sharing | Elizabeth Sands Wise

Dear Daughters,

At the beginning of the growing season, every leaf of oregano feels extravagant. The first snap peas, the early lettuce and spinach, and then later, that first red tomato or first summer squash. But as with most things, by the end, when it’s hard to keep up with the produce, when you can’t even give the extras away because everybody has too many tomatoes and too much zucchini, when I am already snipping large handfuls of oregano every day to eat on my eggs, well, at that point, it’s hard to be appreciative of what is before us.

I’ve been thinking about first fruits, about God’s command to the Israelites in Deuteronomy to bring a basket of the first fruits of their harvest to recognize publicly God’s faithfulness to them in the fulfillment of promises. I read that passage this morning and I heard it differently than I’d heard it before, maybe because we’re still savoring every fresh green bean, still astounded at Kentucky tomatoes showing up already at the farmers market. We’re in a season of first fruits.

Girls, it’s hard to give the first fruits away. They’re what you’ve been waiting for. They don’t even taste the best, to be honest, usually those first fruits are picked too early because we are impatient, but we savor them nonetheless, not really wanting to share. So giving them up willingly and publicly? That’s sacrifice.

And then I began to think of the less-literal “first fruits” of my life. Like, say, tithes. I’ve preached this before, being raised in a home that took tithing seriously, tithing off the top, even tithing off my birthday presents and allowance because I was taught that none of what I had was mine to begin with. It was God’s. So yeah, I get that. Financial first fruits.

I am a generous person with my finances. I am also a generous person with food. I love to bake things and give them away. I like to deliver goodies to my neighbors, and I like to involve you in the process.

Already you know the joy of giving. I have also sorted through your belongings: your toys, your clothes, divvied them out among folks we know with younger children, who would want what, where to donate.

We talk about the least fortunate in our house and I want you to know that it is important to give as if nothing belongs to you. These are all interpretations of first-fruits. (Though I suppose hand-me-downs sound like last-fruits, the truth is that most of what you have is also hand-me-down, so we’re going with the analogy anyway.)

But, I’ll confess, I did come up with a doozy of a first-fruit that isn’t so easy to quantify and isn’t so easy to say I’m a pro at giving away. Know what that is? My time.

Seriously, girls, am I willing to give the first fruits of my time?

Let’s go here:

How about when I’m tired and grouchy? When my to-do list is long? When the neighbor swings by unexpectedly? When we get that text inviting us to come and splash in the kiddie pool? When a friend needs a ride to the bank? When the mailman wants to chat? When I really want to go for a run? When, for crying out loud, I really just want to go to the bathroom by myself or drink my hot tea hot?

Is that too much to ask?

I usually feel this well up in my soul in capital letters, but I’ll scale back here, though I do think this needs to be said again.

Is it too much to ask to keep some time to myself?

Well, I cry a little bit inside when I pause and consider it, because guess what?

The answer is yes. It IS too much to ask.

My time isn’t mine to begin with. So when I squeeze a few minutes extra out of a day, metaphorically speaking, am I using it for me or for others? (To be clear: It’s not that I’m down on self-care. Sometimes I do need a nap. Self-care is important. That’s a topic for another day.)

But I know that I personally need to be careful because it’s not my instinct to give time away. It’s my instinct to turn inward, to look at all I need to do, and see others as an interruption, even to see you as an interruption sometimes, when I’m being honest.

And people are not interruptions.

Your dad and I decided to host weekly picnics this summer. It won’t be convenient. Community rarely is. Sometimes people won’t show up. Sometimes people will show up and there won’t be enough food. Sometimes you’ll get sand in your hair because one of the littler kids dumps it on your head. Sometimes it will be hot and buggy and nobody will want the fire to be lit for s’mores.

When I sent out the email announcing the picnic to a variety of folks we know from around town, church, the college, our neighborhood, one of my friends emailed back: “I’m so impressed by your energy!”

Say what?

What is this energy of which you speak?

Me? I don’t have energy. Not enough, that’s for sure. And it’s not my instinct to not invite people in. (Okay, that’s not true. My instincts are pretty spot-on: I’ve got the instinct to invite people in. It’s just that I usually can talk myself out of it for all kinds of practical and very good reasons. Which is why we decided on the standing invitation, because you can’t talk yourself out of it once it’s been put out there into the universe.)

Girls, I really believe that if we had a first-fruits view of time—that it isn’t ours to begin with but that symbolically the little that we do have, that first bit of extra and abundance we are lucky enough to harvest in our too-busy lives, needs to go back to God for kingdom work and community building—well, the kingdom of God would be a much more hospitable and welcoming place.

We would have real community. We would have relationships with people who are not like us. We would welcome the stranger into our midst and that stranger would become a friend. We would not hoard our time into vacations and extravagant hobbies but into conversations over fences. Church wouldn’t just be a building on the corner (and definitely not across town from the suburbs where we reside) but also a front porch swing where our shared stories transform into holy moments.

Our tables would be more often shared than not shared. Bread would not be broken in front of a television but over a firepit. Cookies wouldn’t be eaten in seclusion in a closet so children didn’t hear the chewing (no idea who does that) but delivered to the neighbor who just had the new baby or the mom trying to get by while her husband is on the nightshift.

Girls, we all have people in our lives who need a bit of our time. And I’m not saying we need to squeeze community and hospitality into already busy lives. I’m saying we’ve got a certain amount of time allotted to us and the first-fruits don’t belong to us and our binge-watching Amazon and Netflix.

And that’s not the message I want to hear most days.

Love,

Your Momma

Dear Daughters,

I recently spent some time hanging out with a dozen elementary school students during an after-school reading program. I was their weekly “special guest,” invited to come and share for about twenty minutes–to talk about myself for a little bit and then read something. The program director actually suggested I might want to read something I had written.

I began to think about what it is I “do,” what it is that is the thread connecting the various things I write and the way I see the world.

So I decided to talk about being a storyteller.

I took some samples of my writing and art that don’t seem connected–the journals I keep for each of you, my chapbook of poems, an article I’d written, the interview with Over the Rhine, a canvas I’d painted after hearing a friend’s sadness–and told these second- through fourth-graders that these diverse forms were all ways of telling stories.

And, I told them, they were storytellers, too. They had stories, they were living stories, and they could write stories, or draw stories, or tell stories in their own ways.

I emphasized storytelling as I shared about myself, and I emphasized it by reading some excellent picture books about storytelling and the way our stories are passed between generations of people, and I emphasized it by giving them each a single subject notebook from the dollar store.

I have never seen such excitement over notebooks before, girls. It was amazing.

After showing them their bounty, I didn’t want the message to get lost in the thrill of notebook-choosing. I wanted to remind them of all the things we talked about as ways of storytelling, how they could tell stories, how each of them had a voice that was worth sharing. I said they could write poems, or draw pictures, or journal about their days. And then I asked the group, “What sorts of stories will you write in your new notebooks? What will you write about?”

The first little boy to respond gasped, “MY WHOLE LIFE.”

My whole life.

Wow.

I loved his answer.

I loved his optimism.

I loved that he actually believed he could write his entire life, all nine years of it.

I loved everything about that afternoon because our lives change when we realize that they are stories, that we are living a story worth telling, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the difficult, the long drudgery of boring seasons, the astounding grace of joyful seasons.

I have the privilege of writing with words, typed into computers, handwritten in notebooks, but even if you aren’t a writer or an artist–and you probably won’t be–you have a story, girls, and not just a story to tell but a story to share.

I believe we’ve all got stories, and we’ve all got ways to share them. It’s about being present in the moment, present with others, present with ourselves. And being thoughtful. Deliberate. Honest.

Maybe you’ll share a piece of your story by listening carefully to a client or a cashier, share your story as you run marathons or build bridges in Africa, share your story as you argue a case in a courtroom or design a website in your pajamas.

No matter your vocation, you’ll have stories. So many stories. But you know what? They’ll all add up to one Story, if you look for it. And when you find it, I hope you share it.

I’m excited about your story.

I’m excited about my story.

I’m excited about our story.

Come along with me.

Love,

Your Momma