I have been busy helping someone in my family with a journey involving cancer, so I've been really distracted through the Easter season.  Please pardon long silences while I continue to cope with helping them along.  The prognosis is very positive, so the recommended therapy is being entered into with confidence that we will do all we must, to see a remission.

As I say that, I have recently been reminded that there are a lot of lessons we learn about giving and receiving in life.  When we are children we learn how to give back to people who have given to us, and that's a lesson in humble reciprocity.  We try to match other person's gifts on a "best guess" of value to value, or we'll try to overgive (outgive) the other person because of the measure of our affection for them.  The first thing we have to learn as gifters is that once the gift is given, we cannot say what the receiver will do with that gift.  Some folks stumble here, but eventually they will understand that's true and they will either continue onward with some frustration and bitterness that moderates their giving, or they will learn to shrug and give gifts without strings.

Sometimes, we simply can't afford to give lavish gifts that we'd love to give.  So, we try to find gifts of service that we can do with some amount of pride.  At that point, the receiver has to welcome our gift, and to our shock we find some will not accept them.  I worked as a housekeeper in a mansion, so I would offer to help clean someone's home or a particular area that I knew some friend was struggling with.  Very often the receiver would avoid any possibility of my doing that for them.  They were either too proud, or they had exacting ideas for the job, and they didn't want to allow someone else to do it.  I honestly understood their concerns and did all I could do to alleviate their fears, but there was no swaying their decision. 

There were other times when I offered food gifts, knowing what these friends liked or couldn't eat.  Some of my receivers felt they owed me a food item in return, and there was no getting them to see that it wasn't needed.  I would finally be a gracious receiver and hope that the chain of reciprocal giving was now complete.

Finally, we have to learn that not all gifts are a good idea.  When a person is living in squalor because of an addiction, we honestly aren't helping them when we hand over some money for the rent.  It will probably not go to rent, but to the next fix or bottle.  That's just the honest truth.  So what we meant for a gift of help in a time of need, turns into enabling a person in misery to do what makes them miserable.  This means that we need to learn how to give with wisdom and to use discernment; but not with paternalistic arrogance.

When my children were young, my husband and I struggled to meet the bills at the end of each paycheck for a variety of reasons.  So often we'd be told that if we had times of need, then we were to give up all the items of value that we had to show our earnestness in working toward a recovery.   We'd tell them what we were in need of, and what bills we weren't able to pay, and they would give us the conditions that we would meet in order to prove we were deserving of their help.  Even welfare will do this, and it's honestly part of the responsibility of not enabling a pattern of abuse.  Some faith based groups will take this "responsibility" and really rub it in, though.  They will ask more personally intrusive questions, or insist on conditions that will humiliate the people looking for help in some degree.  They figure that if the need is valid that it won't matter to the receiver, but it really does matter.  For my children's sake, I will endure humiliation; but I'll also remember who required it.

As we had some persons from a faith based group sitting in our home assessing what our needs were, the visitors were very warm and gracious but I was braced for what I'd learned was to come.   I pointed to the worn untunable piano that I had bought for my husband as an anniversary gift years before, and mentioned that we were trying to sell it for some help in our time of distress.   I was immediately shocked by the expression of pain and entreaty on the one gentleman's face as he strongly urged that we not do that.

"This is a temporary time in your lives," he pointed out.  "Don't make such a strong change in life that you'll regret," he urged.  Then he explained himself to my shocked face.  "I had a piano and sold it.  By the time I finally got it replaced, it seemed like the kids had already outgrown the chance to learn how to play it."  Then he asked which of our kids had already shown an interest and even had my husband play a song for him on it. 

I can't express how much that visit blessed us!  Not only were they showing a willingness to help where we needed it, but they were showing us that they believed this time would be temporary!  As young adults, we needed that kind of encouragement in the worst way.  They gave us really good advice on how to cope with the situation we were in, and also how to deal with adversity as we moved forward (example: pay the bills first, and use the food pantries to feed the family, not the other way around).  When they returned they brought food that I hadn't been able to buy in a long time: fruit, fun cereals (but still nutritious), meat that wasn't ground up, bacon, and cheese that was real cheese!  My eldest son had so much fun helping me unpack it all, that I just choked up watching him cheer over things like jelly. 

I learned a valuable lesson because of those men.  I learned that we have to trust God to discern the future of the people we help.  It's our job to find out if the need is real, but once we see that it is, it's NOT our job to decide how to ensure that the person is deserving or even if they will go forth and not be needy again.  We just trust God to work on that part of their lives and we let God teach us how to let go of what our pride wants to do.  That's the grace part of giving.  So many of us need to give with grace, not just prideful pleasure.  I keep measuring my gifts to others by that memory, and it's been good to keep checking.  Pride really wants to express itself!  It's sneaky, too.  So, I see that I'll have to keep working on that because I am a human person with all the character flaws and foibles that come with being human.

Next: The art of receiving!