WHAT WOULD (COULD) I BE?
Were I not who/what I am – what/who/would/could I be?
Every now and then there ought to be a kind of accounting going on between the me that is and the me that I could be. In other words, the books of Gwen need to be reconciled just as the books of a business need to be audited and reconciled periodically.
It is no secret to you that I spend a few precious personal and private moments each day to center and prepare my mind to “happen to my day” rather than my day “happening to me.” It is the time when I will often seek to reconcile my words with my actions. What you may not know is that my husband and I do the same thing as a couple. We meet after our individual personal time most days and reaffirm a litany of things that we are and that we believe as we try to be intentional about the life we live as a couple.
One of our daily proclamations, “We are generous with each other and with others,” entered my thoughts during my personal time and I felt the need to reconcile the words and my daily actions. In doing so, I remembered a generous act of my mother toward a stranger.
Thirty-two years ago, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, our family became the default host for a Kenyan exchange student. Wanting her to experience the American Life that we knew, we decided to take a thanksgiving driving trip which included a stop at the family farm in rural Georgia where my mother still lived. She had come to us from rural Pennsylvania, and we lived in the urban Midwest.
We had done our best to provide some of her necessities for the winter that was coming but she still lacked much. On the second day of the visit, my mother reached into her wallet, gave me her credit card for a local department store and instructed me to, “Go buy the girl some clothes.” She didn’t ask me or the student anything. She observed a need and acted out of a heart of generosity. My mother was a former school cafeteria worker and disposable income was not her reality.
The audit of my generosity was held up to the measuring stick of my mother’s. Yes, my husband and I are generous, but I questioned whether it comes from the place of much or from seeing a need and addressing. I hope it is both.
In the quietness of the moment, I affirmed my (our) generous nature but questioned could we do even more and with resources that go above and beyond the physical and material things of life.
2024 is here. How will I look/be at the end of this year compared to the end of 2023?
PONDER THIS THOUGHT---There is no shortage of ways to be generous.
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