I’ve looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall.
I really don’t know life at all.  – Joni Mitchell

It’s such a small amount of money, but I’m realizing the amount is irrelevant to the principle and the joy of giving.

Thirty dollars was all she needed. Thirty dollars to buy enough phone time to hopefully land a job interview. We’ve helped them out before – she and her husband – separated, though not by choice – she in one shelter, he in another. Sure there are ghosts in both their not-to-distant pasts. Drugs, alcohol – maybe some prison time – but you don’t ask. You hope. How else will they ever climb out of this? And if they don’t, have you wasted your money? That too is irrelevant. You give what seems like a little to you, and she acts like you’ve given her the moon.

We gave one woman our bed for a night, and to overhear her ecstasy, climbing in between clean sheets, made you rethink, maybe it was the moon you just gave, and it cost you nothing.

I’ve been on the asking/receiving side of giving for so long that I’ve had a tendency to defer to other people or another time in my life, the experience of giving. And then along came our Isaiah House experience and the opportunity to come to know a few women without homes, and I suddenly realize how relative giving and receiving is.

Thirty dollars to one person is like $30,000 to someone else. I can give $30. Someone else can give a thousand times that with similar ease. We both can know the same joy, and learn the same lessons.

You discover it doesn’t make you better – or bigger – to give. It makes you closer. Like Marti wrote, after our friend had received her gift and apologized for asking, Marti replied:

My sweetest sister: Never ever apologize to me. If I do not have it I will tell you just like you would with me.
 
Let’s not let embarrassing factors about each other interrupt our relationship. We have similar things to contend with, so never concern yourself with the thought that I do not understand.
 
My main goal is to get you and [your husband] under one roof so the two of you can fight about realities like John and me. I will finally have an honest friend who can say, ‘I know exactly how you feel’ without the cloak of darkness most of us hide behind.
 
I have never met the man who would put up with you like John does me – but he is known and loved by John – so he must be amazing.
 
I adore you,
 
Marti