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Give without Remembering. I saw this sign on the way home last night just as I was thinking about this very topic. Lately, I’ve had several opportunities to give something of myself\u00a0 – time, encouragement or more tangible support – to another person when I knew it would not result in any kind of reciprocity.<\/p>\n

Now, in my experience, this can be a tricky situation to navigate. Generally speaking, it’s good to give freely with no expectations. The major religions of the world teach that giving without expecting anything in return is a spiritual discipline. In the New Testament, Luke 6:35 “love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Matthew 6:3 says, “but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Now that’s hardcore.<\/p>\n

But sometimes, it’s easy to slip into the role of the person who is always there for everyone else but who doesn’t take care of herself – especially as a parent. Many times, I have fallen into this latter category to the degree that I didn’t have any energy left to spend on taking care of myself, spiritually, physically or emotionally. Of course, after a while I learned that leaving so little for me meant I didn’t have anything left to give anyone else.<\/p>\n

Just to clarify, I’m not putting myself up as some kind of saint who just worked herself to the bone for the rest of the world. But I am saying that learning when to give and learning when to step back and let someone else have a turn may also be a form of spiritual wisdom. So, right now, I’m learning about how to balance this practice in my own life. I think that’s why I’ve had opportunities lately to choose when I can give and when I have to step back and be sure I’m refilling my own spiritual, physical and emotional energy tank.<\/p>\n

Anyone else struggle with this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Give without Remembering. I saw this sign on the way home last night just as I was thinking about this very topic. Lately, I’ve had several opportunities to give something…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1GpYg-n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organicmamacafe.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}