It makes you feel less like a man when you can’t provide for your family. Marie would agree that neither of us dreamed of being rich. We just wanted not to have migraines each month as we tried to stretch too small a paycheck to meet too many bills. Occasionally we wanted to afford some little extras.
I think that is really how it began. Marie’s birthday was coming up. I wanted to surprise her with a nice night out – baby sitter, dinner, and tickets to a community theater to see a play. I wanted to make her feel special for one night and know that I did appreciate all she put up with.
I looked on it as a loan. I’d been left to clean up after worship and put the money from the offering away in the church safe until the treasure could count it on Monday morning. A local high-school choir sang in our worship service and there were several parents of the choir members in attendance. That resulted in more cash than normal in the offering plates. To borrow $150 to help my wife feel special didn’t seem like an evil thing to do.
The problem is it worked like a charm. Marie was thrilled. I felt like her hero, and the church wasn’t hurt at all. In fact, I reasoned, the real reason those parents were there was because I worked so hard with the church youth group who suggested the idea. In a way, it was sort of an extra bonus for all I was doing.
The next time it was to buy Christmas gifts for the family. After all, they were the one’s who paid the extra price for my long hours. After that it was an Easter outfit for my daughter and a Wii program for the whole family. It wasn’t long before the loan/bonus program amounted to several thousand dollars.
