When The Money Gets Funny
No coffee for me please
Do you know anyone in prison?
Probably not! But if you ever happen to find someone you care about in prison, let me give you one bit of advice………Send money! Even if they say they don’t need it, send it anyway. In prison you need money to call home, to use the computers, and last but definitely not least, those weekly trips to the commissary.
In my experience, the most anticipated list in prison every week was the commissary out-of-stock list. When they put that list up on the wall it looked like dropping bread in a minnow pond, people come from everywhere. Like it sounds, it had the out-of-stock items highlighted and the entire building would shake with groans if the list was covered in yellow highlighter. In those months after covid you were lucky if extra small underwear and cue tips were available. It’s difficult to explain the appeal of commissary in prison because the experience itself was anything but appealing. They gave you a pre-printed list with all available items and you went down the list and checked the things you wanted and turned it in the day before you shopped. Easy Peasy right? Of course there were two hundred other people who had lists in the pile and y’all all stood outside the commissary and waited for your name to be called. Rain, sleet, heat, or snow…..you stood outside. Once they piled all your commissary into this one big mesh bag, you threw it over your shoulder and lugged it back to your housing unit. Then the challenge became finding a place to put it in your 3x2 foot locker. Like I said, its difficult to explain the appeal, but every week, after swearing I wasn’t going back, I’d have my list right there in the pile. It certainly broke up the week’s monotony.
Unless of course, you didn’t have any money!
With no money it was easy to fall into a funk. I saw it in myself and in others, when the money is low….the stinking thinking is high. It’s completely understandable that people might get upset when they don’t have money to call home or use the computers, but commissary? It might seem crazy that people get to swinging low when they don’t have money to shop at a prison commissary full of off-brand chips and out-of-date candy bars…..But it's a fact. Money can be a little all consuming in prison.
Just like it can for me and you today!
What’s amazing to me is that even after going through that prison experience, money still sneaks up on me. You see, in prison, you're eventually going to learn to do without whether you have money or not. More often than not, that commissary list they put up every week was going to be swimming in a sea of yellow highlighter. Some weeks they were out of more than they had. So you learn to do without. And you know what, it was fine! The world didn’t stop turning because I had to cut back or cut out coffee. Or sweetener. Or even calls home.
In my life before prison, money was it! It was the one thing I thought I needed to be happy and make my family happy. Of course God taught me differently in prison but it’s sometimes hard to walk-that-walk when my money gets funny. The thing is, I know better. I am completely convinced that you can judge a person’s spiritual condition by their relationship with money.
It just seems like I’m a little behind the learning curve on this one. I’ve often wondered if God looks down at me and thinks, “It sure is taking this one a long time to get with the program!” In the Heaven’s dictionary I imagine my picture being under the term slow learner. When I get to Heaven I’m hoping to get it changed to weak student since it just sounds so much less numbskull. It's tough to be a weak student. To be that person who only learns after multiple lessons. Fortunately, God has a special needs program that He’s put me on but it’s not always been the easiest.
The thing is, I trust God. Implicitly! Or at least I think I do. But saying it and living it are two different things and what you believe is revealed by what you do. If my money gets funny and it affects my attitude, that simply reveals that my confidence is in money, not God.
It’s so easy for me to forget that every time I stress over money God waits until the last possible minute to deliver me. Because He is bound and determined to rid me of this confidence in money. And it works, my faith gets a little stronger each and every time.
Not to mention it enables me to live generously and that opens up a whole other world of blessings. So much of this walk with God is about just following when it seems to make no sense at all. Giving when you can’t afford it or standing firm when it’s going to cost you.
Coincidentally, I’ve noticed a strange irony in this journey, the more I give, the less my money gets funny.
Keep Following!