The Cost of Being A Chaplain

I hate feeling powerless. Becoming an adult ought to mean I can take care of myself in the world, but more and more I feel as though no matter what I do, I will always be behind the eight-ball. South Florida is notorious for paying low wages to the Worker Bees and high wages to the Kings of Commerce (some queens, but few). South Florida is also one of the metropolitan areas most affected by the Real Estate Boom and slow-down. As a result, rent prices have also gotten hefty to help cover ridiculous mortgages. Shit! I paid only $47 less to live in one room in some girl’s townhouse (her brass knuckled grill sporting live-in boyfriend came free of charge) than what I paid for a WHOLE TWO BEDROOM APARTMENT in North Carolina!

I bring home about $2650 per month, not counting mileage or on-call money. Let’s look at the break-down, a.k.a. “Why I Am Having A Breakdown:”

$1380 (Rent & Utilities, but only the most basic of cable around here…not even the Weather Channel.)
$470 (Gas & Insurance..and this number is on the rise.)
$200 (Prescriptions, etc…if I filled all of them. Who knew allergies and sensitive skin were so expensive?)
$400 (Student Loans & Credit Card. I still am in deferment for the Big Kahuna–the $120k I owe to Sallie Mae–which would be another $550 per month, consolidated so I finish paying just after Retirement. Also, my credit card debt is under $3200, but that is a doubling since I started this job. The majority of this money goes to school not credit cards, but I still feel totally irresponsible because this number is so high, and because I am not paying the suckers off.)
$100 (Emma: this covers fleas, food, treats, toys, vet visits, hair-cuts and heart worms. Puppy hysterectomies are paid in-full by Nana.)
Grand Total Out-Go = $2550

Wait! What about food, doctor appointments, clothes, hair-dos, tampons, floss, cleaning supplies, dry cleaning, going out with my friends, etc? What about savings, paying off debt, reimbursing Nana for all the emergency help, having money to fix my car, my knee, or my bike? What about birthday gifts, or cards for that matter? I have $100 guaranteed, plus the mileage and on-call money. Last month that came to a whooping $145.83!!! That meant that for four whole weeks I rolled in the pennies for a grand total of $245.83! Can’t beat $81 bucks a week, can you? This is why when I was at Target on Sunday I just about burst into tears that my $85 budget had already been blown by $65 on house-hold stuff before I put the first food item into my cart. I looked over the cart and decided that, yes, toothpaste is indeed a necessity and it would stay. Ditto for the laundry detergent. The other cleaner went back on the shelf. I now had a good $25 (including tax) to blow on food.

And to think my mother wonders why I eat cheese toast all the time?

See, I save my money to eat out with my friends every now and again. I do not want them to know how close I cut it sometimes. I want to feel like I am their equal. I do not want anyone to think of me as being irresponsible, but I know I feel that way. Not because I actually possess this horrible propensity to buy scads of unnecessary items, like toilet paper, but because I cannot make it right now without help from my family. A thirty-six year-old grown-ass woman with a Master’s Degree from Duke (of all places), and I do not make enough money to live on and take care of myself!

I have full-on panic attacks when I need to go to the doctor. Where will the money come from? What if he prescribes something else I cannot fill? You should have seen me crying like a baby over needing new tires in February. Had to call Mama on that. My $40 oil change cost just under a grand by the time all the “do only if my car would not be safe otherwise” things were done. Now I need three weeks salary, plus medical costs (about $6000 total) to get my knee operated on because of a tear in my cartilage from a bad crash off my bike last fall. Oh the fuck well! That will not be happening any time soon. How about just after retirement, when my student loans will be paid off? If Medicare is still around will they cover it or will it be seen as a pre-existing condition? Please email me if you know!

I need to get a second job. Most of the chaplains at my company work other places too. The on-call schedule makes it a real bitch to do, but people manage. You know? Work 60 hours one place and then try and pick up a good 20 or so hours somewhere else. Maybe I am just lazy or unmotivated or a total free-loading daughter, but I DO NOT WANT TO WORK ANOTHER JOB!!!!! (Can you hear me screaming now? Yes? Good!) Here is why: The job I already work really works me body, mind and spirit enough as it is. Sister here has nothing left to give. I need my down time in order to fill my cup, otherwise I cannot do the job I feel called to do. I do not have anything–time or energy–to give to a job I have to do in order to afford to continue to do the job I already have. (Say that three times fast!)

One of my supervisors asked me recently if I still feel called. I must confess the question stung.

I feel like I am giving my very best to my patients and their families. I just feel like my best includes my stressed out, broke off my ass, angrier and angrier by the day, worst too. Angry? Yes. The little vicious cycle of not wanting to get a job to help pay for my life so I can afford to stay at my real job has a cousin: I am A.N.G.R.Y. my family is helping to pay my way to keep me in my job as a chaplain–making all sorts of sacrifices, given we ain’t rich folks–so I can work for a FOR PROFIT COMPANY!!! That’s right. For fucking profit.

I have $20 cash…and less than $20 in the bank at the moment…checking and savings combined. (Thank God for credit, right?) I worked ten hours today going to a death, having smoke blown in my face more than once, did two spiritual assessments, fought for a cancer patient to actually HAVE some pain medicine because the pool nurse took him off given it was making him constipated (all narcotics do) but failed to actually order anything–not even fucking Tylenol–to help the poor dear, run paperwork back to the office, and cram a PB&J down my throat in the fifteen minutes I had to eat lunch all so the Fat Cats at Corporate get richer and can have lunch at Joe’s Stone Crabs (or so I hear).

With one week to go before I get paid, house guests who will be here four of the seven days, and the car on empty, you may wonder to yourself why in the world I would ever work for so little money in a job where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Do not feel too bad for me…feel bad for the Aides on my Team. If I can hardly make it, how do they at all? And they have to clean poop for a living!! The truth is that Chaplains do not make living wages on the whole. I would do better–even in my own company–if I lived in Georgia, for instance, where the cost of living is so much less and the company pays about $5k more.

Chaplains are not valued in any way by the majority of people, and money demonstrates this point just as much as anything else. We are seen as superfluous. Who cares that we live in an age full of what I like to call “The New Agnostics.” The New Agnostics hate their churches, synagogues and temples of origin because of the duplicity, abuse, irrational doctrine, disregard for science, and hypocritical nature of the congregants, but have not yet given up on their “Higher Power.” An ecumenical chaplain, like myself, then becomes the Face of God to them as they die and offers a peace they never found within their home congregation. Add to this, we asset protect in the tens of millions of dollars neighbourhood our organizations by being the front-line to listen to complaints, offer validation of feelings, and placate thousands of angry families each year.

But I guess it is still too much to ask that I make enough money to actually eat and buy my allergy medication? I am glad I know how to push that out of my mind when I am holding the hand of a patient telling me how angry she is at God for letting her get so sick, or at a family member insisting we want to kill her mother because we administered pain medicine, which calmed her down enough to begin to let go and die. And in the end, I find my calling in these small moments with my patients and their loved ones. My company cannot pay me to love them, which I do, so I keep on giving all my love away for free, and remind myself that they only pay me to fill out paperwork. Maybe that is why there is so much of it!?