Learning to Receive with Gratitude

Being unemployed three times in my life has beaten the pride out of me when it comes to receiving help from others.

Our oldest son served a mission because our former ward supported him fully - paying all the costs of his mission. The Bishop came to us, even though he knew we would be moving soon after my son left for the MTC, and said that multiple members had asked him if they could pay for our son's mission. Technically, our son wasn't a member of that ward for even one day after he left the MTC - but those ward members supported him, anyway.

Some time ago, a member of our Bishopric handed my wife an envelope on Sunday saying simply, "I was told to give this to you." It had a card ("Have yourself a merry little shopping spree.") and a fairly significant amount of cash in it.

The thing is, we weren't on church assistance at the time - and hadn't been for over a year, but some people knew how tight our finances were. It might have been easy in the past (before my periods of unemployment)to have my pride hurt and to argue or be offended somehow by the envelope - but life's kicked that crap out of me.
  
Now, I'm just touched and grateful for the gesture and the expression of love behind it.