Good Taste Matters

Amy posted about choices and finding joy and contentment wherever we are today. Read it here. She did a grand job of saying it well.  
The quote at the top of her post set me back just a little.    A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves." -Henry Ward Beecher- 
Now I don't really have a pick with the quote itself, but this week our family had to reconsider the connection between pride and being deserving. 

Elv's work takes him a hour from home, logging in "blow-down".  I'll skip all the details of the storm and how the woods looks...it's bad.  He is expected to put in "marathon" hours on this job since it is a resort/retreat/convention center for an exclusive group of folks...never mind who it is.  Anyway, they were putting him up in this cabin or that motel room where ever they had an open room in the complex and feeding him too, in the dining hall, if he wanted to take the time for it.  The cabin/condo they suggested for us just never materialized due to other reservations.  Which doesn't matter here either, but the upshot of it is that we ended up taking the travel trailer up there and parking it by the warming shack at the back of the property where most of the trees were down way back in the woods.  We lived there for two days and decided that maybe we could be content like that for a few days every week till freeze up anyway.  We'd have family time in the evenings that way and the kids found blueberries to pick and there were acres of woods to explore. 

 As of yesterday word got around, I guess, that the gypsies (I don't know what term they used; but Bob assured them that we were not what they thought), had moved in on the resort till it reached the ears of the big-wig at the top who lives out of state.  Never mind that the gypsies were hired to log on their property to clean up their complex... it was not okay!

I told Elv that I am not homeless, as it happens, and I will not wait around for eviction notices. We moved home this morning.  As soon as the boss finds us a house to live in by the job we'll move back. 

But now I wonder if our contentment with travel trailer living just to keep the family together was taking things a bit too far.  I have a feeling that we should have had more pride than we did , so that we could have avoided the embarrassment we were headed for.  Seems to me that our zeal to get it right by the family over-rode good taste and made us look less deserving than was necessary. 

So I don't think I totally agree with Mr. Beecher, after-all.  Brother Andrew had to learn this lesson too, when someone finally clued him in that God isn't stingy and to have a few nice  clothes is okay, even for missionaries.  I believe that God has a plan for keeping our family together while this particular job gets done and we are ready to do whatever that is without making ourselves look gauche.  


Note:  It's generally considered okay for a logger to pull in a travel trailer and live on the job if he chooses.