A Surprising Way to Become More Generous

I used to think I was a generous person. Then, I met my husband.

At our wedding, his best friend pulled me aside and told me a few things he thought I should know about Darrell before we were married. One of them was, “He will give anything to anyone. He’ll give the shirt off his back. He is the most generous person you will ever meet.”

Sure enough, in our first year of marriage I found this to be true, which was endearing until he started giving away my things (after all, what’s mine is his) and revealed how generous I actually wasn’t.

Before I knew it I was having flashbacks to elementary school (hey, that’s mine!)

My husband is teaching me what it looks like to be generous.

One day, as we were talking generosity and why it was hard for me, my husband said something that totally changed the way I thought about generosity altogether. He said, “If you want to become better at giving, you need to become good at receiving, too.

“We can’t give gifts we haven’t received first.”

At first, I was skeptical. Really? I can become more generous by receiving? That seems like a total copout. But as I started paying attention to the way I received gifts, favors, or even compliments from people — sure enough, I saw a connection between giving and receiving in my life.

Someone would offer to pay for my meal, or buy me coffee, and I would refuse.

Someone would give me a gift, and I would feel guilty.

Someone would do me a favor, and I felt like I needed to repay them.

Someone would give me a compliment, and I would shake my head.

It took me months to discover why I had such a hard time receiving gifs. Each time someone offered to help me, or do something nice for me, or just told me I was beautiful, I had to ask myself — why does this make me so uncomfortable?

Over and over, my answer was the same: I don’t deserve it.

Not only was I operating under the assumption that gifts had to be earned, I felt like I hadn’t done enough to make myself worthy of earning the greatest gift of all — grace. No wonder it was hard for me to be generous.

I didn’t feel like I had anything to give.

Everything I owned, everything I had, was being held back to compensate for what I perceived to be some personal detriment.

These days, I like to think of resources and gifts like the flow of water. You can’t stop the flow in one part of the stream, and not have it impact the flow in another. If I cut off the flow of gifts into my life, no wonder there wouldn’t be a flow out.

Likewise, if I stop the flow of blessings out of my life, it makes sense that it would be difficult for gifts and blessings to flow in.

Receiving gifts is humbling. So is giving them.

Both remind me how little, and how much, I really have.