"TIS BETTER TO GIVE THAN RECEIVE"

Eileen was diligently saving money to purchase a blue fox fur coat that she had her eye on. Every so often, she would visit the furrier who carried this coat and try it on.

She had saved $1,600.00 so far toward the cost of this beautiful coat. Soon she would have enough money to purchase this coat, perhaps in time for Christmas.

One evening, her sister, Barbara, called from her home in another state. They talked on the phone every week but had not seen one another in several months. Barbara was divorced and worked at a job that provided the bare necessities but there was rarely enough money for extras.

She always seemed to turn lemons into lemonade. She was a happy person.

During this particular conversation, she was not her usual upbeat self. Eileen sensed that there was a problem and asked what was going on.

Barbara said that due to circumstances that she could not control, she had fallen behind on her mortgage payments and had just received notice from the bank that they were going to take action against her unless she came up with $1,800.00 within a short period of time.

She had no way to raise that amount of money and was resigned to losing her home. She was going apartment hunting that afternoon.

She DID NOT ASK EILEEN FOR A LOAN.

Eileen, without hesitation, told Barbara that she would send her a check for $1,800.00 to bring her mortgage current. Barbara said that she would try to repay her as funds became available.

Eileen simply said that this money was for future birthdays, Christmas etc. and was a gift.

BYE, BYE fur coat. Eileen knew that if she had purchased that coat at a time when her sister was in jeopardy of losing her home, that she would not enjoy wearing the coat.

EILEEN STILL NEEDED A COAT......

She went shopping and saw a Jordache fake fur coat that caught her eye. It was originally $250.00 reduced to $75.00. She continued to try on coats but her eyes kept going back to that Jordache fake.

She purchased that coat. It turned out to be a coat that she called HER HAPPY COAT.

Whenever Eileen wore this coat, someone would come up to her and admire it. This did not happen, once or twice, but EVERY TIME THAT SHE WORE THIS COAT.

There was nothing special about this coat except the reason that she purchased it. She came to realize that this coat was special because of how she came to own it.

She came to believe that every time someone complimented the coat and how well it looked on her that this HAD TO BE A MESSAGE FROM GOD letting her know that HE WAS PLEASED with her action.

She does NOT RECEIVE compliments on her other coats.

She has gained weight and no longer can fit into this coat. She recently donated this coat to charity. She hopes that the woman who now wears this coat, receives as much pleasure as she did from wearing it.

As I contemplated writing this story, I googled, JOY OF GIVING. I came upon an article from Science Central.

"Brain imaging research is unwrapping what's behind the joy of giving."

"You give from the heart and.....it satisfies your brain," says Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of a division of the National Institutes of Health.

Studies were conducted using a technique called functional MRI. " They were not surprised that when people received money, it lit up structures deep in the brain associated with the release of the chemical dopamine, which is known to trigger feelings of pleasure and reward."

"But as they reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, donating to charities lit up the brain's reward circuits even more than receiving cash.

TIS BETTER TO GIVE THAN RECEIVE............