unbearable

For several years now, Rob and I have been living willingly below the poverty line as a [hopefully] temporary sacrifice toward the goal of establishing two non-profit organizations. But we find ourselves having more and more conversations lately about how we know when we've hit bottom financially and have to make some difficult decisions.

For two and a half years after we moved to Three Rivers--a result of not being able to afford our apartment in Indiana any more--I worked at St. John's Lutheran Church as the office manager. Last year, after Rob graduated from Goshen, we felt it was time to take the risk once again of attempting *cino work full time. Thanks to being hired to teach a one-credit course at Calvin last fall, we subsisted for a while, but by Christmas, our financial situation had begun to look pretty grim again and we still are finding ourselves struggling to get by. In fact, this may be the worst it's been so far. I find myself worrying about how we're going to afford basic things like laundry detergent, because rent and credit card bills are so far out of reach I can only worry about them in a very abstract way.

Rent is the big thing. I don't enjoy telling nameless credit card people that we can't pay our bills, but I don't feel any guilt about it. However, our "landlords" are our dear friends and housemates, who have been very patient with us so far, but I feel like my integrity in our relationship is all tangled up with our ability to be faithful to our commitment.

And so we're coming to the question about once a week now: How do we know when to do something different? Our current work with *cino and World Fare, at this level of income, is not sustainable. And if we want to continue to get somewhere with those organizations, taking on a part time job is not an option. Rob is already swamped with side jobs (which are nice, but not sufficient to pay our bills at this point in the downward spiral), in addition to all of the web and print design and miscellaneous work he has on his plate for *cino. And my work definitely suffered while I maintained 20 hours per week at the church.

This work has always been full of ups and down, but it feels lately as if the extremes are getting more extreme and more frequent. The ups are euphoric--we feel like we've turned a corner with *cino. Our last conference was wonderful, as we had an excellent display with worthwhile resources and we felt like we were finally learning how to talk about what we do. The downs are full of anger, resentment, frustration and hopelessness. We are so far in the hole that even selling CDs and books and anything else "extra" isn't worth the effort. I struggle with a martyr complex, selfishly asking myself, "Why should we work ourselve to death to improve the quality of life for other people when we can't afford to have any sort of quality of life ourselves?" I realize that true quality of life doesn't take a lot of money, but I selfishly feel myself resenting our inability to take a simple, inexpensive vacation or go out in the evening for a beer. What happens when we can't sleep this feeling off any more? An end to this financial drought is perhaps in sight, but what if we can't survive that long?

Our discipline this year for Lent is, somewhat ironically, to stop working at 7pm. However, what is supposed to be a time to rejuvenate ourselves in the evening with a film or a book is quickly becoming a time with nothing to distract us from our financial failure. We have truly entered the wilderness.

I write this here at the risk of making people feel sorry for us. But this is a big part of our story right now that we've been hiding for just that reason: we don't want people to contribute to our organizations because they pity poor Rob and Kirstin. That's not sustainable, either. However, the only way we can endure this period of time is in community. The further we separate ourselves, the less we're in a position to determine whether the work we're doing is really significant for anyone.

And so I ask for prayer: we need to avoid (or at least survive) the traps of self-pity, of self-loathing, of despair. We need to rediscover resolve, resources and joy, either to continue or to move on. And I ask for encouragement: if something we do has value to you, please let us know. Send us an e-mail, write us a letter, give us a call, make a financial contribution of any size or get involved in some other way. All of these things have value to us, though admittedly the area in which we're struggling most right now is finances.

If we're going to continue on this road, we need people to walk with us, not fifty yards away on a parallel path, but right beside us, holding our hands. We simply are not emotionally fit to be organizational leaders without the support of those around us.