Dear Emily,
My younger brother asked me what he should say to his wife. She is kind to her friends and will go all out to help them. One time, her friend’s mom wanted to go to Singapore to visit her daughter who was having a treatment there, but she had no money for (plane) tickets. So the wife forked out her own money for her friend’s mother’s airfare and expenses.
Another time, she bought a wheelchair for her friend whose leg was amputated just above the knee because of an accident. My brother appreciates his wife’s kindness, but he is worried that they won’t have sufficient savings for their own future use. They are just middle-income people, so he feels they ought to save for their future needs. He has not confronted her about this issue.
–My Brother Has A Generous Wife
Surely, many will not appreciate this wife’s generosity to others, foremost of which is her husband. But whose money is she spending? Is she siphoning it off from the family coffers? Does she have a job of her own that would allow her this magnanimity?
I would have been one in chorus with the husband had he said she shops branded items indiscriminately for friends or allows them to go on luxury trips abroad on her. But the two samples you gave of her generosity were all medical in nature, which only proves she has a bleeding heart for the needy. She seems to be one of those who feels she has enough to give away, that’s all. In this time of COVID-19 and mass unemployment, the wife could be foregoing unnecessary spending of her own to help those she feels need the most help.
The husband should not feel threatened nor shortchanged that the future needs of the family could be compromised by his wife’s indulgence. The wife is unknowingly doing acts of kindness by her generosity, and that would definitely be paid back somewhere by whomever in the universe, with extreme gratitude, should her family’s need come up.
Just have faith in the absolute munificence of the great beyond that what goes round comes round.
