The Day I Decided to Stop Worrying About Money

I didn’t win the lotto. I didn’t pay off my mortgage. The day I committed to stop worrying about money was a day like any other.

A few Christmas’ ago, I found myself in troubled financial waters as a newly minted real estate investor. We had just acquired our first rental and my tenant of only a short few months informed me she would be terminating the lease. 

The flexible lease terms didn’t concern me at first. She was an ideal applicant who was looking for a home to buy at the height of the housing market when purchasing a house was harder than winning the lottery. She quipped she might end up staying for years, which was what I secretly hoped for. But she managed to pull off the inconceivable. She was in escrow after only a few short months and would be moving out at the end of the month. 

Securing her was much more costly and time consuming than I anticipated. With all of the marketing and broker fees, searching for a new tenant this soon would certainly put me in the red. With the rising cost of raising two pre-teens, nor were we in a position to afford two mortgages for very long. On top of this, we had a looming vacation to Japan we planned months ago. My first-world money problems left me short of breath.

(I realize these are privileged problems and I may not seem like the ideal person to address how not to worry about money, but more on that below and why I believe God qualifies me anyway.)

The cost of the trip made me further apprehensive given what we could be facing. Still, I tried to remain optimistic. Very few homes were available for rent on the market, and even though none of the candidates were ideal thus far, we had a good amount of interest. I pushed my worries aside long enough to enjoy our trip. 

As soon as we returned, however, I called my realtor to see if we had any prospects for a new tenant. But there were none. Worse still, I checked listings on Redfin and Zillow only to discover that the pretty barren rental market before I left was suddenly inundated just two week later with a dozen new properties in the same neighborhood – properties that were newer, nicer, cheaper. It was as if everyone was waiting to list their property at the start of the new year. 

Ugh! I screamed inside my head.  Buying a second property was wholly my idea. Money was the most obvious concern, but there was more on the line than that. After being a mostly stay-at-home mom for a decade, I felt I had something to prove. Financial independence has always been important to me, but now with the kids more grown, and recent circumstances that left me feeling more vulnerable, the itch to start working again was real. 

I began to panic and second guess everything. That adult entourage reeking of marijuana and smoke who kept asking about the privacy of our backyard wasn’t so bad were they? Perhaps we had been too picky. My husband always veers on the safe and now look at us. Competition was more fierce and we would have to begin paying dual mortgages in just three weeks. How long could we keep that up? What if we couldn’t find anyone for months? Months could easily turn into a year. What had I done? Had I steered my family wrong in purchasing a second home? What did I know about being a landlord anyway?

God’s Message to Me

While these thoughts consumed and paralyzed me, I managed to open my computer for my daily devotional out of pure habit. This little robotic movement in the face of negative force fields must be why they say you are the sum of your habits because I moved very little otherwise. 

I proceeded to mediate on the verse of the day on biblegateway.com. It pointed to Matthew 6:24. 

“No one can serve two masters,” it read. “Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

My expectant heart sank just a little. Scripture has had an uncanny way of speaking to me throughout my life, and I was really hoping for some words of wisdom on that dreary morning. But this well-known verse just sounded trite. I wasn’t trying to serve money after all; merely make ends meet. Still, I opened up the entire chapter to continue reading, as was my habit to do.

The verse that followed, however, hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25).

This, though, was relevant. Worrying about my life – what I would eat or drink or how I would pay next month’s rent – was exactly what I was going through. But what did trying to make ends meet have to do with serving money instead of God? The cause and effect seemed like non-sequiturs but this passage was making a connection and it produced a startling revelation I had not yet considered up until that moment. 

Jesus was saying, and seemed to be saying very explicitly to me that morning,  ‘You can’t serve both God and money so don’t worry about what you will eat or where your next months rent will come from.’

Jesus doesn’t say you can’t serve two masters, so don’t try to become the next Elon Musk or Warren Buffet. According to this passage, the formidable temptation to slide away from God and serve money stemmed not from lofty ambitions or greed, but seemingly benign, mundane and even responsible worries like the one I was enthralled with.

‘But Jesus,’ I asked in my heart, ‘Shouldn’t we think about how to clothe and feed our family? Isn’t it our parental and societal duty to fulfill our financial responsibilities?’

I reread the passage more carefully this time. And herein lied the distinction.

Jesus doesn’t say don’t think about these things. He doesn’t say don’t plan for your retirement, or don’t work hard to provide for your kids college tuition. There are countless passages in the Bible that encourage diligent work – (“Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth” (Proverbs 10:4)), wise investing (“Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth” (Ecclesiastes 11:2)), and plenty more that warn against idleness (“Let the one who doesn’t work not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)).

What Jesus does say, however, is don’t worry about these things. Don’t “worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” Because worry is poison, as I was now discovering. And the easiest and most tempting thing to worry about is money. And we do it because it doesn’t feel wrong. We do it, perhaps, because it feels responsible even. But worry cast a dark shadow on our lives. It steals our joy, robs us of faith, and clouds optimism. Worry causes heart disease, increases blood pressure. Worry kills from the inside out. 

My worries were hijacking me from living in the moment for sure. And they were paralyzing me from making future plans. But my worries were stealing from my past, too. With money troubles looming, I found myself retrofitting past experiences. Was our winter trip really worth it? Was it really that memorable? If this house is causing so much stress, was it really a blessing after all?

The Parable of the Sower

Jesus emphasizes this manifestation in the Parable of the Sower where he describes four types of soil: hard path, rocky, thorny, and good soil. About the thorny soil, he had this to say: 

“The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22).

Money Plagues Us All

This is probably a good time to mention that I am not so out of touch with reality that I don’t know an investment property and a financially mismanaged trip to Japan are privileged problems. But the reason I’ve decided to share my money concerns, however self-consciously, is because Jesus doesn’t reserve the ask to not worry about money to the middle class. He asks it of us all, poor, middle and rich. And perhaps especially the rich,  because according to the Bible, the temptation to serve money grows with the size of one’s purse if you recall the verse about a camel going through the eye of a needle. 

Is the challenge for Mark Zuckerberg to align Facebook’s algorithm more with human wellness than profit and take into account the effect of fake news on our democracy and the suicide rate of teenagers any less formidable than a homeless person vying for food? Zuckerberg is a billionaire, but he is beholden to shareholders, and at least according to The Social Network, a complicated psyche that fears ending up a nobody. 

Money after all is so much more than physical sustenance. Money is our security, our social standing, and more often than not our identity. Money is the currency of the world that tries to tell us what we’re worth. Money is the root of all evil and the reason for our moral concessions. It’s why Jesus talked about money more than heaven and hell combined. 

So it was on this rather uneventful and melancholy morning while reluctantly doing my quiet time that I decided then and there, I wouldn’t let the worries of money hijack my past, present or future. I didn’t want to live an unfruitful life.

If There is an Ask, Perhaps There is a Way

I sat on these strong convictions for a hot minute before my confidence began to buckle. How does someone like me not worry about money? Then a thought entered my mind. It suddenly occurred to me that as impossible as a command like don’t-worry-about-money seemed, there were things Jesus never asks of us. He never asks, for instance, not to feel sad. While he promises to wipe away every tear one day, Jesus understands that it simply isn’t possible in this life to not feel sorrow. Jesus wept. And he understands that disappointment is a necessary part of the journey in finding him.

So I considered the possibility that if Jesus asks something of us, perhaps it’s because he will provide a way out for those who trust him, as promised in Psalm 91: 9-12. 

“If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.”

The Journey to Not Worrying

So I decided not to run from the fight. As I prepared myself for battle, I discovered I had more tools in my arsenal than I realized. 

1. Surrender to God. The first thing I knew I needed to do was surrender, which admittedly was easier to do after exhausting all of my human efforts. (Why it always seems to take hitting a wall before turning to God, I’m not sure.) But acknowledging God in this way didn’t just mean looking up at the sky and believing there was an arbitrary force out there. It meant coming to terms with who our God really was.

If God is truly all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving, if he really gave up his one and only son to pave the way for me, then I could relinquish control because he knew better and cared more about my life than even I did. And he was able to deliver on those terms. 

I also knew from past experience that letting go of dreams only to hold my breath would turn me blue with disillusionment. Seldom do things ever go the way I plan. So I knew that letting go and letting God could mean losing out on short-term goals for long-term gains. It was possible we could lose the home, even though I believed it to be a blessing and a miracle at the time. I might feel humiliation in the short term but God would restore me in the long term. And once I decided I would rather lose the house than venture on a path God was not on or did not bless – a place I had been before and never wanted to revisit – a not so small wave of peace swept over me. 

2. Recite scripture. Experiencing the cancer of worry firsthand, I also knew I had to be more proactive in controlling my thoughts. So I tried to replace passive brooding with intentional positivity by reciting scripture. 

God’s words are powerful. Our Creator spoke creation into being. And the words found in the Bible are equated as weapons with which we can fight the blows of the devil. Jesus himself recited scripture to combat Satan’s temptation during his 40-day fast in the wilderness. And we are also reminded that “everything will fade but the word of God.”

So anytime a voice crept into my mind and questioned, ‘What are you going to do if you don’t find a tenant in time?’ I recited the scripture I encountered that day. 

 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?… But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:24-25; 33-34).

3. Talk over your mind. The Bible also teaches us the power of our own words. Many of King David’s 73 Psalms were written like journal entries for an audience of one. King David did not have access to a therapist while living in caves and dodging assassins. When his entire kingdom turned on him and the many who sought his life included his own son in a coup attempt, King David consoled himself out of depression. 

“My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”

Just as soon, however, he proceeds to talk over his sorrows and fears. 

Why, my soul, are you downcast
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.”

– Psalm 43: 3-5

So I performed a little monologue of my own. 

‘Why are you so downcast?
God has always provided for you.
You came by this house and beat out 24 other offers through no effort of your own.
If God wants you to keep it, he will help you find a way to do so.’

The combination of reciting scripture and self talk helped ward off intrusive thoughts, sometimes only for minutes at a time. But being able to breathe even for a few peaceful moments sustained me. As Tim Keller says, if you don’t talk to your mind, your mind will talk to you. There seemed to be no truer words.

4. Remember God’s past faithfulness. We tend to think of remembering as coincidental happenchance. But the Bible calls us to active remembering. The Bible even goes so far as to attribute the Israelites failure to remember as the reason for their moral demise. 

“When our ancestors were in Egypt, 
    they gave no thought to your miracles;
they did not remember your many kindnesses,
    and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea.”  – Psalm 106:7.  

Since my memory has become dismal in recent years, I reread journal entries I’ve kept while doing my meditations. As I counted the ways God had answered past prayers and provided for me, I became humbled.   

What humbled me further, were those unanswered prayers I later became thankful for. It reminded me I did not always know what was best. One of my favorite quotes that captures this sentiment is by Truman Capote: “There are more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”

Being reminded of God’s provisions, both through answered and unanswered prayers, made it easier to trust God and thank him for future ones. 

5. Thank God before he answers your prayers. A solution to my conundrum seemed far away. But what could I thank God for? I could thank God for loving me more than I loved myself, for having provided for me in the past, and for providing a way out of this conundrum somehow someway that would in the end, work out better than I could ever hope to resolve of my own volition. 

For Apostle Paul, his great secret to peace was this very sequence: thanking God before prayers were answered. 

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7. 

6. Don’t compare your life with others. One of the biggest pitfalls during this time was social media. Seeing filtered snapshots of people’s perfectly curated lives seemed to make a mockery of what I was going through. Maybe the Joneses didn’t have these money problems, but we each have our struggles in life to learn and grow from. It’s just these moments are seldom shared and social media was the last place for a healthy balanced life perspective. So I really tried to stopped scrolling.

7. See value in the struggle. Looking for the silver lining in struggles is certainly good practice. But James doesn’t tell us to just look for the silver lining as some consolation prize but to consider the struggle as the prize itself. 

^“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” – James 1:2-3

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.” – Romans 5:3-4

This is completely contrary to our zeitgeist that prizes comfort above all else. What James says instead is to consider the struggle as the prize because you can’t build faith without it. And what is more important than our faith? 

Even in my down haze, I couldn’t deny that at no other point in my life had Jesus’ presence been felt closer than when I’ve been in the dumps. It was only here in the abyss, when my own strength evaded me, that I’ve felt his enveloping arms carry me through fire. 

8. Remain Faithful in Prayer. Prayer is nothing more than keeping an open line of communication with God. When we’re discouraged, it’s easy to give up on prayer. God is not listening, we tell ourselves. But God is always listening, and like the poem Footprints says, it is during life’s most dismal times, when it feels like God has dimmed the light on our lives, when he is doing is greatest hardest work. So let us remember to be, 

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.” – Romans 12:12

8. Pray and pray together.  I kept these concerns to myself in the beginning. Money talk makes people uncomfortable after all. In hindsight, though, I realize this was a mistake. We need community during difficult times, even if it takes trial and error in finding it.

I remember sharing these struggles with a random stranger at church one Sunday after we were asked to turn to our neighbor and pray for each other. I reasoned it might be easier to tell a complete stranger. So I asked for prayer in finding a good tenant for my rental property, which was followed up by her more saintly prayer for a successful upcoming mission trip where she would help build homes in Mexico. I felt ridiculous. But to my surprise, I also felt loads lighter. We were never designed to get through life alone. It takes a village. 

“A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” – Ecclesiastes 4:12

In the end, I chose to confide in my brother and a few close friends and asked them to pray for me. Even if they couldn’t relate or understand what I was going through, I felt bolstered by a praying community behind me. 

God promises to hear the prayers of two or more who are gathered in his name –  Matthew 18: 19-20.

In hindsight, I also realize there was nothing to feel sheepish about. There might be a hierarchy of needs with our earthly parents whose energy and time are finite. But God doesn’t need to divvy up his time and prioritize the more pressing needs over less urgent ones. He doesn’t care how big or small our problems are. What he cares above all else is that we turn to him – and all the more that we turn to him together as a community. 

9. Seek advisors. Community is also important in making plans succeed. During this process, I was tempted on numerous occasions to take on risky tenants and had it not been for the counsel of my real estate agent, and the more calm voice of my husband, I probably would have acted much more rashly. 

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” – Proverbs 15:22

10. Be still. Waiting was the hardest part of all. There is nothing more daunting than twiddling your thumbs when you’re eager to find a solution. But when Jesus commands us to be still during life’s storms, I don’t believe he asking us to do nothing. Nor is he granting approval to sulk in bed all day. When Jesus tells us to be still, I believe he is asking us not act in haste, which is what I almost did. But not to be deceived, remaining poised when every impulse in your body is to overreact is an extremely strenuous exercise. 

It reminds me of the famous marshmallow study where kids were asked to delay gratification and not eat the marshmallow placed in front of them. The successful kids didn’t just sit there. No, they covered their eyes and turned the other way. They sang and talked to themselves. They imagined the marshmallow was a non-edible toy.  Their ability to remain still was anything but passive.

One of my other favorite stories is about an entrepreneur who founded a successful yogurt company. When his funding stalled for his brick-and-mortar business, he picked up a paintbrush and began painting the walls of his new yogurt store. Did painting the walls play a part in his success? He believed it did because it spurred momentum. I believe he was successful because he was faithful even with his little tasks, something Jesus speaks about. 

I remembered these stories, looked around and asked myself what was in my control to do. And what I ended up resorting to was a cathartic distraction: organizing closets. It was one of those few things in life where you saw the fruits of your labor right away. Having a clean and organized space always helped me think better too. Cleaning was also one of the ways I liked to show love to my family so they could think better and live more productive lives. It wasn’t an act of Mother Theresa, but I took to the task like Marie Condo. 

I wasn’t completely poised during this time. I certainly acted in haste when I lowered the rental price the minute we got home from Japan. But I was spared from the graver mistake of taking on risky tenants. 

One of the great temptations when we’re down is to look inward and become self-absorbed in our problems. But God challenges us to look outside ourselves and seek his kingdom during down times. 

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” – Matthew 6:33.

And what is seeking his kingdom but to love neighbor as yourself. Looking to help a brother or sister during times of your own distress, then, is one of the most productive ways we can “be still” because it’s a command  that comes with a promise, even if it is to pursue the smallest act of kindness. 

The Answer

It wasn’t a stressless time. The concerns gnawed at me from time to time.  I couldn’t always push the voices out of my head completely. I went down several social media spirals.  And every time I drove through a street or neighborhood with homeless encampments, I was confronted with doubts of God’s provision.

But after a few weeks of what felt like an eternity, I got a call from my realtor as I was parked on a sidewalk waiting for my kids to finish school. She told me about a promising applicant: she was the current tenant of my next door neighbor, who would soon be renovating their home. So she was already integrated into the neighborhood, which was better than any background check. It was hard to believe but sometimes God has a funny sense of humor: my prayer had literally been a doorstep away this entire time. 

The timing was impeccable in a way I seldom have the satisfaction of experiencing. I wondered why she wanted our rundown property over other newer cheaper ones. It was an outcome I so desperately wanted but simply could not fathom. It turned out she was a vet with a lot of pets, including two horses, and she needed our bigger backyard albeit rundown property. The dilapidated eyesore of a stable would even prove useful to her. I relished the news in blissful silence.

Since this incident, I’ve encountered other life conundrums, many that were money-related and some that weren’t. But this experience taught me something about faith.

Faith does not take on an immediate appearance of a super-Christian in a cape who suddenly defies gravity and walks above her troubles without ever looking down, though perhaps there are those Christians too. But for the more human of us, the Peters of the world, who are prone to lose focus and sink from time to time, faith is first an attempt to walk on water because you know who is walking beside you.