What does today tell us about us?
I lit up when I heard those two little words.
“Last Chance!”
I’d heard about this place–basically The Rack of The Rack. The unwanted items from Nordstrom go to Nordstrom Rack discount stores, but then all the unwanted items from all the Nordstrom Rack stores around the country go to one store, located in Phoenix, called Last Chance. And that’s exactly what it is–the last chance to get high-end clothes and shoes at ridiculously low prices. (You know something’s a good deal when they put a limit on how many of something you can buy and when it’s illegal to re-sell items purchased there.) Because of this, the place is a mob scene. Since the only place I shop is either Goodwill (no one’s fightin’ over worn out sneakers there) or Amazon (from the comfort of my own home), the scene at Last Chance was quite another beast altogether. I’ve never done the Black Friday deal either (Well, I bought a coat once), so I was unaccustomed to the frenzied fight for fashion.
But upon arrival, I quickly figured out why the people were crazy there–this place was great! Bins of real leather boots, racks and racks of high-end shoes, rounds and rounds of designer jeans, a sea of quality bras for $2.97 each. What? You can imagine the frugal-shopper in me was doing the happy dance.
I had a blast. I quickly spent the $120 of Christmas cash I had tucked in my wallet, and walked away with two big bags of treasure. But something didn’t feel good inside. I laid in bed that night for hours, unable to sleep. Part of it was certainly just the sheer amount of money I spent. I never spend that much. We live frugally and give a big chunk of our income away. I’ve trained my brain to think of dollars in terms of mosquito nets and sponsored children. I could have bought 33 mosquito nets with that amount of money! But it wasn’t just that. That money had been given me for Christmas to buy whatever I wanted, and I had done just that. Nothing wrong with that.
What nagged at me was what the day told me about me.
In the fascinating book I Told Me So, the author discusses “giveaway actions.” A giveaway action is an event that uncovers and reveals the true values of the heart, which often contradict what we think are the values of our heart. He explains that these moments are helpful for us, because they show us where we may have inadvertently deceived ourselves into thinking we believe something other than we really do.
In our fight against self-deception, we’re wise to pay attention to these giveaway actions.
Last Chance was my giveaway action. Because even though I don’t spend much money, even though I don’t buy clothes or fritter away our finances on frivolous material things, even though I wrote a book on living frugally (directly to your right), my time there, in my heart of hearts, revealed that deep down–I still really love stuff. I still really love jeans and leather boots. And, if I want to give it the name God gives it–I still have greed in my heart. The response, then, isn’t self-loathing or even necessarily returning (there’s no returns at Last Chance) but to confess (call it what God calls it) and recognize once again how much I desperately need His grace, His sanctification, His work in my life.
I desperately need Him to change what I love. To continue to make my heart like His.
So I share this post not to shame us (I’m still wearing my new jeans), but to help us pay attention to these giveaway actions. Certainly, Black Friday is a giveaway action for our nation, spending $59 BILLION dollars on ONE day while 21,000 children will die that same day of preventable causes. So I ask, What does today tell us about us? I know it’s not simple, and I know guilt isn’t good motivation.For me, it wasn’t that spending $120 was bad, it was that it revealed a root of greed still present in my heart.
So all in all, I’m grateful for my trip to Last Chance, but not because of the leather boots and great jeans.
I’m grateful for the giveaway action that brought me back to the cross, and back to the gospel of grace, that showed me my fallenness, His forgiveness, and the cleansing, transforming love of Jesus Christ.
{Happy Friday. Thank you so much for reading.}