I smiled.  He has spent almost every cent of that money on others.  By God’s grace, he seems to be exercising generosity better than his father.

You see, I was raised to appreciate frugality.  Most of my clothes were either from garage sales or clearance racks.  Every pair of my hockey skates were used.  I was taught from a young age about the value of comparison shopping and knew how to cut out and use coupons.  In part, it had to be this way.  We weren’t poor, but we were a family of six and my father had multiple jobs to make ends meet and my mother herself returned to work once we all were in school.

Yet, in this frugal environment I was NOT taught stinginess.  My parents were some of the most generous people I knew.  We had a number of Compassion children that we supported, almost every support letter was answered with a gift, and I remember random acts of giving to others in our family or community.  

From all of this, whether correct or not, I internalized a high value of denying things for myself in order to give things to others.  When my parents tried to purchase a new pair of skates for me in college, a disagreement ensued in the store, even though they tried to justify it by saying I had never had a new pair.  It was very hard for me to accept a gift and something about that should have been the first clue to me that I needed to grow in understanding God’s generosity.

When Sonja and I first met, she loved the passion for frugality, especially since it was done in order to give more to others.  Then she patiently bore with me when she started to realize that I was enfolding her into this vision.  I asked her to make sure she collected all her receipts, so I could catalog and analyze all our spending.  Gifts like flowers that were common in dating were no longer given.  I started telling her that she needed to cut out trips to Caribou Coffee and could save a lot more money by using coupons and shopping in specific stores other than the carpeted Byerlys.  Yeah, nice husband, huh?  For some reason, my generosity was extremely selective.  Yes to overseas workers, orphans, and the homeless, but no to my own wife and others around me.

Thankfully, God provided good men around me.  My friend Dustin gently reminded me that while God encourages living simply in order to give generously, we must not forget that this giving also includes those closest to us, like my wife.  My buddies Ben and Erik told me to get off my butt and get my wife some flowers and that they would ask me next week if I had done it.  Other men have modeled it for me. When one of my friends found out that the fan in my computer broke down, he pretended we was sending me a replacement fan, but instead sent me a brand new laptop.

God’s still working on me.  I have been blessed with riches beyond imagination.  I hope I learn how to use it not only to show the widow, orphan, and unreached how valuable and loving Christ is, but also my family.  And I pray my sons are better men than me.