The Secret Heart of Gifting
Tis the season to………get or give and probably a little of both. It’s called gifting and there are many options to choose from: Simple Gifting, Over Gifting, Re-gifting, Extravagant Gifting, Cheap Gifting, Thoughtful Gifting, Thoughtless Gifting, Late Gifting, Early Gifting, Guilt Gifting, Love Gifting and many more. Here’s the big deal that ties it all together……..that thing you offer and that thing you receive tells far more about the giver than the getter.
When I graduated from high school in central Arkansas my maternal grandparents made a trip from southeast Iowa to celebrate the occasion with my family and friends. On my special day I opened four big boxes of lovely, delicate china! I was seventeen years old and had a complete, eight piece place setting of winter white dishes trimmed with ice blue flowers and silver accents.
Comments over dinner revealed the secret of my treasured china. It came by way of grocery store stamps. Nothing was said to me directly, but I overheard others discussing the diligence my grandmother put toward her gift. Sometime during my sophomore year of high school grandma began shopping exclusively at one particular market. It wasn’t bargains or high quality fare, but the stamp she was awarded for every dollar she spent that kept her returning each week to the same grocer, until she reached her goal, china for me.
The innocence of youth protects us from many truths our lack of experience can’t responsibly process but in the following years I came to realize the poverty my mother knew growing up. She was a child of the World Wars. Her mother went to work in the city factories, her father remained a civilian and farmed for the war effort. Her childhood was cut short by a society that asked her to take up the slack and become nanny and housemaid to her younger siblings. Life was not often kind but when she grew to adulthood her mother was incredibly proud of the woman she became. I could see it in the old eyes that followed my young mother around the room during family togetherness. I am the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter my grandmother held in such high esteem, and that is why I was the recipient of the most extravagant graduation gift my grandparents were ever able to give. It wasn’t because I was Gretchen, but because Cleta Cuppy, poor but proud was determined to give. This gift told the story of my grandmother’s character, not mine.
In this season, as we are blessed by other’s bounty, remember to look beyond the hands that give to the heart that first acquired. It isn’t about getting what we want or what we need, its about the gift of human connection that God wove into His creation. The gift speaks the soul of the giver. AND if you stop by my house for some hot chocolate, you will find a cabinet, a gift from my parents, filled with my graduation china, and then you will turn to a cluttered refrigerator door covered with notes and coloring book pages artfully filled by small hands with big love. Each item represents a human heart and the heart of a Good, Good, God who gave the Greatest Gift of All.
Merry Christmas and Peace of Earth, Good Will Toward Man.
Love,
Gretchen
