Several weeks ago, my wife told me something recently that I didn’t enjoy hearing...

She slowed the cadence of her words and reached for the right terms. “The only word that comes to mind is tight.  The way you’ve been, even your facial expressions, is just tight.” 

By this point in my journey, I knew that women have legendary emotional antennae that sense tiny energy changes.  My heart dropped.

She was right.

Over the last couple of years, I had been learning to show up open-hearted, generous, and joyous. It became a value to bring massive value wherever I showed up--whether to the stranger in the checkout line or my wife and children when I came home from work.

But the past few weeks had brought both professional and personal challenges. Sensing little margin, with little emotional strength to share, I closed off, pull back. With little emotional strength to spare, I had shifted into conservation mode, and I was showing up as “tight.”

The Roots of Generosity

The words generous and generate share the same roots.  At the heart of generosity is the ability to generate, to propagate, to multiply so that there is more than enough to share.  We should garden our world well.  

A man stewarding resources is a seed planter who multiplies.  The agricultural term is to propagate.  From one plant, he trims a stem and replants it to make two.  He harvests one seed, plants it, and harvests 30 more..  

Giving and propagating is a way of being, not just a technical skill.  One can give and be stingy, so it is advised that “God loves a cheerful giver.”

To show up as a generous man then is both a technical skill and mode of heart and spirit.  The man who shows up magnanimous, open, and non-stingy is a beautiful thing.

Generosity is largeness, being magnanimous, full of strength. At its root, it shows a high position at birth. It’s open-handedness, abundance, and a steady flow of resources.

Diagnosing a lack of generosity

In our quest for efficiency, men will do things like watch their 14-year-old son wash a dirty pan, and chafe at the water on full hot, full stream, and keep it there between dishes.  It will seem to a man like unnecessary pennies going down the drain.

The same process repeats around the world.  We twist  inside at the waste of a child meditating in front of an open refrigerator or his wife spending $146 at Target when she just went to get peanut butter and oranges.  

It is our job to ensure the stewarding of resources.  But, when we lose margin, when we feel things getting tighter, whether due to trial or or resources run a little thin, we tighten up, and then project the tightening up on those we love who are under our care.  

In my case, I had been facing a handful of challenging trials.  I didn’t feel I had much excess energy or personal resources, and had got stingy in my spirit with my family.  

A lack of generosity is a indicator of fear that we cannot generate the resources necessary to provide. The fear or anxiety can be cyclical: The more we sense the margins reducing, the more we tighten. The more we tighten and retract, the less we produce.

A lack of generosity is a statement we make about ourselves. It is a belief that we are unable, insufficient, and lacking. On a horizontal plane, that’s an terrible statement about someone born with kingship as a birthright.

The deficiency is ultimately vertical. It’s a lack of trust in God who will “provide all my needs in Christ Jesus”

Breaking Back Into Generosity

Here are three steps to escaping “tightness” and breaking back into generosity.

First, tell the truth about who you are and who God is. Most people have a low opinion about themselves and hide it under theological statements like “I’m such a wretched sinner.” Why not start with the first biblical truth that you are made in God’s Image? It’s true that you haven’’t lived up to that, but the minute you return to God, he runs to you and dresses you in your royal robes.

Second, nourish yourself. Why do you have low margin in the first place? It’s not your circumstances, it’s that you’ve failed to take care of yourself within those circumstances. Whenever I feel “tight”   I can trace it to a failure to do the daily disciplines that nourish me. Spending devotional time with God, exercising, putting nourishment in my body. Failure to do all these things shows I feel I don’t have time to do the most important things that will build myself up. It’s like borrowing money to save money. It's mathematically not possible.  

Third, extend yourself to your most important areas by faith. You break the cycle of tightness by breaking the cycle. Identify your most important projects and extend yourself again. Live like you have enough, and enough will be there. Your wife will sense it, your kids will sense it, and you will feel the rush of stepping back into your design.