In Full Surrender, I Pay for Everything
I used to write about following a leader who was paying for and directing everything.
Now, my life happens at my direction, bankrolled by me, and my leader is curating everything, directing according to our mutual authority.
Case in point: the table. The table at which I am writing this. Last night he rearranged the house for the millionth time and now I finally have a morning writing place that feels perfect. He saw me at it and said “I got you with the journaling spot!”
Yes, he got me.
He HAS me. He’s backing me, siding me, fronting me. He’s all around and inside of me. He has the world’s longest table for the dinner parties where we are still crowding around; chairs are the scarcity.
He bought the most perfect house in the world. He drives just so so I won’t get carsick on winding mountain roads. He’s supporting my business and my livelihood practically, every minute.
I don’t notice or care that the groceries and funzies come out of my account. Long ago I decided to see my credit card as an identity pass that gives me whatever I want because of who I am. I took money out of my mental equation and stopped calculating it. Somehow, there’s always enough slushing around, all the bills are on autopay, and in my experience, I get whatever I want.
The point here is that his leadership in our home, relationship, and community has nothing to do with who is paying the bills. I am following him even if I’m the one swiping the credit card.
This idea that money is a resource, that it in itself is provision, wreaks havoc on modern relationships, men never learning to practically support a partner in the home, always chasing the almighty dollar.
Is it better or worse when he gets it? The man who gets the money takes on a new level of entitlement, removes to a yet-further distance. The man who continues to chase money helps neither financially nor domestically as his sense of self-worth erodes each time dollars ebb away from his starving grasp.
What interests me are not the forms provision takes, but the tone of a home in which we orient to the wholeness, the prosperity, the distribution of love and nourishment to all beings who cross the threshold. I am interested in the collaboration of partnership where we spend “our money” whether or not we legally co-mingle it.
What claims me to follow his lead are his practical actions of service, forethought, framing, feeding, fooling around. What claims me is his energy of holding, I know it by how it melts me into a puddle.
Do you dream of deeply collaborative partnership? Are you ready to surrender any belief you’ve held to have it? Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, May 13. Women are welcome to attend Something Like This at 11 am to learn the discerning practice of attentional appreciation and how it reveals exquisite men. Men are invited to attend Carry Artist at 4 pm pst to discuss their experience of women and dating in an understanding and loving environment and refine their techniques of carrying what they’ve picked up.
