Giving In Abundance From Abundance - The Giving Chronicles (Part 5)

 ^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

I got a new job after being unemployed for nearly five months. It was a relief to have health insurance again for my daughter and resume a stable lifestyle. But I never forgot the provisions of three Christmas turkeys or the mysterious ways THE CREATOR met all my financial needs, and more, that February. The amazing thing is I ended up with more money in the bank at the end of being unemployed than at the beginning. A pastor asked me how that was possible; I really had no explanation.

The lessons of this tribulation stayed with me. It was another life-changing event. The Christmas giving continued, and I began donating to a ministry that provided gifts to children of needy families. As my children grew older, I was donating more money to that ministry than I was spending on them.

And that is fitting, because this whole thing started with an image of a child with no presents under the Christmas tree.

At that time, I asked: But what can I do about that?

And my answer now is – I can do this! I CAN DO THIS. I WILL DO THIS. 

The Three Turkey Tradition

Sometime after receiving those three turkeys in 1992, I began giving three turkeys to people in need each December. I didn’t provide the actual birds. I would get $20 grocery gift cards early in the month and figure out who they should go to, sometimes sent anonymously.

But then weird things would happen after I gave away the last card. Within a week or so, I would receive some unexpected money which coincidently would be slightly higher than the $60 I had spent.

One year, I surprisingly received a check from the IRS for an overpayment.  Another year, the college where I was teaching part-time had forgotten to compensate me for training I had received in May. I wish I had written down the other unexpected December payments that came my way, but I never anticipated I would be writing about them 20 years later.

And then there was the bizarre poker game in December 2008 that I wrote about last year. I had only given away two gift certificates that year and carried around a $20 bill to give to the next needy person who crossed my path. I donated that $20 to a family whose house had just burned down.

Less than four hours later, the poker game began. My luck was atrocious at the start, and I was soon down to only a couple of chips. I then got tremendously lucky on some desperation hands and had enough chips to continue for another hour. But then, my luck ran out again, and I was back down to almost nothing. I somehow survived sure elimination a second time. I then fought my way back and ended up in heads up (just two players remaining), extremely short-stacked (my opponent has many more chips than I do and has a huge advantage). But my opponent is inexperienced and plays so poorly that I win the $180 first-place prize. I didn’t comprehend what happened until the next morning when I realized there was less than a 1% chance of me winning the game before going on the incredible streak of “luck”..

There were no turkeys given away in 2009. The Great Recession cost me my job. My circumstances were much less dire since my wife was working now. Although, as I have chronicled, I did not respond to the situation well. And for the second time, I came out of the calamity with more money than I started with. Still can’t explain it. 

Time To Raise The Bar

And that experience changed my perspective as well. Why limit it to just three turkeys? So, at Christmastime, I started giving ten turkeys away. Then 20, then 30, and last holiday season, with the help of my friend Reverend John, over 70 turkeys. I don’t say this to brag – it’s just a fact for reference and confirmation of my commitment. 

Part of Rev. John's turkey haul in 2018

But Don, where did the money come from to donate all those turkeys?

Well, if you asked that question – or don’t know the answer, you need to go back to Part 1 and reread the Giving Chronicles.

Because it started with a fundamental truth which is …. One more time …. taken slowly:  

^“Give, - freely, generously with a pure heart when you see people in need of help.

and it will be given to you – you will receive back what you have freely given in some form of blessing or benefit.

 A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap – if your heart and motives have been pure, you will receive back the value of your gift, and more. So much more, that it overflows.

for the measure you give will be the measure you get back – the intent, the compassion, the generosity, the sacrifice of your giving, will determine the quantity of blessings you receive back.

This concludes the Giving Chronicles

 

We Are All Pilgrims This Year

This post is about the plague, the virus, the scourge, the pandemic – if you will.

Wait, don’t go! It’s different than the thousands of commentaries already written on this subject.

You see, I don’t care if you wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, vaccinated, non-vaccinated, virus survivor, skeptic, Democrat, Republican, Independent, or other.

I do care that when you inhale, your lungs fill the air. If they do, you are still alive. Which means you have survived the scourge, so far.  This is no small accomplishment. I have told people over the past two years, “If you celebrate a birthday during a pandemic, it is a blessed occasion. If you celebrate two, even better.

You see, 765,000 Americans have died from the virus.

Oh, you want to argue that the number is too high because deaths for other illnesses were intentionally misclassified? Okay …

But you want to argue that the number is too low because some people died and never made it to a testing site or hospital? Okay, also.

Let’s just assume these two factors totally cancel the other out, and 765,000, and counting, is a reasonable number. The count worldwide is at 5.1 million.

And this is because pandemics kill people. That’s what pandemics do. We hadn’t had a severe pandemic since 1918. The frustrating part is that even though mankind is 100 years smarter and medical technology has advanced exponentially, we still can’t keep a lethal microbe from killing us. Mask on, mask off, shots, jabs, distancing, quarantines -- it’s still striking us dead.

But even though it’s killed 765,000 of your countrymen, it hasn’t gotten you. You have not been infected. Or you were infected, but your immune system neutralized it. Or you became ill (I’m in this category), and you were able to survive.

Which brings us to Thanksgiving. These days we really don’t give much thanks. We take our wealth, health, and blessings so much for granted. Maybe on Thursday we say a group prayer before we gluttonously gorge ourselves on the holiday feast. But that’s about it.

The Pilgrims started all this, and if you read the history, you will find that they were essentially thanking THE CREATOR for still being alive on that first Thanksgiving. That is a strange concept when you think about it. But the Pilgrims had that faith thing down right, much more than our present culture. So, we find ourselves back to the beginning, so to speak. Back to the basics. Back to life-or-death. 

This has been a brutal year. Besides the fatal virus, add in the cancers, the accidents, the illnesses, the overdoses plus everything else, and death has claimed someone in our circle. (My posse has been hit hard this year.)

So after making it through this year, and still being able to draw breath through our lungs, we, like the Pilgrims, need to offer up thanks to THE CREATOR for our life – our actual life. For still being alive, when so many others have perished.

And I’m not talking about just “being thankful” or “feeling thankful” or “making a list of things to be thankful for”. No, not enough. Not even close. There is a difference between feeling wealthy and actually being wealthy. There is a difference between feeling blessed and actually being blessed. So, there is an enormous difference between feeling thankful and actually giving thanks.

The Pilgrims got it. They really got it. That’s why the holiday is called Thanks- Giving. So today, it’s time to literally get on your knees and give thanks to THE CREATOR for continuing to give you life. (Yes, I am going to do this) This giving of thanks will provide a spiritual cleansing. This is greatly needed since the virus has infected more than our bodies. It has infected our souls. And there is no vaccine to fix that.

I give thanks to THE CREATOR for your life ……

The Story of the Three Turkeys – The Giving Chronicles (Part 4)

 ^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

When you have always worked, and you want to work, the stress of being unemployed  grinds on you constantly. Although I had no immediate financial issues, there was high anxiety about the future. I had a family to care for and a daughter with medical conditions.

This heavy stress plays tricks on your mind. You begin to have irrational thoughts and fears. Years later, you regard some of these as downright silly, but at the time, they seem totally normal.

As I entered my second month of unemployment in December 1992, the stress began to get to me. It isn’t easy to job hunt at the end of the year since most companies pause their recruiting efforts until mid-January. But having more free time means there is more time for those irrational thoughts to fester.

There were two distressing thoughts constantly rolling around in my head. The first was the fear that I would eventually lose my house and my family would have to wander homeless in the street. Fortunately, that never came close to happening.  

The second was that I was a failure because I would be unable to provide a turkey for our family Christmas dinner. This idea was preposterous. We had plenty of money to afford a turkey. But that didn’t matter much to me. I saw myself as the family provider, and if I didn’t have a job, I had failed to provide this essential Christmas element.

Now, you may consider this chauvinistic, sexist, paternalistic, toxic masculinity, etc. – throw the whole darn arsenal at me. But that’s who I am; however, in this case, it was toxic because it traumatized me every day as the holiday approached.

The voice inside my head yelled out:

“You can’t provide a turkey. There may not be a turkey. You have no turkey, none. Your holiday dinner could be ruined because there may not be a turkey. It is your responsibility to provide a turkey, and you have failed. You have failed your family. What type of man cannot provide a turkey?”

This hellish “turkey loop” was played in my head several times a day, every day. I would guess obsessing over something unimportant is your brain’s defense mechanism from obsessing over things that are really important. But I was obsessed over this turkey problem. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone about this fear because I knew it was irrational, yet there it was every day.

A Turkey From Heaven

Two Sundays before Christmas, about twelve days prior, our Sunday School group at church presented my wife and me with five large boxes of food at the end of class. I was up front thanking the people for their generosity, but then someone came up behind me and set a large frozen turkey on one of the boxes.

Never in my adult life has a small gift made me feel so jubilant. Just as worrying about not having a turkey created irrational, enormous sadness, receiving an unexpected turkey produced tremendous joy.

I had a turkey! They gave me a turkey! And I no longer would be tormented by this any longer. This is one of my best memories of this time in my life.

It did cause some storage issues, however. The big bird took up almost all the space in our 90’s standard freezer located at the top of the refrigerator. My wife had to move some stuff around, but she made it all fit. 

But Wait … There’s More

I felt much better that week not worrying about a turkey and still being jubilant about the gift I had received. And then things got even better. Friday afternoon, there was a knock on the door. It was Carl from our church. He said that he had been delivering turkeys to needy families for the church, and of course, I wasn’t needy, but he had ended up with an extra turkey he wanted to give to me.

Of course, this was a white lie. If I wasn’t considered needy, then what was my name doing on his list – he obviously had my address. This was just his way of making sure I accepted the turkey. But before I could explain that the church, in effect, had already given me a turkey, he literally shoves the bird into my chest. I instinctively grab it, partially in self-defense. But once I had taken possession of the turkey, Carl quickly retreats and wishes me “Merry Christmas” as he sprints back to his car.

I put the second turkey in the fridge and explained the circumstances to my wife when she returned home. Because Christmas is now just a week away, we can thaw the first turkey in the refrigerator and store the second turkey in the freezer. The plan is to roast the second turkey in late January and then get our freezer space back.

And We Are Not Done Yet

Two days later, I took a Sunday afternoon nap. When I awoke, my wife informed me that our friend Dave, who worked at the local homeless shelter, had stopped by. He had been delivering turkeys to needy families … and guess what … he had an extra turkey.

If I had been awake, I’m sure I would have tried to reject this third bird. I know I was supposed to accept all gifts, but this was too many turkeys for me to possess … which brings us back to this …..

^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

In eight days, I had received more turkeys than I had room for. And you can’t press down and shake together frozen turkeys, can you? Turkeys  had run over my freezer capacity, into my lap - so to speak. THE CREATOR had just literally provided a “running over” of turkeys.

The question I posed in Part 1 of this series, is how is this statement from THE MAN could possibly be true. How could you receive so much you cannot contain it? Yet, there I was. The turkeys were overflowing. The strange thing is I never asked anyone for a turkey. I never prayed for a turkey. I just worried constantly about it.

But then, this heavenly provision did cause an earthly problem: I had more turkeys than I could store. That night, I called my friend Jim, who had a large freezer. After hearing my plight, he graciously agreed to stow two of the turkeys for me. My family enjoyed the second turkey in April and invited Jim and his wife Frannie over for a cookout in August, where we feasted on the final bird.

^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

There are teachings from THE MAN that I continue to struggle with. There are many others that I accept as true by faith. But this one, I don’t need to accept by faith, because faith is only necessary for the unseen. This proclamation, I know, is true. I have held the cold evidence in my own hands.

 

 

 

 

 

Giving Is Easy – But Receiving is Hard (The Giving Chronicles – Part 3)

 ^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

The real test if someone has had a conviction, conversion, or life change event is not what they say, or in this case write, it’s what they do. You can say anything, claim anything, but does your behavior change?

You can dismiss or explain away my “Christmas conviction” if you wish, but my behavior definitely changed. Within days, I donated $100 after I got hit with two unexpected big repair bills. But the impact didn’t stop with that one check. That image of the kid with no Christmas presents had been burned into my brain.

As a result, donations were made to various Christmas gift fund drives in 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. But there was no check written in 1992. I had been downsized from my job in October, a casualty of the economic recession.  Now, I found myself on the other side – not giving help, but needing help.

But I was much too proud to ask anyone for help – even too proud to receive any help. I would have to be near death before I might agree to receive any aid from anybody. However, soon after the job loss, it was communicated to me that people were going to offer me stuff, and when they did, I was to accept the gifts graciously and say “thank you”.

You see, when you reject the help of others, you prevent them from following THE MAN’s “give command”. If you don’t receive the gift, you prevent that person from receiving the blessing of giving the gift. That’s wrong for you to do – a bad transgression.

And yet, I only actually asked two people for help the entire time. Yes, I had lost my income, but more worrisome was losing my health insurance. My oldest daughter (there were two now) had a seizure disorder. The seizures would occur at random times and, depending on the severity, could produce a $20,000 hospital bill before insurance. Therefore, going without insurance was not an option, and a cheap policy wouldn’t suffice. I would have to find a way to make the expensive COBRA payments.

I was given the name of a social service worker who a friend thought could help me with this expense. I thought it would be a wasted call since I lived in a different county than the agency served. I even started the conversation by apologizing for even calling her. But she didn’t care where I lived, she asked me what county I had worked in. Oh, it seems the funding covered both people who lived in the county or had worked in the county. Then she instantly approved me for two months of COBRA payments. I asked my mother later for help for the other two months' payments I would end up needing. And asking you mother for help is much easier than asking others.

“Give, And It Will Be Given To You”

But even though I didn’t ask, it doesn’t mean I did not receive. I had faithfully given in those prior years, and now it was coming back to me in awesome, incredible, mysterious ways. There were three distinct events that are relevant to THE MAN’s proclamation on giving. (the quote that begins this post)

#1 All The Bills Get Paid

I didn’t publicize my situation, but I didn’t hide it either, and almost immediately, people offered me assistance. It was difficult to receive it, but I put my pride aside, accepted the help, and said thank you each time. I can’t remember all the people and all the ways people assisted. I do know that my friend Larry, who died of cancer a year later, paid my electric bill for two months. Yes, I was in a financially difficult situation, but all the bills got paid with money from unemployment compensation and my wife’s part-time, holiday job.

However, things took a peculiar turn in early February. So much money was being given to me by a host of people that I had excess funds after I paid the bills. This was difficult for me to process. I felt guilty receiving money that I did not need. My solution was to give away the excess funds to two needy people. There was a person with cancer whose financial light was reported in the newspaper. I don’t remember the second one. I mailed out the checks, but within three days, that money, and more, had come flying back to my mailbox from other people.

This was one of those literal God-fearing moments where you put your hands up in front of you and take a step back in awe. I gave away no more excess money and when I returned to work several weeks later, my bank account was higher than before the job loss.. Let that sink in; I was unemployed for four and a half months and ended up with more money than I started with.

#2 A Very Merry Christmas

I instructed my wife to spend as much on Christmas gifts for our two young daughters as she typically would. You can tell Christmas gifts are important to me, so why should my girls suffer because their father doesn’t have a job? So, my wife and I didn’t exchange gifts that year, and she bought the girls everything they needed, or asked for.

But then, two days after she had completed her shopping, an anonymous letter arrived in the mail with $100 worth of gift certificates at Toys Are Us, with a note to buy gifts for my daughters. The “Geoffrey Dollars” had an expiration date of December 24, so off to the store I went. 

And it was difficult spending $50 (in 1992 dollars) on each girl after we had already bought all their obvious gifts. It must have taken me ten minutes pushing that full cart around the store one more time to spend the final ten dollars on that last gift.

Running Over, Into Your Lap

Both receiving more money than your expenses, and buying $100 more Christmas gifts than planned could be considered an overflow of blessings about which that THE MAN had decreed. But it is the third event that provides the stunning, complete, literal answer.

Next Time: The Story of the Three Turkeys

 

 

Time For A Change In Perspective - The Giving Chronicles, Part 2

 

Most life-changing events are big, prominent happenings, occurring externally but impacting internally. Then there are those subtle, quiet rumblings that impact from the inside out.

It was the first week of December 1987. I had returned home from a mentally exhausting workday. Within minutes, my wife had delivered the following news:

-       The refrigerator, which had been making strange noises, would need a major repair.

-       The VCR[i], which doubled as our video camera, had stopped working and would need to be fixed before Christmas.

-       My master’s thesis[ii], which my wife had been typing into our first ever PC, had vanished from the 5 ¼” floppy disk[iii].

Money was tight since my wife wasn’t working in order to raise our young, slightly-special needs daughter. Two major repairs would put a dent in the holiday budget. It would take weeks for the thesis to be retyped, putting me way behind schedule for the submission deadline.

If these events had been spaced out a few days, they still would have stung, but the impact would have been more easily absorbed. But hitting all at once was more than my psyche could take that evening.

I could not calm down. I kept rolling each of these events around in my head, like a closed-loop horror film that I could not turn off. After dinner and putting my daughter to bed, I plopped down on the couch and turned on the television, hoping that would provide a much-needed escape from my worries. But I couldn’t even concentrate on the program because it was being preempted by the one running through my brain:

refrigerator bill … VCR bill … lost thesis … refrigerator bill … VCR bill … lost thesis …

I couldn’t stop the loop while awake, so I decided to go to bed, even though it was just past 8:30. Except for illness, this is the earliest bedtime in my adult life.

However, I am not the least bit sleepy. I’m wide awake, lying there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, with the same horror loop freaking me out.

I was in distress; it was quiet, it was dark. So, naturally I reached out to THE CREATOR for help in my plight. And I learned something important. THE CREATOR doesn’t respond well when you offer up whiny complaints about your first-world problems.

First, there was the strong rebuke. “You’re actually complaining because your fancy, expensive VCR is broken?”

Okay, when you put it that way. I guess that it is rather petty. Let’s forget I even brought it up.

But it was too late …

Next came the revelation. I was told to imagine an expectant child running down the steps on Christmas morning, only to encounter just a Christmas tree, with no presents underneath it. (This is a powerful image – if you don’t believe me – quick, imagine it yourself right now.)

And this hit me where it hurts. Because I was an only child, which meant on Christmas morning, every single gift under that tree was mine, all mine. And better still, I was an only child of an only child, which meant every present under Grandma’s tree was also mine. (Gee, and you wonder why I love Christmas so much?)

But the image of that kid with no presents ravaged me. It tore my soul open, and I was hemorrhaging spiritual blood. “Yes, that’s an awful scene – but what can I do about this?”

Then came the command. My church had announced the previous Sunday they were collecting money to buy watches (apparently someone had an excess supply) to give to underprivileged kids as Christmas gifts. I immediately dismissed it as something I wouldn’t bother with.

But now, I was expected to donate more than token money to this cause? Oh, no! Absolutely not!  I got to pay for the refrigerator. I got to pay for the VCR. I got to pay for Christmas. No. No money left for watches. Okay?  Oh, not okay? Not okay, at all. $100? Really? Okay, really … 

So that Sunday, I wrote a check for $100 for watches for Christmas gifts for some kids I didn’t know and would never meet. And it did feel good to know none of those kids would go “giftless” this year.

The credit card took a hit, but the refrigerator got fixed. The VCR got fixed. And Christmas got fully paid for. It took my friend Fred, one of the early computer whizzes, all of five minutes to find where my thesis was hiding on that tricky floppy disk.

Christmas 1987 turned out great. And life went merrily along. But that encounter on that unsettling December evening would have a life-long impact.

 Footnotes for those younger readers:

 [i] Video Cassette Recorder. It recorded television shows onto videotape. Mine was an expensive model where the part containing the tape detached. A separate camera plugged into it to record home movies.

[ii] This was a full MBA which took four years to complete going part-time. A thesis was not required but I choose to do one through independent study because I enjoy researching an writing.

[iii] The first floppy discs were flimsy and had to be handled with care. You had to insert them into a “floppy drive” each time you started up the computer and then you saved your file on another floppy disc. The only way to “backup” your data was to save the same data on two discs, which you almost never did.