On a recent trip to San Francisco, I drove my daughters forty-five minutes north to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California. I learned of this facility when a search for tours near our home led me to the Jelly Belly Warehouse in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. Unlike the Pleasant Prairie tour where visitors hop on board the Jelly Belly Express train for a ride inside the large warehouse and distribution center, the Fairfield experience allows guests to see the actual factory where the famous jelly beans are made.

As I suspected, the 40-minute walking tour proved to be a sweet opportunity to see the company's unique candy making process—especially when it ended in the gift shop where we were encouraged to taste the latest Jelly Belly products.

“Which do you like best, Mom?” Hollie asked after we sampled several different flavors of jelly beans.

“Our tour guide said that Very Cherry is the most popular kind and I agree,” I concluded. “What’s your favorite?”

“I can’t decide,” Hollie replied, finding it hard to pick just one.

“Why don’t you and Katie each fill a bag with the flavors you like best?” I suggested. “I’ll pay for the first half-pound and you can use your souvenir money if you want to buy more than that.”

As the girls divided their time between the Sample Bar that welcomed visitors into the gift shop and the self-service dispensers lining the back wall, I noticed a stack of boxes near the exit. Curious to see what was inside, I stepped closer to find them filled with two pound packages of Belly Flops.

These are half the price of what the girls are choosing from, I said to myself as I picked up a bag of the factory seconds that failed to meet the company’s demanding standards for size, color, and shape.

I thought about asking Katie and Hollie to buy a bag of Belly Flops instead of filling their own. Then, after peering through a clear section of the package to examine its contents, I realized that the assortment included a number of flavors the girls probably wouldn’t like.

Why make them settle, when the best is within reach? I reasoned.

If author Stephen Covey had been in the gift shop, he would have applauded my use of the space between stimulus (seeing the half-price jelly beans) and response (going against my spendthrift nature to walk away from the sale). Covey first learned about this space while on a sabbatical in Hawaii. He was strolling through the stacks in a local library when he pulled down a book and read three sentences that would become fundamental to his work on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space,” Covey read. “In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”[i]

Although the girls were very happy that I allowed them to buy exactly what they wanted, the choice was a difficult one to make—not because I didn't want the best for my daughters—but because I was still learning to accept it for myself. Money was scarce when I was growing up and the uncertainty of whether the bills would get paid left an impression that stayed with me after I left home.

Even if I had wanted to be a generous spender, it wasn’t an option as I worked my way through college and saved to pay for a wedding. Only after Bill and I were married did my frugalness become an issue as I attempted to feed my groom a recently expired food item and dismissed his concerns with this romantic sentiment: “It probably won’t kill you.”

In addition to finding it difficult to throw “good” food away, I struggled to bring quality items into our home. One day, after buying one-too-many plain label products, Bill held up a generic package of cheese and exclaimed: “We may not have a lot of money, but isn’t it nice to know we can afford to buy Kraft?”

We have a saying in our family: If you want to fight, keep it light. Long before I verbalized this rule, Bill was living it out as he used humor to diffuse this and similar situations. Looking back, I marvel at how he found my quirks to be, not irritating, but endearing as Bill kidded about my spendthrift ways and met me where I was when circumstances allowed.

One time, when he was feeling particularly in tune with my frugality, Bill bought a day-old Father’s Day cake for half-price and had the baker remove the message from its surface to write “Happy Birthday Julie” on it instead. I never felt more loved.

The apostle Paul wrote about this type of selflessness in Galatians 5:13 when he told followers: “do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” Bill set a modern-day example for how this is done when he used the space between stimulus and response to do something that was out of character for him, but in tune with mine.