CHAPTER 11

JUST ANOTHER RICH MOM

It’s not just the rich who get to give —it’s all those who give who get to be rich. You don’t wait until you have more before you give to God —you give now so you get to become more in God. . . . It’s not having much that makes you rich —it’s the giving much that makes you rich. Give and you are the rich.

ANN VOSKAMP

WHEN I RETURNED to my comfortable American life, I discovered just how weighed down I was with stuff. Our two-thousand-square-foot living space was crammed with enough home accessories to cover several houses. My shopping had become more than a hobby; somewhere it had turned into a habit. I accumulated stuff —stuff that not only filled my home, it cluttered my heart.

It wasn’t just shopping and decorating that led to this overstuffed life, it was consumption. I was buying stuff out of boredom. I would meander around Target, canvassing the clearance aisles, and buy things I didn’t need just because they were on sale.

I pulled big plastic tubs from the attic and discovered I could have decorated the entire street for Christmas. I asked my neighbor if her two newly married daughters would like to freely shop from my excess. I piled up the wall hangings and rugs and dishes and more in the garage, and my family had a big garage sale. We donated the money to a charity, and it was liberating.

Stuff doesn’t fill emptiness; it just hides it. When I looked at my life filled with wealth, I only saw poverty in my heart.

It was a terrible discovery.

For the first time, I understood the rich young ruler’s choice in Mark 10:21-22.

Jesus . . . said, “There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.”

The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go. (The Message)

Sometimes the only way to change something that is wrong is to compare it to something right.

I was waking up from the American Dream that claimed I should have bigger and better and more for myself. I had tried that and only felt empty when I stood face-to-face with people who physically had nothing. Standing in the middle of extreme poverty, I discovered the kind of wealth I craved, and it had nothing to do with money.

When I arrived in Kenya in the spring of 2013 for a quick trip to meet a few new residents and oversee video production of a mini documentary, I was tired —the kind of exhaustion that comes from middle-of-the-night flights, crossing multiple time zones, and sleeping sitting up. Just hours after I landed in Nairobi, I sat in a Kenyan church service surrounded by the residents of Mercy House, worshiping the God who had rescued them from despair. I pinched myself awake because I didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

At Rehema House a couple of the girls greeted me as family. “Mom Kristen, you are looking smart and very fat.” Ah, there’s nothing like a Kenyan compliment.

From previous visits, I knew that smart referred to “fashionable.” I’ll take that any day, and especially this one, considering I was wearing rubber boots and had dirty hair. I also knew that being called “fat,” however hard it was to hear, meant you looked really healthy. The girls often referred to Terrell as fat, and I always giggled when I heard it. This was the first time I had been deemed “healthy looking” by them. That has not been true for most of them.

I have watched dangerously malnourished pregnant girls come into the maternity home and stare at their huge plates of food in disbelief. They were far from healthy or fat. Every pound they gained was a victory against their life of poverty and abiding hunger and a benefit to their unborn children. The staple starch of Kenya, along with many other African countries, is called ugali. It’s made from maize (field corn) that is pounded to the consistency of flour and cooked to a thick mush. The mush makes you feel full, but it offers little nutritional value when you are malnourished.

In some ways, ugali might be considered an emotional “comfort food” to Africans because it’s equated with a full stomach, something many people don’t experience often. For many, it is the only food they eat. While we still serve ugali at the maternity home a couple of times a week because it’s a favorite, it’s not the main course. The residents feast on chicken, beef, fish, liver, fresh vegetables, lentils, and fruit.

“Look, Mom Kristen,” said Sarah, one of the girls, as she patted her own tummy, “I’m getting fat too.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable.

In that moment, I was ashamed. Did these girls understand that I came from a land of fat people? I’m referring not only to weight. I’m talking about how much we have in material possessions and yet live each day bloated by emptiness. We don’t even realize it until we see people with so little. I am not saying that we don’t have poverty in the United States. But even people who lack financial means have something that developing and third-world countries don’t have: opportunity. It’s vastly different in countries where welfare and government aid don’t exist. Many people in the world don’t have consistent access to basic needs like clean water and food.

It dawned on me that having enough to eat every day and being able to provide enough food for my family not only made me healthy —it made me rich. Most of us in the States don’t think of ourselves as wealthy, but if you can afford to buy this book instead of food, you’re in the top percentage of wealthy people in the world.

HOW RICH AM I?

If you’re juggling car payments and a mortgage and trying to squeeze more money out of your month, you might be thinking, I am not rich! I know I would have laughed if you’d told me that when our family of four was living on a one-income youth pastor’s salary. In reality, instead of comparing ourselves to our neighbors and friends, we should compare ourselves to the world.

According to GivingWhatWeCan.org, you can discover just how rich you are. Let’s say your family of four lives on $30,000 a year total income. That’s not exactly wealthy by American standards, right? Well, with that amount of income, you are in the richest 14 percent of the world’s population. Double it to $60,000 a year and you’re in the top 6 percent of richest families in the world.[20]

HOW POOR IS THE WORLD?

It’s shocking when you read global poverty facts and discover how the rest of the world really lives:

I’m not an expert on the economy, global issues, or even cooking, for that matter. But I do believe that if we understand how much we have and how much others lack, not only will it make us more grateful, it will make the needs around us more visible. Giving What We Can, the international society dedicated to eliminating poverty in the developing world, has raised that kind of awareness. “Our wealth is largely due to the fact that we have been born in wealthy countries benefiting from good institutions. This inequality, however, gives us the capacity to achieve a lot for others: by giving a small fraction of our income, we can raise the income of the world’s poorest disproportionately. By concentrating on the most cost-effective charities, we can achieve even more.”[22]

Here’s what I’ve learned since being involved in Mercy House: it’s not really about who is poor and who is rich because poverty and wealth aren’t really about money or things. It comes down to contentment. I’ve taken people with me to Kenya who want to buy a washing machine for the maternity home and a “real broom” to use for sweeping because they don’t understand the culture. The home doesn’t need an electric washing machine. Our residents need to know how to do laundry by hand because that’s how laundry is done in their homes. And when they bend over to sweep with a collection of sticks, they don’t need a different broom. We can’t fix what’s not broken. Most of the things we think would improve their lives are actually conveniences; things like microwaves and Crock-Pots and air-conditioning can make life easier, but not necessarily better.

Steve Saint, who lived with the Waodani tribe in the jungles of Ecuador, understands this:

Among people living simply amidst abundant resources, poverty is not measured in annual income or net worth, but in “what I have in comparison to what those around me have.” In such contexts poverty is more of an attitude and a mood than an actual state of having or not having something. In such contexts, contentment is the secret. Some people think 1 Timothy 6:6 says “Godliness is a means of gain,” but really it says, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Where there is godliness with contentment there is no perceived “poverty” until discontentment has been stirred.[23]

Maureen visited my family in America for the first time in 2013.

We pulled into the driveway, and I put my van in park and hit my garage door opener. As we unbuckled our seat belts, Maureen looked into my garage and then looked at me. “Mom, I didn’t know your family also sold bicycles.” She was pointing at the five bikes hanging from hooks in our garage. Her words shook me to the core.

I was so embarrassed. She looked into my messy, disorganized garage, cluttered with a lawn mower, basketballs, and shelves full of tools and supplies, and saw wealth. I saw the garage as a big honey-do list.

Maureen hadn’t even been inside my home, and I was already convicted.

For the next few weeks, I saw my life the way she saw it and realized just how much I had, and even more, how much I take for granted on a daily basis. From cooking to cleaning, my home is filled with modern conveniences I’ve always had —hot water on tap that doesn’t have to be boiled before I use it, canned food, a stove that doesn’t require charcoal or a tank of propane at my feet —the list is endless. Maureen would watch me closely, and we would talk about the contrasts between her home and mine. Maureen marveled that I could prepare a healthy meal in thirty minutes. With her standing in my kitchen, it was easy to swallow my normal complaints about what to cook for dinner or that I had to cook at all. We openly talked about the differences, and Maureen never condemned our way of life as she tried to understand it. At the same time, I like the conveniences in our culture, and Maureen could understand why.

Maureen with a Chick-fil-A cow

Maureen at Chick-fil-A

It was fun to expose her to new things in our country. For lunch one day, I took her to Chick-fil-A around the corner from our house. She had tasted “Christian Chicken” as she calls it during her stay with Student Life and loves it as much as I do. I always tuck chicken sauces into a suitcase when I visit so she can have a “taste of home.” As we were eating, the Chick-fil-A mascot showed up. Maureen’s reaction was hilarious —she was so confused. When the Chick-fil-A “cow” hugged Maureen in the restaurant, she was shaking from fright because she didn’t believe it wasn’t real. During her visit, she fell in love with Chinese food and decided we should eat it every day. I took her roller skating for the first time with my kids, and we laughed so hard at her trying to get the hang of it. I took her to Target and bought her some new clothes and shoes, and she fit perfectly into our family.

As we drove through my town, she kept remarking on all the pet stores, vets, and animal clinics. I didn’t dare take her into PetSmart or tell her that the people in my country spent more than $53 billion on their pets in 2011.[24] She wanted to know where all the hospitals and clinics for people were located. In her country, there are medical facilities on nearly every street, with most patients sharing beds because sick people outnumber open beds. I tried to explain about medical insurance and preventative healthcare, but the more I talked, the more hollow my answers sounded.

At one point she said, “Do your people not know how my people live?”

I quietly answered, “Many don’t want to know.” And I couldn’t help but think of my own choice to be ignorant for most of my adult life.

Often what we need is a perspective change. It’s so easy to get caught up in consumerism and ungratefulness. Someone once said, “People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped.”

A few years ago, I was outside pulling weeds, and when my neighbor saw me, she invited me in to see her beautiful remodeled house that was finally complete. Now, these were friends who loved God, served on staff at a church, and had lived in their home more than twenty years. They had finally paid the last payment and owned their house. They deserved a little update, in my opinion.

When I walked through their door and saw their gorgeous wood floors, I fell in love. I finished the tour and complimented her on the beautiful renovation, then headed back home. As soon as I opened the door, this came out of my mouth: “We need wood floors too.”

I didn’t even know I wanted them until I saw my neighbor’s. I immediately compared my lack to her gain. Isn’t that human nature? (I never did get those wood floors, but just between you and me, I still would like to have them.) Perhaps you’ve done the same with a girlfriend’s new dress or a friend’s new car. When I stood in a mud hut in the middle of extreme poverty, I found myself making comparisons too, but with the opposite effect. It all depends on how you look at it.

In Matthew 26:11, Jesus says that the poor will always be with us. I don’t think we can cure world poverty by changing our perspective or through charitable giving. Pastor Kevin DeYoung writes,

The Christian needs to be generous, but generous charity is not the answer to the world’s most pressing problems of hunger, inadequate medical care, and grinding poverty. Wealth is created in places where the rule of law is upheld, property rights are secured, people are free to be entrepreneurs, and there is sufficient social capital to encourage risk-taking. We can and should do good with our giving. But we must not lead people to believe that most of human suffering would be alleviated if we simply gave more.[25]

It’s not about giving all our money away and living with the poor like Mother Teresa (unless God specifically calls us to do so). It’s about (1) being willing to do just that if He asks, and (2) exchanging our poverty of spirit that is often found in consumerism for abundant joy, which is often discovered in relentless generosity.

On a daily basis I race from Internet meetings with coworkers in Kenya to the school carpool line in America. One minute I’m trying to help a fourteen-year-old girl escape from sex trafficking and the next, I’m listening to my own fourteen-year-old daughter tell me all her friends have iPhones and hair highlights. One of my greatest challenges is living with one foot in the first world and the other in the third. And while I can’t ultimately change either or all, I can live with intention, and that’s what changes me, my family, and maybe the world. Elizabeth Dreyer, in her book Earth Crammed with Heaven, makes this provocative statement: “In a profound way, our intentionality is a key ingredient determining whether we notice God everywhere or only in church or only in suffering, or nowhere. It all depends on how we choose to fashion our world.”[26] When we open our eyes to what we have and how others live, it affects the choices we make.

WE CAN BE CONSCIENTIOUS CONSUMERS

Before my youngest started her last year of preschool, we went shoe shopping. She walked right over to the row of sparkly tennis shoes and declared, “I want Twinkle Toes.” At the time, I hadn’t heard much about these light-up, overpriced shoes, but she begged and pleaded, and I gave in. She did need shoes, and they were 20 percent off (and she was my baby and, honestly, I didn’t want a tantrum in the middle of the mall. I never said I was perfect).

A few weeks later, she excitedly told me she was a part of a club on the playground. “Mommy, it’s called the Twinkle Toe Club. Only girls with sparkly shoes are allowed in it.”

Oh my word. Later I saw commercials for these silly shoes on TV in between kids’ shows. My daughter danced and twirled to the advertisement. I turned off the TV and realized I had been suckered into consuming something based on a buck —apparently so had a lot of other moms —and tried to introduce my preschooler to the concept of buying what we need instead of what everyone else has.

Media not only targets our children and homes, it influences what we buy. Jim Taylor, the author of Raising Generation Tech, sounded the alarm in an article in the Huffington Post.

Popular culture is big business, to the tune of $1.2 billion a year. . . . Research has also shown that in the United States, children have influence over their family’s food and drink purchases, purchases totaling 100 billion dollars each year. Popular culture wants you to raise consumers, not children! . . . Popular culture is now so ubiquitous, intense and unrelenting that if your children are exposed to it without sufficient limits or guidance, it will go far beyond simple entertainment and become a powerful —and unhealthy —influence on them.[27]

When we consider where the shoes and clothes and cheap jewelry we love to wear come from, it’s quite revealing. And disturbing. As I write these words, news programs are talking about the horrific sewing factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than a thousand people. No doubt something in my closet came from this oppressed country. Cheap clothes come at a high price.

So what do we do?

I’ve been down the confusing and hard-to-follow road of trying to buy only fair-trade or secondhand clothes, among other things. I am not advocating boycotting clothes made in other countries. I am encouraging conscientious shopping. Here are some ideas to get you started:

WE CAN LIVE GENEROUSLY

Generous people raised me. My parents are two of the most giving people I know. From early childhood to today, they have freely given what they have to others in need. They have repaired cars, paid bills, helped missionaries, funded projects, bought appliances —the list is endless. It’s also inspiring and contagious. I can remember from a young age hearing my dad say, “You can’t outgive God,” and I watched as he opened one hand to give to others and opened the other to receive from God. My dad once emptied our family savings account to give it away, and we watched God replace every dime. This picture of open hands for giving and receiving shaped me. We can all be part of that conduit, standing in the middle between God and people in need, ready to give spontaneously.

I want this for my children. I want them to see us give a family in need a generous check, offer to help a friend, see the joy in giving big to the teachers in our lives. I want to look for opportunities to involve my children in generosity. I tell them stories of other kids who are giving, not to make them feel guilty, but to inspire them to action.

Not long ago, our six-year-old did just that. After hearing a story about a generous child, she said, “I want to do that.” We sat down as a family and talked about a few needs we were aware of, and our children chose to help start a small business for friends in Kenya. We discussed various ways to raise the money, and a garage sale won out. Our kids each contributed items from their rooms, and my little girl sorted and helped separate donations from our community group and learned the fine art of garage sale pricing. Our kids “helped” run the sale —if you have kids, you know that means they played with all the toys they donated and even bought a few back. Baby steps. The money raised bought two sewing machines to start a business in another country.

By far, one of the greatest and most powerful lessons I’ve been taught in this journey is the beauty and life change that comes from being generous.

I hold fast to Winston Churchill’s words: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”[28]

Christmas is a golden opportunity to help others. A few years ago, I wanted my kids to fall in love with the joy of giving. Terrell and I took them to Target and told them to pick out an age-appropriate toy to give to the kids of a single mom in our church. At first it was hard for them, standing there in the toy aisle, looking longingly at the colorful, fun items that would have been nice on their own wish lists. But then they really got into it and ended up putting way more items in the basket than we had planned.

A week before Christmas, we each wrapped a gift or two, then drove across town to deliver the packages. We saw that the mom had left her garage open, and while the rest of us hid in the car in the dark, Terrell snuck the big box of gifts into the open garage and quietly placed them next to her van. We giggled and hushed our voices, although the excitement was tangible. We circled the block three times to see if our anonymous gifts had been discovered yet, but they were untouched. We left, hoping she would discover them (and her open garage door) before morning.

Back home, as the kids got ready for bed, we all speculated on how shocked the family would be. I happened to check Facebook (I’m friends with this lady and am probably totally “outing” myself all these years later), and when I read her status update, I rushed upstairs to share with the kids her excitement, joy, tears, and relief for this unexpected surprise.

I will never forget the look of pride on their faces. They never told a soul about what we did on that December night, but they have never forgotten how good it felt to give.

A couple of years ago, my pastor issued a challenge to our congregation: “Look at your life and where you have in abundance, even excess. Is it toys bursting from the playroom, clothes in the closet, food in the pantry, an extra car in the garage? Take seven days and ask God to reveal someone who is lacking in the area of your abundance. And then share what you have.”

It’s what Jesus talks about in Matthew 25:35-40.

“I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.”

Then those “sheep” are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?” Then the King will say, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me —you did it to me.” (The Message)

We don’t give because we have a lot. We give because we’ve been given a lot to give away.

A generous person is always ready to spontaneously give to those in need. It’s usually inconvenient and unplanned. It will probably cost us comfort, even pride. It won’t be easy or bring us fame.

This is Christianity.

UNPINNED FAITH

When our worldview is altered by realizing how much we have in comparison with how little others have, it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for us. We have been given much, and much is required of us. Here are some practical questions to ask yourself: