We Can Change Our Lifestyles, or We Can Change a Life
But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
1 John 3:17 ESV
It turns out that when you decide to write a book on generosity God might just drop a large, unexpected amount of money in your lap. No kidding, that’s exactly what happened.
I drive by my dream house on the way to work every day. During the spring when it was being built, Terrell and I impulsively stopped and looked in the windows. I told myself if we got caught peeking into the vacant house, we could convince people we were potential buyers and not creepers.
A contractor opened the front door with us standing on the porch. It was as awkward as it sounds, but he was happy to give us the grand tour and confirm that, yes, this was definitely our dream house and it could be ours for a small fortune. My husband and I had one or two what-if conversations. “What if we sold our house and what if we got a little higher house payment and what if we used the extra space to . . . and what if we . . .” and we talked about all the reasons and ways we could make this happen. We even dipped our toes into these murky waters and said to each other, “We are good people. We help others.” Although we didn’t say it out loud we might even have thought that maybe we deserve this blessing.
But in our hearts we knew the what-ifs would make our we coulds impossible. It is the we coulds that have made our lives such an adventure. We could sponsor another child. We could start a nonprofit and raise money to open maternity homes in Kenya. We could buy a kiln for an artisan group we work with at Fair Trade Friday. We could support our sweet friend and employee who wants to move to Thailand to serve her people. We could respond to a need immediately. We could . . .
Back in my own beautiful home, I gave myself a pep talk every now and then when I started to think about what I didn’t have instead of what I did. My thoughts went like this: Kristen, your house is beautiful and has plenty of room. Moving would be so much trouble. We’ve spent so much time and money on our backyard.
But even the we coulds didn’t stop me from noticing the for sale sign swinging in the wind as I slowed down to pass my dream house, and they didn’t stop me from wondering what it would be like to sip coffee on the broad porch swing or cook in the modern farmhouse kitchen. Our kids overheard the small talk about a dream house and noticed every time we drove slowly by it and put two and two together. It didn’t take long for it to become their dream house too. “Mom, drive by the house!” they would urge me on every trip home.
During spring break when that dream house was going up my family traveled back to Kenya. We visited the maternity homes, held miracle babies, took new fair-trade product ideas to artisan groups, and witnessed hope. It got us through the hopeless situations such as visiting with Agnes, a mom who told us her daughter got pregnant at fourteen.
“She was in the sixth grade,” she tells us. She wasn’t promiscuous or disobedient; she was desperate. I didn’t ask what it was like to let your little girl sleep with old men for food because the tears rolling down her cheeks were answer enough.
Her pregnant daughter is now a young mom, rescued and thriving at the maternity home funded by Mercy House Global. Our family started the nonprofit more than seven years ago for survival prostitutes, those who prostitute for food and survival—for girls just like this daughter.
I sat in this mother’s home with my fourteen-year-old next to me, and I could barely breathe.
This mom also told us how her son was still owned by a neighbor who lived down the littered road in the slum. He worked all day and most nights—not for money but for food. I wondered if she knew we called this slavery.
She told us how she boiled corn to sell to people on their way home from work and tried to provide for her seven children after her drunkard husband ran off, but month after month she came up short and had to make desperate decisions to keep her family fed. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, but I knew we had to do something or her daughter and grandchild would never be able to come home.
I won’t lie, as I scratched my crawling skin in the stifling heat and could still feel the glares of men staring down my daughters as we walked to her house, I couldn’t wait to leave her home. I didn’t feel brave at all and longed to return to my normal.
I closed my eyes and held back tears. This is 75 percent of the world’s normal. It’s a truth that’s easy to ignore: a small percentage of us have enough of the world’s resources to last a lifetime, while a large percentage of the world doesn’t have enough for even one day.
Before we left the house I pulled out my phone to show her pictures I’d taken of her daughter and granddaughter at the maternity home the day before. She tenderly touched the screen and wiped her eyes; her pride was evident. Then I showed her a picture of me holding her granddaughter, and I could no longer stop the tears. You see, her granddaughter was named Kristen after me. Baby Kristen made Agnes and me family forever. I treasured the moment, and I think my family sitting around me did too.
We left her home and found a place to shake the bugs out of our clothes, and we cried over lunch with the heaviness of the world’s normal. We already offered small-business and parenting training, but our small team—our kids included—racked our brains on how to take the next steps to provide new jobs and a central workspace for the desperate mothers we had visited that morning. We returned home, vowing to change their lives.
The entire time we were in Kenya we didn’t think of our dream house once. I didn’t think of the gorgeous wood-beam ceilings when I stood in a home without a roof. I didn’t remember the massive front porch when I stepped over putrid raw sewage to enter a home in the slum. I didn’t long for the perfect kitchen when I sat in home after home without running water.
Once we were back home, I decided to go a different way to work so as not to pass by the dream house. I no longer cared about it. My kids never mentioned it again either. I was reminded of this truth—this choice—that our culture and even the church and, yes, I don’t like to think about: I can change my lifestyle, or I can change a life.
On a Saturday a few weeks after we got home we were doing yard work. The guys were mowing and weed whacking while the girls and I pulled weeds in the flower beds. I took a break to grab the mail. I opened the mailbox and pulled out a letter and some bills. I opened an envelope from my publisher and couldn’t believe what I was holding. It was a very large, very unexpected royalty check. I let out a gasp and my family looked up from working. I waved it in the air and they came over. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!” I said.
“What is it?” my son and husband asked in unison.
I told them and Emerson said, “Momma, what are we going to do with that money?”
Before I could answer, these words flashed in my mind, Is this a blessing or a test? I knew the answer. “Honey, we are going to change lives with it.”
We can keep changing our lifestyles with every raise and “blessing” that comes our way, or we can change a life. That’s the hard truth in the daily choices we make. Yes, the truth hurts. I will tell you plainly, it is gutting me. I have met women in oppressive and pathetic situations who are hoping and praying we will make the right choice.
I can make my life better, more comfortable, and more convenient, or I can change another person’s life so they can live another day. When we say it hard and clear like that, it almost makes it sound as if we are choosing between being selfish or selfless.
Right after that trip to Kenya, I stood in front of women at a church, and the words that had been thundering in my heart for weeks came out of my mouth. I was as shocked to hear them as those with dropped jaws staring back at me were. I’m still trying to sort out the thoughts and feelings in my heart, and some days I swing too far to one side or the other. But saying them aloud has made them seem only truer. We call ourselves a blessed people. America is blessed. We are a Christian nation, and God has blessed us with so many good things, pretty things. I have a nice car, a nice house; I am so blessed.
We get unexpected money in the mail and we say, “Oh, look, another blessing.” But what if God gave it to us so we could bless someone else with it? What if instead of giving God the minimum we gave him the most? What if we aren’t blessed at all? What if we have so much not because we are blessed but because we simply keep it ourselves? What if we have been given so much because we are supposed to give it away and not keep it? What if we are really just selfish? What if we are failing instead of succeeding?
We can change our lifestyles, or we can change lives.
Often when we change our lifestyles we saddle ourselves with debt and payments and we couldn’t change a life—ours included—even if we wanted to. When we have so much stuff, always trading in and up for bigger and better, we don’t feel less burdened; we feel only more tethered to this earth. I can say it because I have lived it—so heavy with stuff that it nearly choked me to death.
I cannot get Mother Teresa’s words out of my head, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”1
What if we took Richard Stearns’s version of Scripture to heart:
For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness. I was in prison, and you said I was getting what I deserved.2
We must consider this question asked by David Platt: “If our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is really in us at all.”3 What if we changed the way we live so that other people could live? What if we were changed in the process? What if we believed these words: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:16–17 ESV). God help us to see the truth, even when it hurts. We either believe this truth, or we don’t.
One night after that trip, as summer was in full swing, Madison sat down heavily on the couch next to me. I could tell she wanted to talk, so I closed my laptop, turned toward her, and waited. I refused to fill the silence with words, and eventually she started talking. (Sometimes this simple action is all we need to take to get our kids to open up.) “Mom, I just feel different from kids my age, even the youth group,” she confessed. Her brother joined the conversation and admitted that he did too. They had just finished their first year of online high school, and it had been tough in a different way than public school. They struggled with loneliness the most, and we were already adjusting our plans for the following school year to get them into more co-ops and groups of kids their age.
But I knew in my gut that friends and school changes would never make them feel that they totally belonged. They were different—how could they not be? They had witnessed the world’s normal up close, and it had changed them. Since that trip Madison had made a commitment to buy and wear only fair-trade or secondhand clothes because she knew that cheap clothes were costing someone their freedom. She had read that cheap clothes often point to slave wages for the world’s poorest clothes makers.4 Jon-Avery was giving free archery lessons to kids because he had tasted the joy of sharing what he’d been given. Emerson was begging to return to Africa. The fads and trends, silliness, and superficial components of our culture would never truly satisfy my kids again. I knew they would not be changed by our world, but I could see the heartache of raising world changers.
“I feel different too,” I confessed, and I shared some of my own heartbreak with them. The cost is high, but the payoff is life changing. We cannot forget Veronica’s question to my daughter Madison at the start of this book. It has shaped how we want to raise our kids and spend the rest of our lives. I believe every family should ask themselves this question: What am I supposed to do with what I’ve been given? The answer will always lead to redemption.
Five months after that spring trip with my family, I returned to Kenya. I didn’t return alone. I brought most of the Mercy House staff with me because I was desperate for my team to understand the world’s normal. We brought a new fair-trade product line to teach, visited the maternity homes, witnessed soul-crushing poverty, and slept crammed on the floor of Maureen’s home every night. But the highlight was witnessing the hopeless moms we’d left a few months earlier now standing in front of looms and kilns and learning a new skill so they can provide for their families.
By that time our family had given most of our unexpected money away. Our kids thrilled at the idea of sharing it and the process of disbursing it, but we agreed to keep the details private. Keeping it a secret didn’t diminish the happiness a bit; it only enhanced it. Somewhere, somehow along the way in our little family—with all its hiccups and hang-ups, imperfections and impossibilities—we were raising kids who would change the world. They had discovered the beauty of sacrifice and the joy of giving. Yes, the world is changing, but we can change the world by pointing our kids to a God who never changes.