Using our talents and gifts to sow seeds of hope, encouragement, and kindness in the fields around us can sound so vague and almost esoteric. The whole concept can conjure up images of summer evening at camp, young people surrounding a campfire and singing We are the World while holding hands and swaying to the music. It’s a lovely feeling (and so are the toasted marshmallows), but it’s basically a “surface sentiment.” It’s temporary, there are no roots, therefore no growth. There’s no bloom. There’s no fruit. There’s no lasting strength to weather harsh storms or trampling.
I truly believe that every gift or talent we possess is for a specific purpose. That purpose is not just to make ourselves happy, nor is it to build our ego. If the use of our gift dies when we do, then the gift was useless. Our gifts were meant to be fluid and to spill over into the next generation – to leave a legacy. Our gifts are meant to affect others, to express what we feel, to teach, to influence, to bring joy, to make people think. Most importantly, our gifts are meant to honor God.
How do we do that? Many people think they don’t have any talents. That’s not true. Everyone has a special gift. It may not be in music or dance, or a visual art, or writing, but the gifts are as varied and unique as the people who have them.
Compassion is a gift. Taking someone into your home to build them up and nurturing them is using that gift. It gives them the strength, desire, and motivation to use their own gift, and perhaps do the same for someone else.
Patience is a gift we’re using when we can wait with hope while helping someone who is struggling to climb back up, then seeing them fall again, and helping to pull them up again, perhaps a bit higher, and repeat over and over again until they finally reach the top. If they have developed the confidence to achieve because of your long-term, persistent support, that’s using your gift.
When people know that they can completely relax in your home and always feel welcomed, loved, and appreciated, that’s the gift of hospitality. It’s not about having big parties. When people don’t feel afraid to be themselves without judgement and criticism, that’s also hospitality, and that’s using your gift.
Anything that influences others and brings comfort, joy, and inspiration is a gift. There are so many gifts that we all have; it would take volumes to cite each one and its use. But, your gift is there, and it can be used in ways that you can’t yet imagine.
My grandmother was a professional seamstress in Russia. She escaped from there when she was a relatively young woman, and she used her gift to make a living for herself when she arrived in America. She taught me to sew when I was very little, as well as to crochet and knit (she also taught me how to whistle). Now let’s jump ahead a few decades. I started ballet at
7 ½ years old, and I’ve learned to use that gift throughout my whole life. When my husband and I started a professional ballet company, I soon had to deal with the issue of costumes. We had a friend help us for a couple of years at first, but then it all fell to me. It was far too expensive to buy costumes, and I wanted to design what actually fit our choreography, so I pulled up the gift that my grandmother had taught me. A lot of my earlier costumes filled up the trash can more than the stage, but the desire was there, and so our costume closet was born.
A few years ago, a very wonderful woman and friend of mine passed away. Two of her daughters had been ballet students of mine, and they gave me all of the fabric that had been in their mom’s sewing closet. It was clothing fabric, rather than costume fabric, but the knowledge and practice of sewing that my grandmother had taught me was passed down. That gift and the majority of my friend’s fabric allowed me to make clothing for impoverished children in Colombia. If my friend had never had her gift of sewing, she wouldn’t have had all of that fabric to pass to me. If my grandmother hadn’t taught me to sew, I wouldn’t have been able to make all those clothes, which will in turn be passed down to younger kids as they grow.
It’s sowing seeds of hope through sewing. I had thought that sewing was a rather insignificant skill that no one did anymore, because buying clothes is so much easier…for most people. But God used it as a gift. Although so much of my early sewing did end up in the trash, those mistakes taught me so much more about life. Every single thing that we can do for ourselves can be used as a gift for someone else. Cooking, caregiving, cleaning, ironing… I was bedridden during one of my pregnancies, and a friend came over every week and insisted on doing my ironing for me. She said she loved ironing so much that she deliberately let her clothes stay in the dryer for a long time so that they would need more ironing! She may have been crazy to some, but it was a priceless gift to me. I had two other children and a husband who was at work from 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. every day. She was the definition of sharing her gifts!
Did you know that organization is a gift? Being proficient with a hammer and nails, plumbing, auto repair, computer skills – all things that help those who can’t are gifts. They sow seeds into people who need to have something grow in their lives and in their hearts.
The underlying gift behind all of the talents is the desire to give back and to reflect the many facets of God, so find the gifts and use them. They’re in there.
Dance on.
Grace Notes 