Give it Away

More often than not, Anne Lammot and Donald Miller magically give words to unwoven threads of my dreams and tiny inklings of incomplete thoughts that have not quite come together in my mind.  In this blog, Donald Miller unfolds the story of deciding to give his Storyline conference away, allowing each attendee to simply pay what they can afford to pay.  "Give it away now. God said to me.  I knew instinctively what God meant. He meant why wait till you have a foundation, till you have security to start giving your life away. Give it away while you are in need."  I love the idea of giving away while we are still in need. I think I am so far from it that I cannot even conceptualize it. But I know you and I have a gift or talent or resource or idea which could connect the dots, feed the heart or the mind or the body, give a breath of life or paint the full picture for some other soul who is looking and searching and digging for that one thing which you hold in your hands and could give away.  In my life this most often comes in the form of food and beer.  At a speech she gave in Fort Worth, Anne Lammot said it seemed to her that everytime Jesus had a gathering of people he was like, "Can we get these people some food? They're a little crazy!"  I think that's right.  Give each guest some food and a nice glass of iced tea, super sweet like your granddaddy makes it, or a cold beer or a Malbec or a Cabernet.  Something to tide them over and calm the crazy.

The hardest thing God asked me to give away was my Bible.  During high school, I poured over this Bible, less out of a genuine faithfulness or commitment to a routine of "morning quiet time" and more out of desperation, confusion and a deep desire to make sense of my friends and my family and the overwhelming feelings in my heart that God had a plan for me if I could just figure it out (which I have not).  This is the Bible I loved and wrote in and made notes about events in my life and my friends and times when I was sure the Holy Spirit had given me a word.  I treasured it.

One Sunday at church, Josh and I were sitting next to a woman who didn't have a Bible with her.  No big deal.  Lots of people show up at church Bible free.  (This was pre-iphone or ipad.)  While we were singing I felt a little twinge of "give her your Bible" from the ever-subtle, if not always convicting, voice of the Holy Spirit.  Um, let me think about it...wait its coming to me...no.  That little whisper felt louder than the six piece band and the chorus of a few thousand voices singing in the room.  Ignore, ignore, ignore.  I was so wrecked over the nagging Spirit telling me to give this woman my Bible that by the time I offered it to her at the end of the service I was sweating and holding back a rageful flood of tears. It physically hurt me to hand that book over to her.  She couldn't have  known Josh and I were weeks away from breaking off our engagement or that we had recently left another church because I felt so terribly excluded and rejected.  She didn't know handing over this Bible caused me to feel I was giving up on a person I thought I would never be again. I don't have a beautiful end to this story. I have never seen her again.  I gave away something I treasured and I have no idea if it mattered at all.

We don't always get to tie a bow on our "give-away" stories.  We aren't here to be everyone's fixer.  Co-dependents, all together now...I am not here to fix other people.  But we can "give it away now." Our work, our art, our time, our food, our money, our clothes, our ideas, our encouragement, our vulnerability, our permission, our conference, our podcast, our music, our Bible, our lives.  We can slowly be transformed into the kind of people who are fully expecting the opportunity every day to give something away.