Friday, June 29, 2012

One Thing

We place a lot of emphasis on finding our gift.  In church circles, our "spiritual" gift; in the world at large, just our gift.  That one thing that we do with an incredible passion and unexplainable skill where others look at what we're doing and say, Yes.  You were made to do that.  Then we work on turning our gift into a purpose.

It sounds a noble enough pursuit, but in a lot of cases, I think this pursuit of our "gift" is holding us back.  And I say that knowing that it is this very concept that left me lost for so many years and knowing I'm not alone in that.

Because we always say it that way, don't we?  Finding our gift.  Singular.  The one thing.  Then leaving everything else to be nothing more than a hobby and always lamenting that the one thing isn't the other...and the other isn't the one thing.

There's so much stuff I love to do!  So much I'm passionate about!  So much that fuels me!  And I spent so much of my life trying to weed out the "one thing" from the many, going through these seasons where I wished it was this, but it just wasn't there.  Or I wished it was that, but that kept getting overshadowed by a different thing entirely.  Then stuck because I couldn't figure out in everything I loved to do what God had created me to do.

The answer?  All of it.

Just as we are each part of a body (of Christ) with many parts, so are we also bodies with many parts.  I think one of the greatest things we can do in finding our "gift" is to put an S on it.  To find a way to incorporate into our day-to-day and into what we're forming into our purpose all of those things God has given us a uniqueness for.  It gives us permission to be whole people and wholly ourselves instead of these dissatisfied bits and pieces lost in limbo looking for just the one thing.

I am a writer.  You see that every day when you graciously come to read these few words.  But that is only one part of me.  I am One Part writer.  I am also One Part artist (and my Art page is just about ready to go; still working out a few kinks for you).  I am One Part musician.  I am One Part create-r.  I am One Part worshiper, One Part mad scientist.  And All Parts God's.  You see where I'm going.

It's why I make up words like "intimicited" - because I'm never just one thing.  I doubt you are, either. And in all of these moments where we realize we are a whole mix of this and that, and sometimes even a contradictory mix of those things, why do we still insist that God must have made us with one gift that we're supposed to spend our years rooting through our lives to discover because it, above all else, is somehow "perfect."

God created us to be one thing - His.  Apart from that, He created each of us to be many things.  And if we are truly committed to finding our unique niche in this world, His world - our purpose - then we have to find a way to weave together all that we are into the one thing we truly are - His.  Then go from there.

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