I posted on Facebook the other the day that I was interested in buying a used weed eater from anyone looking to sell theirs. I had checked Craigslist and none of the ones on there really jumped out at me.

Eventually a woman from our church commented on my status and basically told me to give her my number and her husband would call me.

I sent her my phone number and not long after that I got a text message from her husband telling me to call him. The last few days were pretty busy so I never got around to calling him. However, on Sunday morning he found me in the hallway of our church building.

“I’ve got some weed eaters for you in the back of my car. Come out and take a look.”

I said OK and we both headed out to the parking lot. It felt kind of like a drug deal. I can’t say I’ve ever bought anything out of the trunk of car before.

And I still haven’t.

He opened the trunk of his car and there sat two really nice rechargeable Craftsman battery powered weed eaters.

He told me the story on why he had two. He also told me that his yard at his new house was bigger now than the one he’d had when he bought these and so now the charge didn’t last long enough on them to weed eat the entire thing.

The whole time we’re out at the trunk of his car he’s smiling and I can tell he’s really excited to be unloading these weed eaters on me. I too am excited because I had given up on the idea of buying a used weed eater and had pretty much come to terms with the fact that I’d be buying a new one.

Excited to be purchasing two really nice cordless electric weed eaters, I asked him how much he wanted.

His answer, while still wearing a great big smile, “Nothing. You can have them.”

This wasn’t the first time I’ve been given a gift from a real man. In fact, the more life I get under my belt, the more I’m starting to realize that real men like to give gifts.

He should have charged me for those weed eaters. They both had value and I was willing to pay, but that’s not what this veteran of manly gift-giving, this jockey of generosity had in mind.

In his mind, the satisfaction of helping out another man and passing on a few possessions he was no longer benefitting from was worth more than I was willing to pay to buy them. And that’s how a real man rolls.

I attacked the tall grass and weeds lining the edge of our yard last night for the first time since we moved four weeks ago. In my opinion, the yard looks better than it has all summer.

Thank you Carl (and Joanne!) for the awesome gift of weed eaters.

Real men like to give things away that other people might charge for. As I look around my house and think about all my stuff, I find myself wondering what I have that I could give to someone who needs it more than I do and I challenge you to do the same.