The Pink Shoes of Generosity
What is a generous life?
Is it the $1 you put into the tip jar at the coffee shop? Could it be donations you make? Is it the extravagant gift you buy someone?
Maybe it's when you share your dessert and you didn’t want to. Maybe when you spend time listening to someone.
What if it’s the encouraging word to a friend who is struggling and the offer to babysit? The time you spend doing the housework when it was someone else’s turn. When you loan your car to a friend.
It can’t possibly be when you say no, can it? It can’t be when you refuse to hand over your car keys.
Generosity comes in many shapes and sizes. But it’s easy to recognise in the form of money, harder to recognise as time or energy. Certainly not recognised when it takes the form of saying no. Saying no will even get you labelled as selfish.
Generosity with my money
Once upon a time I decided to be more generous. I was not particularly well off so the generosity was in very small portions but instead of waiting until I had excess, I decided I would start to be generous with whatever I had. Which seemed to be what Jesus told people to do.
Tip jars, donation boxes, street performers got coins. Letters received from mission groups were saved and a small donation sent. Food-banks got something as did the SPCA.
It was a wonderful way of taking the focus off of my lack and onto the good I could do even with limited resources. It was fun and I really enjoyed it.
Generosity with my time
I realised that I was focusing exclusively on money. So I looked for ways to be generous with my time, but with limited success.
I tried to be patient with people who frustrated me, to be encouraging to people, to help at working bees and to serve more in the church. I really tried.
It was not exciting. It was not fun. I did not enjoy it
I thought this was a sign of my failings as a human being. When I said no I would berate myself, tell myself there was something wrong with me, that I didn’t love people the way Jesus said to. I felt pretty stink (scientific term there).
So I wallowed in self-pity and avoided church people who would ask me to do things I didn’t want to do.
The turning point
One day, in the midst of self-pity I was out and saw some pink shoes I instantly loved. I could afford them. But I felt guilty about even thinking of spending money on non-essential shoes.
At home I prayed and I felt God tell me I should get them.
So later on I went back in to buy them. There happened to be a sale on and I could buy another pair of shoes for less than half price. So I bought the same shoes (because I loved them) in black.
When I got home I did the housework in the pink shoes. I wore the black shoes to the grocery store. I loved those shoes. At house-group I wore the pink shoes and someone asked about them. I said they were new and I felt God had given me the ok to buy them. House-group looked doubtful that God would have said anything so strange about frivolous pink shoes.
Later I prayed and I got a whole new perspective on the shoes. I realised that in buying the shoes I felt like I had value again (after beating myself up for failures). I was saying that I was worth buying shoes for. I was learning that living a life of generosity means being generous to yourself too.
What I learnt
What I learned from that whole experience is that living a life of generosity means caring for yourself too. Saying no to things and recharging, even buying things for yourself sometimes.
It is more than 5 years later and I still have the black shoes, I still wear them. The pink shoes however died a natural death after being worn far too often.
KG
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