Stop Saying "God Will Reward You"

They all meant well, I know they did. But you know what they say is paved with good intentions.

It started at our wedding. The priest was clearly weary of arguing with the couples he was preparing, and palpably relieved to discover we were already well-versed in the basic principles of Catholic marriage and accepting of them. He made a comment at our wedding that "this is a couple who really should be getting married and having children," and we were hoping to start a family right away. So his words added to the sting a bit when the first 4 months of marriage came and went, and my friend who got married the same month was already having a baby shower (and no, it wasn't unusually early in her pregnancy), but still no baby on the way for us.

That rub quickly disappeared, though, and 13 months after our wedding our first child was born. But far from the Madonna and Child images in my dreams, her willful, hyperactive, and defiant nature was obvious from day one. Her reaction to "baby wearing" was screaming and kicking, and within a few months she could hardly stand to be held more than a few seconds without squirming her way down to crawl and climb and run off. I watched the other mothers at Mass with much more docile babies and couldn't help but think, what did I do to deserve this?

My husband's salary barely covered the mortgage on our modest suburban townhouse, so there was never any question I would have to go back to work. But we sacrificed a lot financially and professionally to avoid using daycare. We both cut our hours and tag-teamed the childcare. He cut his hours more because my hourly rate was much higher, and quickly discovered caring for a high-strung infant wasn't as easy as he'd thought it would be. Meanwhile my mother was struggling with unemployment, and everyone said the second-best option to "mom at home" was "other family" care, so we took on her full financial support in exchange for her help with the childcare.

For a year or so we muddled along with this situation. Even though we had cut our income by a third and increased our expenses by a third--all to "put family first" and not for any material reasons--we continued to tithe, sing in the church choir, and keep being open to life. God was supposed to reward us for that, right? But meanwhile I had a couple of first-month miscarriages that no one but my husband and OBGYN knew about - why upset our friends and family members?

By the fourth time I got a positive home pregnancy test, all I could think was "for what that's worth..." But I did have some progesterone pills my doctor had prescribed too late to help the last time, and started taking them. A few days later our world came crashing down. My employer of the last several years told me I had to be out the door in a few months. I knew many in my profession had been out of work for a whole year already, so in such a tough job market who would possibly hire me knowing I was pregnant? I could have just skipped the progesterone and waited to see if "nature would take its course" again. But I kept taking those pills and soon found myself hiding my bulging belly under loose suit jackets for job interviews.

During that time, I remember visiting a Catholic preschool where I hoped to give my daughter some crucial social interaction she wasn't getting from Grandma, if I could get a job in the meantime of course. When I tearfully described what was going on in our family, the admissions director assured me "God will reward you for taking care of your mother." She didn't offer financial assistance - she just assured me that God provides good jobs to good Catholic families who pray and remain faithful.

It didn't exactly work out that way. Aside from a temporary and tenuous position for a couple of months, it was over a year of searching and a few months after the birth of my son before I landed another full time job. I was now making half what I did before I faithfully answered the call to motherhood, with twice the expenses. It turned out my mother really couldn't handle two small children that close in age, so she constantly used TV as her assistant despite numerous arguments on the subject. For our daughter's sake, we ended up taking on the cost of all-day preschool on top of supporting Grandma. By then we had cut our budget to the bone - no date nights, no vacations, no voluntary retirement savings, etc - and the charitable contributions had to give too. There was no light on the horizon from the Catholic community we had long supported, or from a deus ex machina.

Over the next couple of years we made more changes to try to better provide for the spiritual and physical needs of our family. More people told us God would bless our efforts. They flopped. Our finances and our relationship with my mother went from bad to worse. In the few times I have shared any of this with others in our parish, in every case they have urged me to have faith that God will turn things around.

In the midst of all this, my husband began to break. For so long he had been told, for so long he had believed, if you "play by the rules" God will reward you. We had played by the rules, we had sacrificed for the sake of family and faith, so why was life just getting harder and harder? His anger began to boil over fiercely, at God and everyone involved in his distress.

This wasn't the first time my world had been shattered, the security of pious promises dashed on the rocks of a fallen world. The first time it happened, when my ostentatiously religious Protestant father abandoned our family, I found refuge from this "vale of tears" in the Holy Catholic Church. I signed up for this faith precisely because it promised redemption of suffering, not relief. But my husband, like most cradle Catholics, "signed up" for this faith with feel-good promises at an age when he still believed in Santa Claus.

It is true that God will always provide. But He doesn't promise to provide us "rewards" in this life. He promises to provide us the grace to endure. He promises to provide us with crosses, that we may share in His glory in the next life. He promises not to give us trials beyond what we can bear. God will not be reduced to a syncretic Western Santa Claus.

The Prosperity Gospel is very much a Protestant fallacy, which is why it drives me crazy when I hear it echoed in the platitudes of avowed Catholics. The central mystery of our Catholic faith is grasping through a glass darkly, by sharing in the sufferings of Christ, we lay claim to salvation and find joy that is a sign of contradiction to the world's definition. But if our personal suffering has no salvific purpose, as the Protestants believe, then it follows that no loving Father would allow suffering to continue indefinitely for his chosen children.

What Jesus actually promised us was weeping and persecution and homelessness and family division in this life. So why are so many clergy and lay Catholics going around telling fellow Catholics they will have good jobs and good health and well-adjusted children and won't be touched by divorce if they just stay away from contraceptives and porn and go to the sacraments regularly and donate to the Church? For the love of God, stop! You are a fatal millstone around souls that God is trying to purify by suffering.

Don't promise anything but God's loving Presence, and to stand at the foot of the Cross with your brother or sister in Christ. It's not as easy or comfortable as saying God will turn things around, but it is the way of true faith and hope and love.