“Babe”, my husband looked up at me from the bed where he was curled up with his iPad and a low-grade fever.

I paused looking for my birthday chocolate to give him my full attention. “Shall I buy first-class tickets this time?”

I snorted “No, we are peasants, sit us with the peasants”.

“But I have always wanted to fly first class,” he said.

“Then buy first-class, that would be fun” I laughed.

“It’s double the money!”

I gasped! “We are peasants, for $200 we can sit with the peasants!”

“That’s what I was thinking” he gulped.

It was only a year ago that we were surviving the last dredges of a completely crashed economy. Milk prices were so low that farmers were not even coming out even. We had spent months working at home, doing jobs that allowed us to pay our employees, but not always ourselves. I didn’t buy the children summer clothes at the Goodwill. I couldn’t. There was no money for such frivolities. The children cut off sleeves and pant legs and were happy. I was amazed when a random person at a campground lugged two trash bags full of summer clothes to my camper. Plenty for the three girls to fill in a few holes in their wardrobe. “God, why do I even bother to worry ahead of time,” I told him later.

We didn’t worry or stress. We just lived, knowing God had every single day in the palm of his hand.

Always there was enough.

Always.

Sometimes there was even a little leftover. But not often. Not often enough to get frisky.

Finally, work started rolling in. And we went to work. The whole crew dug into the harness and pulled. We were gone for months at a time. The men got fresh blisters, calluses, and thick muscles from heaving steel. We missed social engagements and spent hundreds of hours on the road traveling. We cooked massive loads of food for the hungry, and in the evening threw back shots of whiskey to try to warm up again after freezing on top of a roof in 20-degree weather. Alternately the heat was brutal, and water ran through the workers like a sieve.

Eventually, we come home. And it feels so good!

But invariably the comments start.
”You guys must have so much money”.

“You must be raking in the dough right now”.

Years ago when the world was young and we still thought money had spiritual value, the Lord took all our money away. For years he allowed us to fall short every month. We were forced to prioritize and scrimp and scratch and save and eat rice and beans, so much rice and beans. For a treat, we sometimes had venison that someone gave us.

But slowly something magical started to happen as we pressed into the battle. We lost our appreciation for money, while also gaining fresh respect for it.

The two are not mutually exclusive. We can build our barns, fatten our bank accounts, buy property, hoard and scavenge and grasp for every dime we have. But it’s never truly safe. Moth and rust, robbers and cheaters are always standing by to take it away. Gripping money tightly with your hand closed will create a miserable life of counting, recounting, and stress.

The very same thing happens for a frivolous lifestyle without respect for hard work and the laws of income versus outgo.

I’ve always been fascinated with the story of misers.

Daniel Dancer came from a family of skinflints, but he outdid all of them. He refused to bathe or wash his clothes lest he be forced to spend money on soap. He once found a sheep that was partially decomposed. His sister busily transformed that old dead sheep into meat pies for the next two weeks.

“A very different type of stinginess qualifies Wellington R. Burt for our list. This timber baron from Saginaw, Mich., was one of the richest men in America at the turn of the last century. He lived well enough, though not ostentatiously, and was a generous philanthropist in Michigan. Yet what he's most remembered for is his tight-fistedness toward his own family. After his death in 1919, his will was found to contain smaller annual payments to his children and grandchildren than to his domestic servants. A "spite clause" specified that none of Burt's descendants could receive the bulk of his fortune until 21 years after the death of his last grandchild. The outraged offspring appealed but to no avail. The condition was finally fulfilled in 2010. Just last year, more than $100 million was distributed between 12 of Burt's great-, great-great-, and great-great-great-grandchildren.” This story is especially fascinating. What caused him to do such a thing? I cannot see many reasons for this, even if his children and grandchildren were spoiled.

Yossele the Holy Miser is one of the great stories of Jewish folklore, and it does seemingly have a historical basis. Yossele lived in Kraków, Poland in the 1600s and was famous as the richest and stingiest man in the city's Jewish community. The people resented his hoarding and when he died they delayed his burial and threw him in a pauper's grave. But then all the charitable funds in the community mysteriously dried up, and it turned out that Yossele had been anonymously supporting the poor villagers, never allowing his involvement to be known. So be careful before you judge another's generosity; the purest charity of all is given without thought for reputation.

Several years ago while visiting a little church in Georgia, a little old lady sidled up to me. She didn’t ease into the conversation. She just walked straight forward into the deep waters. This happens to me often. Because of this blog, via my online presence, many people feel as if they know me, but forgetting that I do not yet know them. Still, as an introverted enneagram 5, this is my preferred method of meeting and conversation. If you try to small talk me into the deep waters, I might actually die.

Back to my little lady: She slipped her hand into the crook of my elbow and said earnestly “I cannot bring cakes to fundraisers” her eyes glinted with a tear. “Nobody eats the cakes I bring”. I feel my brows pull together as I involuntarily react to her pain. “Why does no one eat them?” I ask. “Well, you see, it’s like this, I am gluten intolerant and diabetic so I always use spelt flour, and sweeten with apple sauce”. She leans back triumphantly.

“Do people not like spelt flour?” I ask, trying to get on the same wavelength.

“It makes my cakes heavy and not as sweet, and people are spoiled, they like sweet, fluffy cakes.”

“Help me understand,” I say, “Why don’t you just use sugar and flour for when you bake for a function like this?”

She looks shocked and aggrieved. Clearly, I am not getting it. “People don’t eat my cakes, so I have to eat them all myself. If I don’t eat them they will go to waste.”

My head turned one side and then the other like a quizzical dog. “Are you telling me that you use spelt flour and apple sauce because people won’t eat your cakes, but they would eat your cakes if you used sugar and flour, but you don’t because you cannot eat sugar and flour, therefore no one eats your cakes”?

She nodded, gratified that my thick skull finally downloaded her information. I turned abruptly and walked away with my brain juice trickling out my ears. “I ain’t got nuthin” I told my husband in my most Amish-redneck accent. “I can’t help her, the Lord needs to do some groundwork first”.

“Could you not have told her the truth?” My husband asked.

“No” I replied flatly.

He sighed. He understood all too well.

Why am I ending with that story?

Because that kind of mindset springs from two tightly closed fists, and the confidence that God is in heaven, and has very little power all the way down here on earth. It is the attitude of “I must care for myself because no one else will”.

Open your fists people. Let go of your need to control. There is no sweeter friendship than that of a person who lets God do his work, who loves you enough to be honest, and who is confident enough in God’s power in heaven as well as on earth.

He hears you, he listens. Have a relationship with him. He’s a real God with real power and real love.

He has already won.