The Giving Season - It's All About Me...

The Season of Giving - It’s All About Me…

It is the holiday season and the season of giving and I am wondering is the giving all about me?

You see them everywhere the signs, the stories, the pleading to help those who don’t have enough, those who won’t have a Christmas if “we” don’t give it to them.  They come in the form of emails and facebook posts from friends asking for your old coats, because they will “go where others are afraid to go”.  The malls and stores are filled with Angel trees and ringing bells, bright colored post cards in the mail with pictures of poor downtrodden children in ragged clothes and bare feet; all designed to bring in the presents and the dollars.  But what does it do to the dignity of the receivers - the parents, the children who know that Santa won’t come this year because there isn’t enough money to even buy food to put on the table so they can have breakfast before they go to school or the mom who tells her friends she’s not going to lunch with them because she’s not hungry and the real reason is she has to pay the electric bill so her children will have a little heat that night, or the Dad who silently cries as he walks to work because the choice is gas  or food for his family.

What happens to the gifts you so generously give?  Does it really end up with the child it is intended for?  Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to those who legitimately need receiving what they need.  IF I know that they only receive from one organization.  What experience taught me many years ago is that is not always the case.  I will share a part of my story few people know.

It wasn’t too many years after I divorced, I had lost my job and started my own business.  Times were lean, very, very lean.  I could pay the rent and keep the utilities turned on, but that was it.  It was the week before Christmas when I went to pick up my check for a job I had done.  I was excited.  I was going to be able to buy Christmas and fix a nice dinner for my kids.  When I arrived to pick up the check I was told it wasn’t available and wouldn’t be because the person that had to authorize payment had left for the holidays and wouldn’t be back until after the first of the year.  There was not enough begging or pleading I could do to get a check released.

So, with a broken heart, and feeling like a complete and total failure I went home and explained to my daughters there wasn’t going to be Christmas this year.  No presents, not dinner, nothing.  I didn’t have a red cent left to my name.  To add to the feelings of failure and disgrace my ex could and would shower them with the gifts they dreamed of and I could give them nothing.  They were great kids and said no problem, we would just celebrate later and went to Christmas Eve at Granny’s where they were showered with love and presents and a feast of Christmas dinner.  Later, in complete desperation I was digging through all the old coats and jackets I could find in hopes that I could scrape together a few dollars to at least fix a stocking with some fruit and nuts when I pulled out a $20 bill – in the late afternoon of Christmas Eve.

I went to the dollar store and with the change I had been able to scrape from all those little places in your house that change will hide, I had enough to spend $10 on each girl and pay the tax.  Being young teenagers I was able to get makeup and other “girl” stuff, wrap it in newspapers tied with string and waited until after they went to be that night. 

We talked about it that night when they got home and I was never so proud of them.  It was ok that they didn’t have presents.  If I had the money they would rather buy presents for the kids I was working with in the worst parts of town and the kids at the homeless shelter because they would get plenty of presents from other people but the kids I was working with wouldn’t have anything. WOW!  I was blown away by their generosity but it didn’t do much for my feelings of failure.

After they went to bed, I quietly put all their presents under the tree.  What was going to be the most horrible Christmas of my life turned out to be one of the best.  It was better than two little kids waking up to a tree filled with Santa presents and stockings overflowing with toys and candy.  But the story doesn’t end there.  The holidays ended, the girls went back to school and I headed back to Stop Six and the homeless shelters.

I was greeted by excited students telling me all about the two and three Nintendos they got for Christmas (that was “the” gift that year).  I heard all about how they had so many bicycles they gave them to other kids or “Daddy sold it”.  They excitedly told me about all the presents they received and how they “disappeared”.  Hmmmm….. I can only imagine where they went.  It was there I learned that way too many families know how to work the system and register for every Christmas give away they can, and receive from multiple organizations, often times way more than we are able or willing to give to our own children.

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What is missing from this picture??

Fast forward a few years and I was working in the homeless district.  I observed first-hand the hundreds of people who showed up between Thanksgiving and Christmas to that “horrible place others are afraid to go” to help the least of these.  With trucks and vans loaded full of old clothes, coats and a plate of hot food they quickly distributed their items with a huge smile on their face and a “God bless you” they came and left.  They left, but not before I experienced the giving from the homeless perspective.  Part of my job was to go and visit with the givers and direct them to the designated giving place in the neighborhood.  I was walking the streets and visiting with my homeless friends when I was mistaken for one of them.  Several times people tried to hand me a plate of food or asked if I needed a warm coat to wear.  I politely told them who I was and why I was there and asked them to go to the proper place.  I was met with anger and resentment even when I told them they were trespassing.  Not only that, I experienced the feelings of those that were being given the items; feelings of lessness, loneliness and humiliation that my homeless friends had tried so hard to describe to me.  I had heard the first hand stories from the homeless themselves about what happens to those generous donations – they were tossed in the trash can as they rushed to the next person giving away things, taken around the neighborhood and sold or traded for drugs or left in piles on the streets for city workers to come and trash in the weeks following the holiday season.

Perhaps you just have to experience it to understand that what the homeless or the “least of these” tried so hard to explain to me. I watched it happen.  They don’t want your “stuff”.  They don’t want your meals.  There is no reason for a person to be hungry in that neighborhood there are about six agencies serving three meals a day – over a million meals a year.  What the homeless really want is for you to come and spend time with them, getting to know them, building ongoing relationships with them.  They want to know they matter.  They want to know you care.  Not just for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

After Christmas the streets become bare and lonesome.  “I” felt good when I went home.  “I” got to go spend a few minutes making “them” feel better, and then “I” disappeared, not to be seen again until next year.

Don’t get me wrong, I spent many years on the streets at Christmas time passing out hats and gloves and warm blankets. Years ago, before all the services out there for the homeless now I went under bridges and behind the buildings and into some really dark and scary places.  I went before serving the homeless became what it is now, before millions of dollars had been poured into cleaning up the homeless district in Ft. Worth.  And, yes, it was all about me.  It was about what made me feel good because I had done something that made me feel better with little regard to what happened to the homeless after I left. It filled a dark empty place in my heart that was left during the holidays in the years following my divorce, but I did something different.

I went back.  I had been there before the holidays, committing time and energy and resources into the ministry I felt called to at the Church on the Slab, at the Presbyterian Night Shelter, the Salvation Army and just by sitting on the curb talking with people and learning their stories, week after week, before, during and after the holidays.    

And that brings me back to my original question¸ is it all about “me”, and what makes “me” feel good, or is it really about helping the least of these?  If it is really about helping them, what can I do that will bring long lasting sustainable change and not just a smile for a moment with loneliness and lessness to follow? 

So, I challenge us this holiday season to really examine our motives for giving.  Is it all about "me", what makes "me" feel good? Why not give a gift that will really help - pay a utility bill, buy a gas card, contribute to the local food bank?  Why not keep giving of your time, your talents after the holidays are over and the lonliness sets in?  Give something that will empower and sustain...

God, help me as I go forth on this journey to South Sudan to promote feelings of self-worth and empowerment to end the cycle of poverty and not the good feelings in me that only last a moment.  God, help me to offer long lasting, sustainable change that will bring about the restoration of peace and the building of dignity in those I go to serve.  God, help me to make this journey all about you, and not about me. Amen.