Living Life: Giving and Receiving

You may have noticed quite a few changes on Brenda Cares Corner the last few days.  I’ve decided to remove the PC Tech business side and allow the Blog to flow in a more personal manner.  What I’ve decided to add is more of “Brenda,” that’s me!  “Living Life” will be articles expressing any and everything about my experiences living life.  Sometimes I may post several times a day or not even daily at all.  I’m just living life, learning, and endeavoring to enjoy every single minute of it.  Living Life could be considered a form of Journaling but I’m just doing me.

Today I was sitting and thinking about giving and receiving.  My mother is a very giving person, she genuinely gives from the heart without thought or consideration about her own needs.   There were times when my mother gave to those who were so much better off than her financially and it bothered me.  My mother was struggling desperately, we were poor and living in a building that should have been abandoned and yet family members would come from out of town to visit and my mother would always send them away with a gift.  You see, my mother had boxes of new items for that nice apartment we would someday move into; she referred to all those boxes of goodies as her “hope chests”.  She shared her goodies generously, it bothered me that she was sharing those treasured goodies with people who were in a financial position to help her, yet they never did.

It has taken me years to come to the realization that she gave because it made her happy.  My mother’s generosity is part of what makes her my Mommy!  I love her dearly, she is one of the few people I believe I would give my life for in a second.  Giving and receiving are a part of life’s journey.   We give and receive love, gifts, friendship and so much more.  I personally know that Charm (my baby sister) and I are givers like my Mommy, giving genuinely gives us such pleasure.  I love to see people happy and smiling.  Those close to me know I have a giving nature.  Unfortunately, I have a problem with receiving and that is not good.  A very wise lady once told me (in her endeavor to give me a gift that I didn’t want to receive), that I was very selfish.  It hurt me.  I immediately asked her why she would say such a thing?  She told me, ”You have been a great help to me and I want to give you this gift because I love and appreciate you.  It would make me happy to see you receive it, but you want to deny me my happiness because you are too selfish to receive my gift.”   A light came on in my head - giving and receiving bring joy and happiness to both parties.  The giver gets joy from giving and the receiver gets joy from receiving.  Giving is not the only joy but receiving is as well.  I still struggle with receiving; I endeavor to remind myself that I’m being selfish because in receiving I take part in the joy of the giver.

What are your experiences on giving and receiving?  How does receiving a gift make you feel?  Share with me, what’s your story?

I’m Brenda Living Life & Learning from it…

If you enjoyed this article, make sure you subscribe to BCC RSS Feed to stay on top of the latest article posts.