“It was the way we always did.”

Therese and I are reading the book, A Pair of Red Clogs, by Masako Matsuno for our Five in a Row book this week.

In the book the little girl, Mako, gets a new pair of red clogs that shortly thereafter she cracks playing a game with her friends. She almost does a dishonest thing to get a new pair-she dirties the broken pair so much that her mother would want to buy her another pair.  But instead her mother sends her to clean her shoes.  Mako reflects,

“And I remember that you should try to clean a thing first before you decide to buy a new one. It was the way we always did.”

What a lesson in stewardship!  That was not the way I grew up.  If something broke, I don’t remember my dad going to a whole lot of trouble to fix anything.  He was of the, “let’s go buy a new one,” mentality.  On the other hand, I think Adam grew up like Mako.  And over the last six years, he’s been working on me.

Remember our camera that was sent off to Canon for repairs? Well, it was because Adam did his research to find the problem and discovered that there was a recall on the camera.  And if the part was indeed faulty, Canon would fix our camera free of charge.   Well, guess what arrived today–less than 2 weeks since we sent it off?  That’s right, our camera!!! In working order. And this was a great learning lesson when FedEx rang the doorbell and the camera arrived while we were reading this book!  This is one of the things I absolutely LOVE about my husband.  He doesn’t like to create unnecessary waste or make unnecessary expenses.  The camera still meets our needs as long as it’s working.  And now it works again and it didn’t cost us anything but a little of his time.

I hope someday, our children will get this virtue of stewardship from their dad and think fondly of his hard work and say, “It was the way we always did.”