What debt, unemployment, and daily discernment taught me about being dependent on God, not just adjacent to Him

If you’ve spent any time online, you know the checklist. Roth IRA, maxed. Six months of expenses in a high-yield savings account. A diversified brokerage. No credit card balance carried month to month. Every finance influencer is selling some version of this profile as the definition of a responsible adult, and if you’re a young Catholic professional, it’s easy to quietly measure your spiritual life by the same rubric — faithful giving as a line item, Mass attendance as a checkbox, gratitude as something you’ll feel once the numbers finally work.

This article isn’t for the person who has that checklist finished. It’s for everyone else. If you’re carrying debt you can’t see the bottom of, if your savings are gone and your emergency fund is a memory, if you’ve been out of work longer than you told people, if your health has cost you both money and momentum — I want to tell you something that took me a long time to believe: you may already be living the exact thing the checklist can’t teach.

What I Actually Lived

I’ve been through a stretch of real health problems, extended unemployment, and a period where homelessness wasn’t an abstract fear but a real possibility. Credit debt piled up. Savings ran out completely, with no reserve behind them. There was no six-month cushion. There was, some weeks, no cushion at all.

What I found in that place wasn’t a hack or a five-step plan. It was daily dependence, and I mean that literally. I couldn’t plan three moves ahead because I often didn’t have the information, the money, or the certainty to do it. What I had was prayer — asking, most mornings, for enough clarity to see the next single step, and trusting that the Holy Spirit would show up in time for that step and not necessarily any sooner. I write about faith and money less for what it’s earned me and more for what I found in that season worth passing on: a faith-abundant life doesn’t require your finances to cooperate first. Gratitude showed up before the numbers did, not after.

Rereading “To Anyone Who Has, More Will Be Given”

A homily on Matthew 13 named something I recognized instantly: “we could be religious churchgoers but not docile to God.” The warning usually gets aimed at people who look financially secure and spiritually comfortable. But flip it around, and it says something else too — the “having” that gets multiplied in that verse was never about your account balance. “To anyone who has, more will be given. He will grow rich. Anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 13:12) is describing docility, not net worth. If you’ve been forced by circumstance into daily, undeniable dependence on God, you are not behind. You may be exactly where that verse says gets more.

Docility is usually pictured as a beautiful, freely chosen surrender — Mary at the Annunciation, saying “let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) before she understood any of the plan. Nobody forced that fiat on her. But surrender doesn’t stop counting just because it wasn’t your first choice. When life sells everything out from under you — a diagnosis, a layoff, a debt spiral — and there’s nothing left to hold onto but trust, that is still docility. Maybe closer to it than most of us who get to choose our surrender in comfortable, low-stakes moments ever come.

The Purse That Was Already Empty

“Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail” (Luke 12:33) is usually preached to people who have something to sell. If your earthly purse is already empty, you didn’t need the instruction — you’re already living past it, whether you meant to or not. The treasure that doesn’t fail isn’t a reward for the financially disciplined. It’s simply what’s left when everything else has been taken, and it turns out to be enough.

“See that you abound in this gracious work also” (2 Corinthians 8:7) doesn’t require a bank account either. If you’ve ever stayed up with someone in a worse spot than you, shared a meal you couldn’t really spare, or written something honest to help a stranger feel less alone in their own financial fear — that is the gracious work Paul is describing. It was never gated behind income.

And “he who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10-11) reads differently from where you’re standing. It’s not a verse about scaling up from a small salary to a large one. It’s an honor given to whoever manages real scarcity with real integrity — the person who pays what they can, tells the truth about what they can’t, and keeps showing up to the discernment even when the numbers are bad. That faithfulness is the whole point of the verse, not a stepping stone to something more respectable.

The Pearl You Didn’t Choose to Sell Everything For

The merchant in Matthew 13:44-46 sold everything he had for one pearl of great price — a deliberate, chosen trade. Most of us in financial crisis didn’t get to choose the sale. Life took the possessions first and left the pearl — trust in Christ — as the only thing remaining. That’s not a lesser version of the parable. It might be the truest ending of it: everything else gone, one thing left, and it turns out to be enough to build a life on.

Wherever You Are Right Now, This Still Applies

You don’t need a spreadsheet to practice this. Tomorrow morning, before you check a balance or open a bill, ask one question instead of making one plan: not “what do I need to fix today,” but “what is Jesus asking me to trust Him with today.” That’s the whole practice. It won’t clear your debt or fill your account. But it’s the difference between being adjacent to Christ — showing up, checking boxes, staying nearby — and being dependent on Him, which is what docility actually is. The checklist can wait. This can’t.