I remember being a little girl and sitting on the piano bench with my Mom for what felt like hours, just listening to her play this heavenly music. Most of the time she wasn't even using sheet music she would just play by ear. There was hardly anything she couldn't play and she always made it look so easy. I would look at her with this great envy. I wished so bad that I could play like her. I took piano lessons off and on for much of my child hood. She had taught them to many people so I first started taking them from her but because she was my Mom she was the lucky recipient of my frequent frustration. So I switched to another lady and she taught me for a couple years.
Even though I was getting better I still could not play like my Mom and I slowly convinced myself I never would be able to so I gave up. There was one song however that my Mom would play that I fell in love with. I decided that I would not give up until I could play it. I practiced everyday, oh how I drove my parents and brother crazy, but the day came when I sat down on that piano bench with pride and gave my clumsy version of this heavenly tune. It was a fulfilling thing to do, however playing piano was not something I was naturally gifted at and I quit practicing and as a result much of what I once knew has been lost.
Maybe you have had a similar experience. You see someones gifting or ability to do something and it leaves you with this feeling that no matter how much you try you will never measure up to them. I think it is more common then we think. Why do we do this? Why do we seem to overload our brain with everything we can't do or maybe can do but not as well as we would like. We focus so much of our attention on the things we aren't super gifted at that we forget to strengthen and embrace the things we are. If we were the best at everything we would be the most arrogant people on the face of the earth. I want to clarify that I am not at all meaning to state that you can not be good at something without being prideful about it, but I do think that it makes it more challenging. It is in those moments of feeling completely inadequate that we grow and mature the most.
Example when I was 23 I was asked to lead this class at church for women's bible study. I was absolutely terrified and felt incredibly incapable. Here I am this young girl newly married and pregnant with my first child and I am supposed to teach a class where half of the women were old enough to be my Mom. Like they were really going to take me seriously. But, after much encouragement from a woman I love and adore I decided to go ahead with the class. I went into this class with the mindset that I was not going to try to be someone I was not, but rather I was going to be honest with my life experiences and my short comings and encourage them through theirs as well. Before each class I would pray that God would give me wisdom and insight. The class in my opinion was a huge success! We all grew so much together and I know it was only because of God and it had nothing to do with me. At the end of the semester the class had such good feedback that they asked me to do it again for the next semester. By this time I was getting pretty burnt out and knew I should have probably passed it up but it felt good to know "I" was doing something right that I agreed to do it again. This time however the class was not the same. I was so caught up in self- glorification, I guess you could say, that I completely missed the point. Pride comes before a fall, and I was definitely knocked off my high horse.
I don't honestly know what the outcome for the people in that class was, but I walked away disappointed. I set this bar for myself and in my attempts to fly over it I felt more like I was crawling under it. I walked away embarrassed, humbled, and determined to never let that happen again. Instead of letting God lead me, I was trying to conform Him to what I saw as the right thing.
We all have a gift. As a Mom I look at my girls and see how they are so incredibly different. There is already this competition between the older two sometimes about who is cuter or whose picture is better, who can run faster, or can make more people laugh. I point out to them that they are made completely different and that they are both going to be good at some things and great at others. That their talents will not always be the same but that's ok. They should embrace what they are good at and encourage each other along in their talents. Why is it always so easy to say something but so much more challenging to actually follow through with doing it yourself.
As I write this I can't honestly say that I am not even certain of what my talents are. But it seems as though we sometimes discredit our talents because they come so natural to us that we deem them unimportant. So we instead focus on what others do that we maybe aren't so good at and then view ourselves less impactful. In this journey of life there will always be high points and low points. There will be challenges we face that force us to rely on God and there will also be moments where we get caught up in our own pride and will be graciously reminded that we are useless to do anything of heavenly significance without God being involved. Let us each embrace our strengths and encourage others along in theirs. After all, in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given us.
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