The Gift of Generosity

This past summer a sweet, sweet friend of mine found out she was having a second son. I shared the happy news with Shane and Keith and instantly Shane wanted to go get this friend flowers. I knew that my mom, Shane's Grandmother, had purchased flowers with Shane for me the week before so the action was freshly ingrained in Shane's mind. At the time, I can clearly recall that we were running a bit late but Shane was so eager to delight, so open to learning, and so wanted to mimic what my mother had been teaching him about gift giving, about generosity, about thoughtfulness that we stopped at the market.

That afternoon we were late to meet our friends at the park however, we showed up with a beautiful orange and green bouquet. I will never forget Shane handing those flowers over with such joy. He knew they would warm our friend's heart. He knew she would be delighted. Shane was able to experience the joy of generosity and I never want to miss an opportunity to foster that in my son's heart. One day that lesson is going to impact his tithe habits, his purist of a worthy woman, his heart as a friend and a father. One day I hope to send out into the world a man that is more excited to hand a bouquet of orange flowers to someone and bring  them joy then he is to open gifts on Christmas.

 So this holiday season we continued the lesson of generosity. Under my tree yesterday were gifts picked out by Shane. Bright and cheerful red ribbons were tied by his loving toddler fingers, and cards were signed by his hand. This holiday season Shane had already proudly announced before Christmas to my sister that she was getting pink earnings but I was OK with that because my son is learning the joy of generosity. He could not wait to share with my sister! So we will continue to teach, to model, and to practice this through gift giving because it is a lesson I want him to learn. Teaching generosity was the best gift I gave to my son this Christmas!