For my new Blog project im linking up with Velvet Verbosity for the 1oo word challenge!
This weeks word is Gratuitous
Its an adjective
1. given, done, bestowed, or obtained without charge or payment; free; voluntary.
2. being without apparent reason, cause, or justification: a gratuitous insult.
3. Law . given without receiving any return value.
When i think about this word for this week i wonder if ive done anything Gratuitously….I just started volunteering at Nationwide Childrens Hospital reading and coloring with the children who come for a hospital visit. I thought it would be a good way to spend a few hours a week and i dont know what to expect each time I go in.
Last week i sat with a little girl and her brother. She was 4 and man was she a talker! everyting she colored shed say, “hang on i want to show my mom!” And then shed come back and say, “my mom loves it!” She did this ten times with the same result. I started coloring while she did and she looked at mine and said, “heyy thats a good flower! can you teach me?” i said of coarse! and so i started by trying to get her to draw a stem for the flower and she said, “wait!! we have to draw the green grass first!” so she started scribbling some grass all the while saying in a sing song kind of way, “the green grreen grass! the greeen green grass of the earth!” it was quite cute! Then her brother scribled some red lines on it and of coarse we started all over and this time with the grass! then i taught her to draw the actual flower which she then stuffed into a bag i gave her and then took alll my coloring pages as the nurse called her name!
Her mother called her name and asked if she was ready and she ran off then came back to try and get more from me but her mom yelled for her to quit trying to take all my stuff! it was funny! i can wait to go again this next week when i get back to school! I dont know what she was there for, but i know her smiling face and extrovert personality was enough to keep anyone smiling all day!
I wonder about the things people have given me Gratuitously….My car for one..i never thought i deserved that car but everytime i get in it i am appreciative of the people who bought it for me! they did not have to do that but wanted to and even when my relationship with their son ended they let me keep it. I felt bad for a long time, guily even, but they wanted me to have it because they said i deserved it. After a while I stopped feeling bad and knew they really did care about me so instead of feeling guilty i felt very very thankful. And i still am! That car has gotten me to work and back and forth from home! ive had an adventure (breaking down in the middle of no where west virginia with michael during new years!) in that car and have enjoyed it very much!
I think about how i have a gratuitous God. Why does he give us his love other than the sole purpose of loving us? We dont deserve to be loved or to be forgiven, but he gave his own son for us so that we might live! How awesome is that? Yet, at the same time he gives us gratuitous challenges in life…ones we feel like we shouldnt be given…but he gives them anyways. And why? For many reasons i suppose: to test our faith, to challege our character and values, as a lesson, as an eye opener, to change us, to strengthen us. He wants us to be the best we can be and that wouldnt be possible without knowing pain and over coming it. And he never gives us more than we can handle. He gives us people, who teach us many many things, the good things but also the bad. Relationships can teach us the most important things in life but can also rip our hearts into pieces. How is this possible? God is always transforming us, teaching us that while we love, from that love people can also hurt each other and themselves through the destruction of that love. It doesnt seem fair to have someone we love hurt us and leave us and for no other reason than because they can, because they “don’t love us anymore”, because, “they weren’t thinking.”
Why do we do things gratuitously? One because we love somone and we want to show them or give them something because we think they deserve it and we expect nothing in return because we benefit more as people from giving not recieving. But why else? All the mean, hurtful things we do and say in our friendships and relationships we do for several reasons: to hurt someone, to get revenge, to show them up, just beacause we can, for our own satisfaction, its funny, to hurt them like they hurt us….But is this necessary? Isnt loving selfless, doesnt it hope for the best and want the best for the people involved? I think so. Ive hurt people for the fact that i did love them. Hurting them would mean they could eventually be happier in the future….with or without me.
So think about this word…What does it mean to you? how have you shown it and been shown its meaning?
AshleyKay 