Healthy Boundaries Series: 1. Money management

This is a series on maintaining healthy boundaries within relationships.
The guidelines stated in this series may challenge a lot of long-standing habits. It is my experience that these old societal habits are unhealthy and that these new boundary markers point us to healthier ways to navigate our interpersonal dynamics and shared experience. I recommend that readers consider these guidelines and try them on before starting in with arguments. The suggested changes are nuanced and will possibly threaten our collective go-to behaviors for judging and attempting to manipulate other people's choices.

These boundaries outline what is ours to control and what is not ours to control. They keep us in our own business and out of other people's business. Poor boundaries encourage us to spend too much time trying to manage other people's lives and discourage us from the hard work of managing our own. It is a spiritual practice to move increasingly into managing our own business and to get out of everyone else's. The more we do this work, the clearer we will also become in identifying what is our shared business, and how to navigate that as well.  Without this work, we will do poorly in managing shared or public business.

Credit for identifying and articulating these boundaries goes to Mark R Carlson, MS, MDiv, Marriage and Family Therapist in Huntingdon Valley, PA. USA


1. MONEY MANAGEMENT: Do not judge how someone else spends their money

Several years ago a friend of mine was invited on a cruise. At the time, some of her income came from a grant. When she went on the cruise, the body who awarded her the grant felt obliged to question her use of her money. Were they justified? In my eyes, it seemed beyond their scope of management.

Recently, my husband and I were invited on a cruise. Most of the expenses were paid by a generous relative, but not all.  Should we say yes or no, knowing a "yes" would add unnecessary expenses to the debt which we could avoid by staying home?  As I debated, in the back of my mind were all the judgmental voices waiting to have an opinion should we say yes.

Sufficient money and growing debt have been an issue for us for a few years now as I struggle to make a living wage in New York. Many people know this. It is not something I believe I should feel ashamed about, even as I struggle with deep shame about it. I tell the truth about it even though several people have leaped to judgment of me as soon as they heard.

(I see this freedom to judge those who struggle to have enough money as a collective societal ill. Being poor is equated with having a moral weakness. It is as if those who are poor did something to deserve being poor, and if they would simply make better choices they would be lifted from the depths of poverty in very short order. This has not been true in any aspect of my lived experience. Speaking as a white person with two masters degrees who is the daughter of relative wealth, if anyone should be able to lift herself out of disadvantage, it is me.  But so far, despite my best efforts, I have not. Does the fault lie purely in me? Perhaps it does, if luck and timing and the stacked-against-the-poor nature of this country are not taken into account as well.)

Do not judge how someone else spends their money.

Notice all the objections that come up when that line is drawn.

Here is a common situation.  Joe and Jane are a married couple. They pool their finances, and each gets to take an equal portion from the group finances for their personal hobbies and interests. Jane spends her portion on facials and manicures and fancy hair coloring. Joe spends his portion on model trains. Joe secretly judges Jane, thinking her vain and wasteful, wishing she would spend the money on better housekeeping tools or a gym membership. Jane secretly judges Joe for spending his money on a childish hobby when he could be bettering himself with courses or more stylish clothes or a grooming regime.

Discuss.

My thoughts? The judging these lovers are doing tell us about their own preferences and insecurities and longings and say nothing about what the other partner "should" be doing differently.  They are projections. They are absolutely not loving of the other one's autonomy or freedom. They come from some sense of a need to control the other one's resources. He does not get to judge what she does with her portion. She does not get to judge what he does with his either.  PERIOD.

Good counseling would help them discover and name the fears underlying the attempt to control the other's use of money. It would deliver them each back into the things they need to address within themselves and take them out of the other's business.

When I first learned that I needed to stop judging how others used their money, I felt uneasy, insecure, and angry. I felt like some of my power was being taken away.  But by now I am grateful to have gained an understanding of why I long to control other people's anything, and for much better skills in discovering where my agency does and does not lie. I feel MORE empowered and better informed, not less.

Should my beloved husband choose to spend money in a way with which I do not feel comfortable, I can express that I feel uncomfortable and name why (to the best of my ability). I OWN my discomfort and do not try to use my feelings to make him choose differently. I ask him to hear my struggle, and then support him in doing what is authentic to him. Several times lately, when he asked I have expressed my opinion only to have him choose what he originally wanted anyway. I felt GLAD. I do not want to manipulate him with my feelings or thoughts, and in all those cases, it was the right choice for him. When he did reconsider his choice, he was learning about himself, not pleasing me.  He does like to please me! That is why it is so important to make sure I don't try to manipulate him by exploiting that desire to please me. I could exercise some control that way.  It would be toxic if I did.

Before I learned this boundary, I felt it was my duty to judge others in certain contexts. As I saw it, my judgment served to help them make better choices, which they might not make without the societal pressure of my (and others) judgment.

During that time, a dear friend ended up on welfare.  I felt entitled to judge her for many reasons, including for keeping the family pets (their feeding and care cost money!) and for not being harsher with her children who threw away their packed school lunches. It felt like my duty to nose into her decisions and try to influence them.  That we are still friends today is a testament to her forgiving and patient nature. She expressed how my advice affected her, said a bit about her reality and the choice to keep her pets, and did not take any of my advice. She drew a firm boundary without judgment and with a clear expression of feeling hurt. It took me a while, but over time I realized with increasing mortification just how clueless and entitled my so-called "help" had been. Subsequently, life also saw fit to drop me down into the debt-carrying class. I have since had many experiences from the "poor" side of the fence that have continued to educate me about the hurtful and harmful lack of boundaries our culture has around money.

Is someone else's use of money our business?  If it isn't, why are we trying to control it by judging it?  We can examine someone else's use of money to learn about our own longings and desires and values. We don't get to tell someone else our opinion about it unless they ask. Whether they heed our opinion or not is not our business either. We must leave others alone and manage our own money by our best judgment. Remember, "Do unto others as you wish them to do to you." Do you like being micromanaged?

The very question of how we manage money individually and collectively speaks to our societal narrative about money and entitlement and what belongs to whom. It speaks to the group assumptions that are part of each country's collective storytelling regarding entitlement and belonging and worth.  Who is deserving? Who is undeserving? Why and why not?

That is another entire blog post.

Following are the other three entries in the series:
Health
Family of Origin
Thoughts and Feelings

Forgive Us Our Debts

“Forgive Us Our Debts”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Oct. 13, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 40:6-11; Luke 16: 19-31; Heavenly Secrets 6960 

I love researching sermons.  The deeper I delve, the bigger and broader and more amazingly interconnected the insights become.  (It doesn’t get better than being Swedenborgian in my honest opinion.)

Heavenly Secrets 6960. ‘Put your hand into your bosom’ means making truth ones own. This is evident from the meaning of ‘hand’ as power, and from the meaning of ‘bosom’ as love. The chest corresponds to love since the chest holds within it the heart.  We have a sense of ownership of or attachment to the things we love. Therefore ‘the bosom’ symbolizes the things we ‘own’ or identify with, which is the same as the things we love.  For this reason ‘putting a hand into one’s bosom’ here means making something one’s own.  And for this reason 'the bosom’ symbolizes a person’s true self, or all the things with which one identifies or one ‘owns.’ 

“Forgive us our debts.”

I have had this topic on my heart for a while, having listened to many stories of good people struggling with overwhelming debt in the past several years.  I came to Maine with no debt and will be leaving with several thousand in debt, so it is an active personal topic as well. 

According to my book-keeping program, I now have a negative net worth.  I am worth less than nothing.  It doesn’t matter what my character is or my desire to do good, or my kindness, or my life experience.  Put me next to someone who earns more than I do—who owns more than I do—and I can be seen as “worth less” or worthless.  In today’s culture it means I must be less deserving.  That it would tell Jesus the same thing were He among us today is only a little comforting.

“Forgive us our debts.”

Debt weighs heavily on our hearts.  In this culture in particular debt seems to strike at our very sense of human worth, not just material worth.

Take yourself back to a time when you realized that you owed far more than you could pay.  Surely everyone in this room has experienced that bottom-dropping-out sensation—that cold hollow in the gut when you realized you didn’t know how you would repay a debt. Remember that insurmountable bill—that frightening peek into the future that struck at your very sense of worth and capability.  It doesn’t feel good.

To have a hopeless, unpayable debt forgiven, throws us sobbing on our knees.

As I researched this topic, I kept being struck by the relationship of debt with ownership, and Swedenborg’s extensive discussion of what is “our own.”  In spiritual growth circles, phrases have emerged such as “I need to own my part of it,” and “that wasn’t mine to own”.  They are used to describe how we do or don’t take responsibility over our part in misunderstanding and conflict.  Spiritual growth work invites us into greater and greater clarity over what we do and don’t “own” in our relationships. This clarity brings healing to all areas of our lives. We develop the ability to “own” our part rather than “pass the buck” to someone else. 

Spiritual “ownership” means we take responsibility for our contributions to life situations.  We become better and better at managing what is ours and leaving alone what isn’t ours in our relationships with others. We start spending increasing energy on our own spiritual territory and stop spending so much energy on what other people “should” be doing. The metaphor holds strong all the way through.  Our debts are all the things we are refusing to take responsibility for yet which drain our ability to be of service to others.  We need help acknowledging them and learning to manage them. This is far easier than it sounds but it is essential to our happiness.

“Forgive us our debts.”

When the scripture reading from Isaiah says that God carries the lambs in His bosom, it is symbolizing the way God embraces our innocence and vulnerability.  The bosom symbolizes what someone loves most—it is the “heart place.”  The female bosom symbolizes motherly comfort and nourishment; the male bosom symbolizes fatherly protection and strength.  The Divine bosom encapsulates all of these qualities in one and transcends them as well.  Our weakness and ignorance are next to God’s heart.  He carries us tenderly even when we feel weak and unworthy.

When we pledge allegiance, we put our hand to our “bosom.” This shows our willingness to support something we hold dear.  This intuitive act of placing our hand on our heart springs from the spiritual meaning of showing commitment to the things that have the most meaning in our lives. 

Swedenborg tells us that we are what we love.  The things we draw to ourselves represent our desire to “own” or be identified with those things.  Ultimately, everything we pull close represent what we love, and what we love is who we are.  Why would we pull close those things that reflect badly on us, even if we are responsible for their existence?

 “Forgive us our debts.”

We say that phrase every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. It is a simple phase, holding within it such a world of meaning.  We are not asking that God forgive our debts when we pray this.  We are stating the reality of what God is already doing.  Our “debts” are already and continuously forgiven by God.  It is we who cannot forgive our debts.  It is we who feel the shame, and can get caught between denial and self-abuse when we realize how much we “owe” spiritually.  We struggle with all aspects of spiritual ownership. We tend to swing between wanting too much “credit” or wanting none at all even though it is due.  We notice when others “take credit” unduly and we feel the injustice of it.

Where do you lie on the spectrum of ownership of your spiritual worth?  Do you acknowledge the riches you have and use them in wise service, or do you tend to feel undeserving and bury them in the ground? Are your riches repeatedly cast before swine?  When the world wants to hand you responsibility because of your spiritual abilities, do you hide your gifts under a bushel, or do you step up and offer from your bounty?  Or are you the one most likely to give energetically more than you have only to end up needing help yourself or in debt?

Because we all tend to be out of balance in one direction or the other, there is only honor in recognizing yourself in one of these profiles.  “Owning” your tendencies is the first step toward a healthier spiritual “financial portfolio.”  As for me, I am the one who gives away too much.  I repeatedly “spend” too much on helping others, forgetting to leave enough for myself.  There is a false “Christian” cachet associated with this way of living that is not actually helpful.  Another name for an overly-sacrificing style of relationship might be “codependency.” So detrimental can codependency be to healthy relationship, it now has its own twelve step group to aid people in recovery. Far from making everything better as it likes to believe it can, codependence is often as big a part of the problem as what it is trying to help.

And this brings us back to ownership.  If I am too ashamed to “own” the ways I am codependent, but instead pass responsibility onto others, (blaming) I will never get free of my spiritual “debts.”  Only by owning my part in each problem to the best of my ability (but no more than my part) can I help restore my relationships to their rightful balance.  Even if those around me are wobbling in their balance, the more stable and healthy I am in myself, the more I make space for others to find their balance.  The only debt I can own is my own.  The only contribution I am responsible for is my own.  And because we are all so interconnected, the more stable and balanced I become, the more easily those around me can find their own balance.

“Forgive us our debts.”

My grandfather kept a little black book on each of his eight children, tallying what they were costing him as they grew up. Imagine the emotional impact that must have had on those seven little girls and one little boy.  One day my grandmother, who rarely stood up to her charismatic but often violently angry husband, threw those books in the fire.  He never raised a hand to her, they say.

A chasm of unworthiness existed in the heart of my grandfather. He could not forgive himself for whatever he thought was so completely unlovable inside himself, so he spread harsh judgment and blame onto those around him.  A terrible accuser existed inside his own consciousness, placing on him a sense of debt so great he could never get out from under it.  He could not love his children because he could not love himself.  I don’t know what wound he carried, but I don’t believe he ever forgave himself on this earth. He died of a massive heart attack at age forty eight.  My prayer is that he found the self-forgiveness he needed in the life to come.

 

“Forgive us our debts.”

God would no more keep a book of deposits and debits on our spiritual account than would any loving parent.  Imagine saying to a newborn, “Well, it will be twenty thousand for the hospital fees; another ten thousand for the prenatal visits, blood-tests, and ultrasounds; then there was the six hundred for the maternity wardrobe; two hundred for the prenatal vitamins; and we haven’t even begun to add up the costs of diapers, immunizations, clothing, school costs, university….  Will that be check or credit card?”

We can never repay our “debt” to God, but it isn’t about debt, with God.  It is we who cannot forgive our debts, not God.  We are born profoundly imperfect, frightened, and ignorant.  We then inherit whatever the family legacy might be, be it privilege and loving support or blame, abuse, and addiction, or something in between.  If we leave this life having made any progress on the spiritual family legacy, I count it as a win. Besides, no one can see our spiritual balance sheets but God anyway.

And God forgave our debts before we were born.

Amen

The Readings

Isaiah 40: 6-11

The voice said, “Cry out!”

And I said, “What shall I cry?”

“All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

O Zion, You who bring good tidings, get up into the high mountain;

O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength. Lift it up, be not afraid;
Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him;

Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him.

He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those who are with young.

Luke 16:19-31

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus in his bosom. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”