Letting God Wear The Pants

At the end of this past year, my wife resigned from her job at Coon Rapids High School. She did so mostly because of the commute - a 60 mile round trip is just too much with today's gas prices. She then looked for jobs closer to home, and the one she came upon was a special ed. teacher at Eagan High School. She took the job, and has been looking forward to starting this fall.

The occasion that inspired this blog, however, came at around 11:30 this morning. A woman from the school district called to inform my wife that they made a goof on her application and processing papers that would affect her salary. They had initially only given her credit for five years of experience, when in fact she has seven. They told her that this discrepency was worth an extra $5000 in salary! I don't know how you live, but that's an absolutely huge amount in our house.

This brings up another interesting point: I am not, nor will I ever be, the "pants wearer" in our family. As long as she is working, my wife will be the main income earner. My wife will always out-earn me as long as she is employed. This has been the case since we were first married. I've never made more than my wife. She is not particularly more skilled than I am. We are both working on our master's degrees, and we both have quite a bit of experience in our particular fields. Her profession just draws more salary than mine (understandably - you don't get into ministry for the financial perks!).

For some guys this would be a huge blow to their pride - to have their wife earning more for the family. It doesn't bother me though (but then again, if it truly didn't bother me, would I be writing this blog? Hmmm.). At our house, we don't particularly have an authority structure based upon income earnings. We've never argued over money, like saying that we can't spend anything because we're not the one who earned it, or anything goofy like that. We've always been united that everything we have is ours, and we operate in such a fashion. I guess I should say that I'm glad my family will have what it needs to get by, wherever the money is coming from.

All of that to say that we are celebrating God's blessing and provision in our house today.