He’s doing. So I guess I will continue to pray for God to raise up others to step in where we leave off. And I will continue to pray for those children to find loving homes, to find grace,  to find healing, to find Jesus. And then I will love my own children with everything I’ve got, literally. That’s what God is asking us to do right now. And somehow, it’s enough.