Where Greed and Gratitude Collide

Nap time is upon us, and I sigh heavy.  I’ve been waiting for nap time today since the dawning of the sun, it seems.  I’ve spent most of the morning de-cluttering, but this can be a difficult project, what with my 2-year-old stomping through my piles, making a break out the front door and down the road to the playground (twice), and barking cranky orders at me as he continues his quest to assert his newly discovered mean streak.  And I fear we’re in for a long upbringing with him, since he yells with the power of an angry dictator and is wildly encouraged by how adorable the general public thinks that kind of behavior is, coming from a tiny boy with 2-inch eyelashes and swoon-worthy baby blues.

It’s been the kind of day that I look at these kids I love and my heart cracks and my feathers ruffle when I wonder how, despite my best efforts, they have been infected like the rest of us with the disease of privilege.

“I don’t want to sleep in my sister’s bed”, my oldest (11) says, when I tell him the sleeping arrangements will change when his beloved grandma comes to visit.  His face crumples in disgust.  I don’t like sleeping in other people’s beds.”  His video game controller is hot in his hands and his room is strewn with gifts and toys and clothes, and he begins to complain about how cramped we are here in this house that’s not really ours, and how unfair it all is anyway.  I hear the ingratitude and it burns and angers and I tell him he’d do well to realize how lucky he is to have a bed at all, especially since he’s the only one of the twelve of us with his own bedroom and bathroom.  Not to mention an endless supply of food and shelter and all his needs provided for.

So often lately, I wonder if I’ve missed something as I’ve raised them or whether the intrigue of worldly pleasures is just so overwhelming for little ones in our culture, today.  And with each passing day, I become more and more disgusted by the stuff that clutters our home and heart and calendars, and I wonder if the amount of peace and gratitude we are capable of experiencing is inversely proportionate to the amount of crap that sits upon our shelves.  I’ve come to dread the portion of holidays that involves the tearing off of gift wrap because no amount of effort on my part can discourage our relatives from spoiling them rotten, and while I haul bag after bag off to Goodwill, I can’t seem to escape the plastic wonderland that consumes their little hearts and minds and hands as I ever try to fill it with matters that matter more.

And today, I’m defeated by all of it.  I want the U-Haul trucks to come and haul it all away – my stuff, my kids’ stuff, and the resident kids’ stuff that begins to define all of us… and stifle, and maim, and seemingly squash our ability to see past our own noses.

I pray that we are not too far gone.  I pray that we have not all become rich young rulers.  Because it hurts my heart to think that we have so much abundance that it suffocates our ability to see it all as gift.  I decide to pass on the gift-counting, as a homeschool assignment, and I prepare gratitude notebooks for them each and hope beyond measure that learning to count every gift, to thank God for all of it, for every breath, will reverse the sad impact of the grip selfishness has on us all.

In case you’ve been living in a cave and haven’t heard of Ann Voskamp (just kidding), the “gift counting” I’m talking about here is the challenge she ushers in her beautiful book, One Thousand Gifts.  Find more info here:  www.aholyexperience.com. 

Jesus Loves You. Pass the Pop Tarts.

God has been doing a lot with me in these last few months – challenging my perceptions on authentic faith in a variety of ways, from encountering a bizarre smattering of unfamiliar theological terminology that makes my head spin, to a simple wondering whether I’m really doing anything worthwhile to help the poor and needy… whether I’m doing anything to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world.  And with every day that passes, I become a tad more disgusted with my half-hearted efforts.

Some of you know that I live and work in vocational ministry, raising many kids that are not my own in a children’s home in The Middle of Nowhere, Texas.  I moved far from home in an effort to follow God where He needed workers – and I was pretty sure that helping feed, clothe, and raise orphans qualified.  I was quite confident that His face could be found hanging out among the “least of these”.  But I’m wondering, a lot lately, whether my work here is also enabling a future generation of spoiled me-first Christians, iPods in hand, longing (but not for long) for new laptops and X-boxes and cell phones, owning salvation simply as “fire insurance”, and who will grow up to continue the ignorant idea that so long as I drop a buck in the offering plate on Sunday, I’m doing my part for the sake of the Kingdom, so aren’t I holy?

And don’t think I don’t count myself among those Christians.  I love my laptop and cell phone… and my fire insurance, and I am guilty of selfish motives just like the rest of us.  And He’s dealing with me.  But I’m longing for the “how”.  How do I show these kids that iPods are dandy and going to college is a wonderful gift, but its what you do with all these gifts you’re given that counts?  The sense of entitlement is astounding in a place like this, and I struggle to find the joy, anymore, in the giving.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, and dozens of times in the last month alone, I’ve come across the feel-good sentiments about the joy of giving, the true gift that comes when you give, but I have to be honest for a second here because my heart is aching with emptiness over the blindness of the receivers.  A kid who didn’t have a meal to eat or a bed to sleep in last Thursday is complaining today because his cocoa puffs are the store-brand variety and the game system he got for his birthday from the poor widow down the road isn’t the color he asked for, and where is his monogrammed gym bag, already, ‘cuz he’s been waiting for it for a whole week now.  And this is bold to say, but I wonder, sometimes, if some of these kids weren’t better off when they had real-life in front of them, poverty and dysfunction and the whole mess of things… where the love of Jesus meant more than shiny new shoes and a slick skateboard.

And I’m disenchanted about what the point of all this is.  How is this helping?  I am keeping these kids alive, yes, and peppering their lives with scripture and smiles, but aren’t I also continuing the lie that will send them to their (silk-lined, consumerist) money-hungry graves?  “Look and see, God really does love me, after all.  I know because I got NFL tickets and an iPad on the same holiday.”  And there are days that I can’t remember the message I’m supposed to be sending here, or how to do it by giving and giving to encourage greed and gluttony. 

Jesus Loves You.  Now pass the industrial-sized box of Pop Tarts.   

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