Beyond Generous

Late last night I emailed a friend to ask him a favor on behalf of our family.

It’s always a little hard, isn’t it, to make yourself vulnerable and share of a need you have? I mean, we would have totally understood if this man had said, “Sorry. Can’t help you.” No problem. But it would’ve had a teeny-tiny element of, “Oh WHY did we ask?!?-ness” to it, if you know what I mean.

But by this morning, he had already written back with not only an, “Of course I’d love to help!” but also an insistence on (tremendously!) blessing us even MORE as a “condition” of helping.

Such a friend. I just don’t deserve such a friend.

Totally reminds me of the time as a grad student when I started to get convicted about my (POOR!) financial management — I didn’t live on a budget, I had allowed myself to go into tremendous credit card debt for unnecessary luxuries and pleasures, etc. etc.

I reached out to Crown Financial Ministries for help. (And did, I should admit, hang up in tears the first time I called when they said I had to pay $50 or $100 or whatever it was to get their materials. I thought, “Are you kidding me? I’m going under here! I need help to spend LESS money, not MORE!” But of course now I think, “What else could a ministry do?” And I see the wisdom of how learning to live on a budget and get out of debt REQUIRES you to make decisions about what REALLY matters–and investing a little bit to get good materials to help is SO wise.)

One of the pieces of counsel that I acted on was to ask a friend if he might loan me money at a lower interest rate than I was paying on my credit cards–so that I could pay OFF my credit cards entirely and make payments to him at the lower rate.

Again–how embarrassing to have to confess to a friend my poor stewardship and foolish, foolish mistakes. But I did. And he prayed about it and studied what the Bible said about loaning and giving, etc. and came back to me and said something along the lines of:

“I’ll give you this money, Tara, but only with a few conditions. One, it’s a gift, not a loan. You never have to pay it back. Ever. If you do, that’s fine, but I’m giving it to you with no expectation of repayment and certainly no expectation of you paying any kind of interest.

Secondly, I will only give you this money if it draws our friendship closer — because my friendship with you and Fred is what is important to me.”

And that’s exactly what happened. He gave me the money. I paid off my credit cards and then began to live on a (careful) budget. Fred and I got married, finished graduate school, and steadily worked to pay off our $73,000 in student loans. (All but $1,500 being MINE, not Fred’s)

Two years after finishing my J.D. and M.B.A., we paid off all of our interest-bearing loans and called back my friend to let him know that we would really like to pay him back that $5,000 if he would please accept it. He said that he would accept half, but he asked us to give the rest to a Christian ministry. The ministry we chose was Peacemaker Ministries and the very next month we got a call from out of the blue inviting us to move to Billings, Montana and join the staff.

Even living in someone’s basement for a year, we could never have accepted, left our careers in Chicago, and moved to Montana to work for a non-profit organization if we had still been in debt. Our new salary (yes, singular) wouldn’t have even covered our monthly debt payments!

But by God’s grace, and because of the generosity of such a friend, we were out of debt and free to serve.

Grace, grace, grace!

I don’t know what your financial situation is like–but if you are in debt, stressed about finances, a little guilt-ridden over the wills that you know you should have but you don’t yet have–Fred and I just found out yesterday that we’ll be embarking on a little adventure at our church this coming spring. We’ll be teaching a class on “(Actually!) Setting Your House in Order” to help our church members to actually get on a budget, work on paying off debt, live more simply so you can give more generously, evaluate life insurance amounts, actually execute estate planning documents, etc.

I know it will be a blessing to our family to study and work on these topics again! (Sometimes our “budget” is really more like a “really REALLY careful accounting of our overspending.” Blush blush.)

And maybe I can be an encouragement to you all on this blog too? There sure are a lot of marriage and family conflicts related to MONEY — so this is a topic in the “living the gospel” and “peacemaking” areas, right?

We’re off to ride on a submarine and spend the day at Corona Beach now. (BTW–I’m trusting that you all know that we can only do such amazing trips like this because of the astounding generosity of my sister and her Fred, and the fact that they really LIKE to spend time with Sophia, so they take us on these trips and literally pay for EVERYTHING. Yet another thing that can be hard to receive in some ways–but it’s a grace to learn to receive too, right?)

Thank God for generosity! I pray that I will grow in grace and live as a generous and giving person.

Much love,
Tara B.