I did not expect to have a crisis on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays are for faculty meetings, forgetting to eat lunch, and wondering if I graded that last batch of essays or just thought about grading them. Tuesdays are not typically for existential reckonings. And yet.
There I sat, on a hiring committee, feeling quite collegial and professional, when I saw the salary range for the position we were filling. And friends, I want you to know that I handled it with tremendous grace and maturity. On the outside.
I stared at the number. I looked away. I looked back. I did the math three times because surely I was wrong. I was not wrong.
The person we were about to hire would be making considerably more than me. Me, who has been here. Me, who shows up. Me, who genuinely loves this job and these students and this wonderful little corner of academia I get to inhabit.
I went home that day with a question I hadn't walked in with: Am I undervalued?
The Trapdoor Question
Here's the thing about that question. It's a trapdoor. You think you're just asking about a paycheck, but one tug and you're falling through into something much deeper. Am I undervalued? Am I overlooked? Do the people around me see what I bring? Do I?
The enemy is very good at taking a spreadsheet and turning it into a subtweet. A discouraging one.
But here's what I kept coming back to, even in the middle of my very dignified internal spiral: I was happy before I saw that number. Like, genuinely, actually happy. I love my job. I find meaning in it. I actually enjoy grading essays. I go home tired in a good way. Nothing about my actual life had changed, only my awareness of a comparison I hadn't been making five minutes earlier.
That's the sneaky thing about comparison. It doesn't steal what you have. It just makes you forget to be glad you have it. I have called it the "compare snare" for years, and there I was, entangled in my own compare snare.
The Word I Always Skip
Paul writes in Philippians 4:11:
"I have learned to be content in all circumstances."
Philippians 4:11
I always breeze past the word learned. Like contentment is just a personality trait some people are born with and the rest of us are just stuck. But Paul says he learned it. Past tense, sure, but earned. He learned it through abundance and through need, through seasons of plenty and seasons of "I have no idea how this is going to work out."
Contentment wasn't handed to him. It was forged.
And here's the thing about Paul's résumé of suffering: shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, the whole dramatic list. My salary discovery does not make that list. I am aware. Contentment isn't about the number on your paycheck, the title on your door, or whether the hiring committee's spreadsheet reflects your value.
Contentment is the settled knowledge that you are held, that your life is purposeful, that the God who called you into a room also knows exactly what's happening in that room, including the salary columns.
Where My Worth Was Actually Set
My worth was not set by HR.
My value was set on a cross, and it has not fluctuated since. (Even if my certainty about this truth has.)
That doesn't mean we shouldn't advocate for fair pay. It doesn't mean we paste a smile over legitimate frustration and call it faith. It means that when the compare snare opens up beneath our feet, we don't have to fall all the way through. We can catch ourselves on something sturdier than a spreadsheet.
I still love my job. I still love my students. I still went back on Wednesday and did the work. But I went back knowing something a little more clearly than I had before: my contentment was never really about the number. It was about the calling. And the calling is still very much intact.
Which, honestly? That's a pretty good Tuesday after all.
One Question for You
Where are you learning contentment this season? I'd love to hear. Send me a note. I actually read those.
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