The Ugly Green Monster, or Being content with your own challenges

It is always difficult comparing oneself to others. It is perhaps more difficult not to compare oneself to others. The tendency is one that every parent (every parent, that is, who does not encourage such comparisons) combats as soon as his/her child enters school. "Tommy is 3 pages ahead of me in math!" "Jimmy read 3 books and I'm only on my second!" "Caleb and Cody run faster, and Ruben is a better soccer player!" But in all reality, I think most adults are equally guilty of comparing themselves to others, and that the result of such comparisons is the inevitable envy of others' situations. It is a struggle to remember, at times, that our situations are frequently the results of our own different goals and choices, and that others' challenges may be more difficult than ours, even if their circumstances seem better in one way or another.

This is something I have struggled with ever since coming to Texas. The standards by which native Texans judge life--especially the financial aspects of life--are radically different from how I understood things growing up in New Orleans. Graduate students still being supported by their parents and grandparents provided my first great shock, but I think this difference really gelled for me when a friend's husband remarked that he didn't think they were yuppies yet, but that he hoped to be so one day. To me, the term "yuppie" represented something like Matthew Arnold's use of the term "Philistine" in Culture and Anarchy, or the term bourgeois to societies that value aristocratic culture. To him, "yuppie" represented a standard of income and comfort to which he aspired. As I remarked to a student the other day when we were discussing graduate school and income, specifically, the idea that some B.A. degrees have a greater payout than many graduate degrees, it definitely depends on your perspective whether a graduate degree is "worth it." My family already earns more than my family's income when I was growing up (inflation notwithstanding), and my mother had 6 children. I am only on #3.

Though I have stopped panicking about the financial aspect of this pregnancy, having found that my insurance will probably only require us to pay about $600 for every aspect of this pregnancy and delivery, it will not be easy on us to have #3 at this stage. We just decided that we could afford #2, when we were confronted with the choice, shortly after her birth: reconcile with the USDEd or be garnished. (Forbearances fell through the cracks.) We considered ourselves to be doing pretty well, comparatively. We were better off financially than we ever had been since marriage. My husband's job was more stable (since he gave up the teaching that he enjoyed) and he was guaranteed a paycheck 12 months of the year (which I am not). So I was shocked when a friend of mine, newly married herself, devoutly Catholic, a great advocate of NFP who considered me an NFP "success" when I became pregnant shortly after becoming Catholic, presented me with a couple of shopping bags of baby "gifts"--chosen from the crisis pregnancy center where her Dad worked. Was I to be a charity recipient? I in no way felt like I was the person for whom those goods were intended. I was married, my pregnancy was "planned". . . I could only assume that she either believed that my daughter was an NFP success because I was "open to," but not necessarily trying to achieve, pregnancy, or that we were too poor to be able to afford another baby. Either impression was disturbing.

Inevitably, when one is close friends with people, particularly, it seems, with couples, one becomes acquainted with their financial situations. In the case of this friend and her now-husband, I know that they planned meticulously (albeit quickly) for marriage by taking stock of their various resources, considering their compatibility and God's will--things that it would not have occurred to me to do, and which, if considered carefully, would have contraindicated marriage because of our financial situations at the time. So we came to realize that these newlyweds, who did not have children and did not have to pay rent because of an arrangement with the homeowner, made roughly twice our income. Other friends exceeded our income by something like three times, but did not feel financially secure enough to have a family, in spite of their significant lack of debt. We have always struggled. It may have been wrong to compare ourselves to others who did not choose graduate school, or who did not finish or work continuously towards the degree the way I have. But the comparison was inevitable, and the seeming unfairness of the situation preyed on my mind. It also puts one at a disadvantage in a friendship to feel as though, if your friends can't afford a child at $100K, how can they respect your decision to have a second at $40K?

I have discussed elsewhere the dilemma of helping relatives who need financial assistance after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina. We pay for two cars, but only have use of one.

Things will not be easy, and I am still over a year away from the possibility of a tenure-track job, though all the instruments we have agree that motherhood decreases a woman's chance of achieving tenure, either because of her own decisions in the matter or others' prejudices. Fatherhood, by contrast, according to an article I can no longer find, increases the man's chance of advancing in academia, providing his fatherhood is a subtle aspect of his persona. My husband had to abandon the possibility Ph.D. a while back, in support of my own Ph.D. (though perhaps not permanently). So I'm pretty much our hope for any increase in income. Later, not now.

And here I am, working on #3.

The question occurs to me, once again. . . What is the role of Divine Intervention in financial matters? There are many whose blogs I have read, notably Jen at Et tu, Jen?, as well as commentors on a previous post of mine, who believe explicitly and implicitly that God does provide materially and in tangibly noticeable, even dramatic, ways. I have always experienced it as a slow inching, by degrees, to a slightly more preferable state, followed by a number of setbacks like a seized tax return after loan consolidation paperwork fell through, or sabotage by graduate coordinator of the Ph.D. program that my husband would have graduated from by now, or the sabotage of a willful department head who could not see why someone with a family and an excellent teaching record deserves to teach, and be paid for, the full-load of 4 classes instead of 1.

If I accept my own view of things, that God does not directly intervene in financial matters, but provides for our needs in other ways, I can not account for others' financial-relief-though-prayer stories. However, if I accept others' faith in God's provision for our material needs--in some cases, wants--I am faced with the dilemma not of why my needs are not met, but why others, in worse situations than mine, do not have the benefit of divine intervention. As for myself, I have either to conclude that I lack constancy in prayer and faith in this particular area of God's mercy, or that my situation is not bad enough to merit Divine Intervention, which I can accept, but I know that there are more pious people than I who are very, very desperately poor.

This was not intended to be a post primarily about finances, however, but about envy, comparing oneself to others, and finally preferring one's own challenges.

There are many other occasions that arise that encourage one to compare oneself to others. Mothers everywhere discuss childbirth experiences, early feeding issues, jaundice. . . I have twice had friends less experienced than I with breastfeeding spared the agony I faced with a child who would not wake up to nurse--who lost a pound of her birthweight while I waited for my milk to arrive. Whose doctors did not have to push formula, and who did not make them feel deficient. Baby and I survived these trials, and more. And it is difficult to see others breeze through. . . Except that one of my friends had to travel 3 hours in the days after her son was born to spend time with her father in his last days. She found that she was pregnant about the time that he learned that he had cancer, and had little if any hope of it being cured. So her unplanned pregnancy resulted in her father being able to see his new grandchild before he died. What a gift! And had she had to struggle with my new baby struggles, her ability to find time for her father would have been compromised. My other friend who has wonderfully had unparalleled success with breastfeeding almost lost her baby due to complications, endured an emergency C-section, and had a terribly emotionally taxing pregnancy even before the onset of health concerns for the baby. Her positive breastfeeding experience has allowed her a measure of comfort in all of this. It is impossible to feel actual envy in the face of these circumstances, and it helps to be able to recognize that our difficulties are our own, unique to us, given to us with a recognition of what we are capable of handling, and from what we will benefit most in our particular circumstances.

Since finding I was pregnant, I have found more blogs discussing--often in grim detail--the emotional and physical pain of miscarriage than I ever suspected existed. I already knew of 3 fellow-graduate students who suffered miscarriages since I was pregnant with my daughter. This is not healthy reading for someone in her 9th week of pregnancy, but it does make it clear to me that my feelings about this baby--and this pregnancy--are not ambiguous. I did not expect that they would be, but being confronted with it concretely is a blessing of sorts. In the midst of my sadness and sympathy for others, I realize that I prefer my own challenges, and pray that I will not have to face what they have bravely endured.

Similarly, the financial burdens I have are ones to which I am fairly accustomed at this point. They weigh me down. They are ugly. They seem inescapable--and may well be. But they are my own challenges. I have a wonderful, supportive husband who understands me and does not demean me or my experiences in any way. We both value much in life above money, and we will hopefully teach our children this attitude. Likely we are not as generous as we could be, but since we both returned to the Church, this has been improving. It is difficult to be generous when one's mind is focused on one's own financial troubles! We love one another and our children. We will accept this new life with excitement. We have goals that are non-financial that may be within reach! So at the end of the day, the comparisons between our life and the lives of our friends do not hold up. We are living as we have chosen to live in many ways; we accept our own challenges and are satisfied.

ADDENDUM--Here is the source for my comments about academic motherhood and fatherhood, above, from The New Republic's Open University blog feature. Evidently the same search term yielded this result and one of my posts! It never ceases to amaze me how the web works. . .