When I was growing up, my mom would often buy gifts for people in our family when she happened to see something on sale that made her think of a specific person. She would then proceed to stow the gifts away until an "appropriate" gift giving occasion. Sometimes, when an occasion rolled around, such as a birthday or Christmas, she would remember having bought a specific gift, but she had lost track of it in the time that had passed since she bought it. This meant a lot of extra time spent looking around for the gift. Sometimes the misplaced gift wasn't found in time for the occasion for which it was intended and a new gift would be purchased. Other times my mom would look at a gift and begin to question whether the recipient would actually like the gift. Some gifts were just forgotten in the busyness of life. So many gifts ended up in boxes in the closet, never to be given for whatever reason. Many years later, when we stumbled upon them again, some of them were no longer relevant for whatever reason - a season of life when it would have been appropriate had passed, the trend had come and gone, the intended recipient had gotten older and outgrown the gift.
Right now I'm in a stage in my life where I have stumbled upon the box of gifts that God has given me that I have just stowed away in the closet and I find myself remembering when "I used to" pray fervently and "I used to" write songs and poems and essays and "I used to" love singing worship and "I used to" take care of my body and so many other things "I used to" do. Over the last several years God has blessed me with a husband and a beautiful daughter, but I have become so wrapped up in my blessings, I forgot all about the gifts that God has given me to share with others. Gradually, one by one, they have been shoved aside because there's "just no time" or "I'm too tired" or "I can't do it by myself." What I've discovered as I've begun to unpack the box again, is that the reason I have no time, energy or motivation is because my focus switched from the giver of the gifts and the blessings (God) to the recipient (me). And the scary part is that I didn't even realize it was happening.
I think part of me expected God's blessings to be without difficulty. I'm not sure why I thought that, because the Bible is filled with people who had to face challenges even in their blessings. But when it was finally time for me to receive the blessings I had waited so long for, things were actually quite difficult and I sometimes found myself questioning if my life was really a blessing or if I was being punished for some mistake I had made in the past. Most of the time, I snapped out of it quickly because I had good friends who shared their own struggles with us which made it clear that it was totally normal. But as time went on, our friends moved on to other things, they took different paths, and we found ourselves growing more isolated. When God called us to move, we knew that it would be difficult because it would mean leaving behind even the friends we did have, but we were excited to see how God would grow our family through it.
As excited as I was to experience something new, I think it was more difficult for me. I have a much harder time meeting people and getting to know people than Josh does. I was also sort of in a phase of mourning because my season of staying at home with Linnea was coming to an end. I wouldn't have been able to continue staying home with her in Reno, either, but going through it away from my mom friends made it more difficult. With all that was happening when we first moved, we fell out of the practice of praying together nightly, which we had been doing pretty much since we got married. We were each praying on our own, but for me not praying together made me feel more isolated. I let so many things get between myself and God that it wasn't until we finally made a couple of connections with people here that I realized that even my joy had been shoved away in the box in the back of the closet.
Once I found my joy again (which still comes and goes since I'm out of practice) I started digging through that box and I found my prayer and I started praying daily with Linnea so that she will not be afraid of praying out loud. I found my love for learning and Josh and I picked out a devotional to do in the evenings. I found my desire to be healthy and I have hand more than about 5 sodas in the last eight weeks - and I'm working on the rest. And most recently, I found my passion. Over the last six months, most of the times I thought about writing it was, "Gee - I wish I could find a way to make money with my writing." And then I would find myself stuck, completely unable to write because my motives were wrong. I was not enjoying the gift that God gave me and I wasn't sharing it. Instead I wanted to pimp it out to the highest bidder. That may sound a bit crass, but that is literally what I was trying to do. I was trying to write about subjects of which I knew little just to meet the needs of a paying publication rather than writing from the overflow of my heart.
Much like the gifts my mom bought, my passion for writing has sat in the closet getting stale. It is a little bit dusty and could use some polishing because I'm out of practice. Some of the ideas I've had are no longer relevant because times have changed since the last time I was committed to writing regularly. And some ideas have been forgotten. I have been waiting around until I "feel like" writing or until I think of something "good enough" to draw the attention of some readers - but God gave me this gift for so much more. He has called me to write for my enjoyment and hopefully for simple entertainment value. He has called me to write as a way to process my thoughts about Him and my journey through life and faith. And he has called me to write as a way to connect with people I may not have ever talked to otherwise.
No comments:
Post a Comment