It’s hard to admit, but giving doesn’t come easily to me. It’s probably there somewhere in my genes, but I’m sure being the oldest of four growing up cemented it in pretty deep. If you didn’t take what you wanted, and take it first, you were going to get scraps. That is just Big Family Life.
In my own home now, with seven kids, I find myself using my large family as an excuse to continue Not Giving. I don’t want to feed the neighbor kids, because my own kids already eat continuously, and the neighbor kids already come over all the time. We would have to increase our food budget to feed a bunch of kids whose parents I’ve never even met. I’m not doing it.
With my friends and family, I want to be giving. But even that doesn’t often come naturally. I have to be intentional about it.
When it’s time to give spending money to the kids, I want them to earn it, even when there isn’t time or it’s not realistic. I have trouble sharing my special treats. When we first got married, I remember how I instinctively pulled my snack bowl away from the Chaplain when he reached over to grab a bite. I still have to fight that impulse. And I hate it when people Ruin My Stuff. Self Preservation Mode is hard to pull out of.
A few years ago, when my mom mentioned how much she loved my echinacea, I saw it as an opportunity to be generous.
Except, I only had one echinacea plant in my back yard that summer.
I don’t usually take selfies at work, but the shift I got this news, I was feeling sad and thoughtful and was in the loneliest assignment on my floor, the back hallway, which I also refer to as Purgatory (not for the patients, just the nurse who cares for them). I wanted to connect with the Chaplain, so I sent him this pic. At the time it was taken, I was chowing down on a Swedish fish, which wouldn’t surprise anyone I work with.
Recently, the Chaplain shared an idea with me from C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves. At the time, it was interesting, but didn’t have any real application to me. Then, over the weekend I found out a former coworker had passed away unexpectedly.
The nurse who told me wanted to be able to tell someone who knew her, who would understand.
When I looked up Lewis’ concept, it goes like this:
This morning got off to a rough start. It began with a contingent of kids who were up at the crack of dawn.
Based on the level of clamor, I was surprised and unhappy when I came downstairs to find it was barely seven. An all-out fight was in progress, the kitchen had been trashed, and a batch of pancakes was steaming on the stovetop.
I still remember the look of disappointment on my Textile professor’s face when I pulled out my final project to present to our class. That term we had learned how to work with our hands. We made our own paper, wove baskets, and made objects from wire and metal. My final project had taken hours. I’d hand-dyed and screen printed fabric in different colors and patterns and sewn it together to make a duvet cover.
That stack of books is all the reading I’ve been doing about sex, marriage, and relationships. Some of the titles I’ve already mentioned in other posts. I could wait until I got through the rest of the pile to write about them, but I wanted to feature my top two books from the pile, one on marriage, one on sex.
