We all have them.
Some of us were born with them. Some of us have developed them. Some of us have forgotten about them. Some of us can’t remember where we put them.
Don’t you dare try to tell me that you can’t find yours. Ask a friend and she’ll help you figure it out.
A great deal of us, most of us even, have let ours
lapse.
We’ve let them fall into disrepair, like a rickety set of sand-swept wooden stairs leading down to the shore. We’re scared to put our full weight on them because we might go crashing head-first into the driftwood and rocks.
So we just avoid the beach.
And oh yeah, it’s a word that sounds like a cliche.
Gifts.
Yes, I said it.
Maybe I can use a more relevant term, ART.
We all have them. Talents. Propensities. Capabilities.Your calling.
These are the things when you are in the midst of them you know beyond know that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing.
Fredrick Buechner calls it “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Can you possibly imagine what life would be like if the thing that you love to do the most, that you know that you should do has the ability to meet some of the needs of this vast world?
But the sad part is this:
Most of us don’t know that deep gladness.
We have forgotten that we are artists of every shade and color.
It’s your singing, your writing, your conversation. It’s your thankfulness, your ability to make a phone call to save a heart. It’s your giving, your creating, your home-building. It’s being the bridge between people, the saying of the right word, the ability to tell the truth. It’s your ability to look into a child’s eyes and understand his thoughts.
It’s the gift of motivating people to action, the gift of being able to remember important dates and your friend’s likes and dislikes, it’s the desire to open your home to others for a meal, to a child who needs a mother, or to a family who needs a bed. It’s making music with your hands, your voice, your body.
You can do this.
Go back to the beginning. Remember what you are good at, or what you wanted to do, and begin to do that.
Ask God how your calling, your deep gladness, helps to fill in the holes that death and hopelessness has left in the world.
It might take awhile. You might have gotten out of practice. That’s what happens when we don’t use what we’ve been given.
Take a risk. Take a step onto what seems like an ancient staircase down down down to the beach. Put your full weight on what you remember your talent is and go. Let your momentum carry you. Let God, who has perfectly and intentionally given you this talent, carry you.
And then be ready to change the world.
What is your “deep gladness?” What is your calling?
My deep gladness is always bringing joy, happiness, positivity to impossible negativity. I’m bragging on how God works through me, giving a hug, lots of love to a hurting person. I make home-made cards and send them. Since we’re retired from the Pastorate, I truthfully do not know anyone’s address, but my encouraging comments (my real “deep gladness”) is my blog our son and daughter put on the web for me four years ago and I rarely miss a day. Also on Facebook, writing encouragements! This carries me “to the beach” as you say and I am extremely grateful. I refuse to give in to the doom and gloom attitudes! Thank you, Sarah, for reminding me we are worth tons of value, but tend to forget it when faced with so much negativity!
Those moments of deep gladness are priceless, yet we so often seem to run away from them.
Thank you for this reminder today, it came at just ther right time, a point of need.
Ditto!
Well said FireFly.
Food for thought for sure… Thank you for it.
wow…gladness as a bridge…to joy…
what an awesome Buechner quote! he’s right…
and…here’s another related thot:
maybe a deep sadness in our culture & often in our own lives is when we feel compelled to professionalize our deep gladness…
the sadness lies in the compulsion…
not in the professionalization…because a deep gladness that can help pay some bills is a double blessing, a huge joy…just not the ultimate joy that our literature (written & video) often pictures it to be…
thank you for sharing yourself each day…
you bless me (& others) SO much!
love you,
dad
wow dad. i love how you always think the “next step” in it all. i agree. sometimes we feel like we can’t engage in something unless it brings in money. otherwise, it’s useless.
but in the kingdom, the currency is changed hearts and lives.
thank you, as always, for contributing.
This spoke to my heart so deeply. I admit I’ve struggled with the concept of my giftings as moneymakers and how that all works for me, for my family, for God’s kingdom….
Thanks for making me really think.
Your greatest hurts on this earth will be your greatest testimony. Share it with others that hurt…that is the greatest calling! Story! Telling how God has brought you through…
Deep Gladness…I like that, it makes me smile and think of laughing with my girlfriends, encouraging the amazing women that surround me, baking cupcakes for the sweet ladies at work, having brunch and sipping mimosa’s with my bestfriend. My deep gladness is women, loving them, helping them to see that they are special, that we as women are worth it, and just enjoying being girly together. Almost anything can be solved with Jesus, laughter, girlfriends and chocolate fondue fountains haha
Thank you Sarah for this sweet little reminder to use our “deep gladness” to meet the needs of a hurting world. I loved it!
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up at the proper time.” I Peter 5:6
This post hits home…like the core of home…the deepest part of my heart.
To live for so many years, thinking I knew what my calling was, only to find the carpet ripped out from under me. I say that not with a complaining, ungrateful heart, rather out of gratefulness, fear, anticipation, joyful anticipation, of how God will use what I know are my gifts for HIS calling, HIS glory.
I am creative. That is a gift. An integral gift that was part of my career. I am a study-er and educator. That is a gift. Another gift that helped define my career. I develop, launch, oversee, direct, organize…all gifts…all words that grace my resume. I have a heart for people, people who need motivation to succeed…young people especially. That WAS my career. For 14 years.
Then I lost it. I left it. To save my marriage. To save my family.
If I look back on everything I did, the one thing I loved the most (and did a lot), felt the most comfortable with, excited about (exhilirated even) was speaking. Speaking to 10 or 100 or 1,000 people. To tell them something significant. Something of worth. To motivate. To empower. To inspire. I would always get anxious, but the minute I was on stage, it would go away…until I stepped off stage. It was my calling, my gift and everyone around me knew it.
I got the glory. It wasn’t for His glory. Not openly. Not in my heart.
Then it went away.
God is so good that he divinely orchestrated a way for me to be a keynote speaker at a women’s luncheon recently. It was a phone call I received while vacuuming…God is funny that way.
But God reminded it was just a glimpse…
He brought me to that verse in I Peter….”Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up at the proper time.” I Peter 5:6…He gave me an entirely new persepctive, He gave me one shot to do it for His glory…and it was far beyond what I could imagine…YET He distinctly told me it wasn’t my time.
Tears well up as I write this. It’s so much a part of me. A part of who I was and a part of who I know I will be. But for now, I wait…
I wait doing what I know God has called me to do NOW… getting kids to school on time, making their lunches, washing clothes, putting them away, making dinner, cleaning my house…and more importantly…being in His Word, in prayer and fellowship. Sitting at His feet…and starting all over…
The rest will be HIS story…not mine.
This is something I’ve been thinking on a LOT this past year. I guess the fact I’m convinced I don’t have any of said gifts means I’m severely out of practice?
Also, I love your dad and his wisdom. Can I adopt him?
Sometimes I struggle with my gift. . .I teach–and I Love it–love the population I work with–love seeing their eyes shine with excitement–or listening to their thoughts. God gave me this gift to touch others. . .and even though it’s a part time assignment (Thanks be to God, I prayed about this for 5 years!!)–it’s still every day and I miss the mornings with my own kids–getting them ready for school and walking them there. But God gave me these gifts–a part time job that I LOVE–so I must use them, right?Right. Thanks, Sarah.
OOOH Miss Sarah! Frelle told me to come visit you today. I am blessed and overwhelmed. I started clickin around and started reading your love story. I still have to think of an answer for this post but I am supposed to be teaching my son;) I am just amazed by you. So much to catch up on!
so glad you are here, jana!! =)
beautiful.
there is a line in the david crowder song, i’m alive, that says “my tongue dances behind my lips for you.” and that is where my deep gladness is.
it comes when i am Holy Spirit conversation. the words are God’s words, ordained to speak truth into someones life. and in the humility and wonder that God uses me.
and when i sing. the song comes from the Deep, it reaches into my Spirit, draws the words out… (as ann lammott says) when she opens her sings, it is like a calling from the mountains, she opens her mouth and lets the Lord out.
i love those feelings, stirrings, movings of Deep.
this is beautiful denise!! miss you.
correction, “when she sings, it is like calling from the mountains. she opens her mouth an lets the Lord out”
oops.
thanks for this! its something i have been thinking a little bit about myself lately!
This post really meets the cry of my own heart lately. I love what your dad added here too about it not being about making money. When we are living out what God has purposed for us to do we are satisfied. This just makes it so much simpler and clearer for me. Thanks for making me think deeply today….
This was awesome. Thank you for giving me something to sink my teeth into today. So good to stay focused on the real currency. Love!
-Ari
You’re such a beautiful soul.
Deep Gladness – how wonderful. I walk in my call every day. My calling is children, always has been and always will be. I forgot that while ago. I was burnt out in my call and actually gave up the children’s ministry at my church (a small one). I was so tired because I am surrounded by my ministry everyday. I stopped teaching my kids and others about the Lord and what He means to us. I wanted someone else to take over. After several months of complaining because noone was teaching the kids the Lord convicted. “I gave you the gift of children. If you don’t teach your children, who will? If you don’t teach other children, who will?” I actually again got excited and again felt my Deep Gladness. I let the world around me darken my view of my gifting. My Deep Gladness is back and my zeal has been renewed. I live my ministry 24/7/365. But I’m blessed to be able to do that.
oh, deidrah. this is a beautiful example of someone using their gifts each day to contribute to the world. thank you for having a deep compassion for the world’s children (who are now your children!)
This post was used as an exclamation point to my day. Thank you.
Humm, my deep gladness comes from writing, and helping others to do so. I miss that since I’m home with little ones right now. I wonder if I will get to go back.
Ahhh this goes so beautifully with our pastor, Perry Noble’s, message from this past Sunday. I am going to send you some link love so people can share in this:) Thanks Sarah!
Erika
Hospitality. And the more I do it the more I see it is my area.
More importantly, when I’m not practicing hospitality I notice even more.
makin’ me think again! love it.
This is very timely for me. I’ve been viewing my time in NC as a spiritual/writing retreat. It’s in this space that I’ve had time to really analyze who I am and where I’m going.
What I found is something that I’ve always known. I just didn’t have a name for it. I wrote about that on my blog earlier this week. But beyond the writing and storytelling, I’ve remembered things about who I am and the gifts God has given me that I have long forgotten. And I have remembered things that in this long desert wandering of mine, that I wanted to forget — like His directing me towards ministry. I’ve been ignoring that for almost ten years. Just call me Jonah.
Thank you for making me think. I published your link on my site today and told others about your blog.
I love this quote. It’s at the top of my blog.
My deep gladness comes in many forms. Most intensely, it comes in the form of loving a forlorn little orphan girl. She is no longer an orphan. She is no longer forlorn. The world’s deep sadness is being washed from her memory every day.
I missed this when you posted originally– but this is so timely for me as well.
I have struggled in the past with accepting that I am “ready” to use my gift. Whether I am worthy enough or redeemed enough or healed enough or good enough…
God has so graciously shown me that my brokenness that is still so near, still a tangible physical feeling, is what gives me words to help others still near to their brokenness.
And that my feelings of inadequacy are finally rooted in humbleness before and praise to my Father, not self-condemnation. Praise God for precious healing
And He is definitely orchestrating my path now that I have gotten out of His way!
Blessing to you —
Lindsey
Sarah–God has blessed you with an immense gift! I’m reading not only your blogs but the posts that women are writing in response, and it blows me away. I’m so used to seeing people (primarily my friends) who write blogs and MAYBE get one or two comments.
God is really allowing you to speak love, grace, and truth into the hearts of women ALL OVER THE WORLD. All because of a blog. I don’t think I can even imagine the number of people you are blessing–including myself! I look forward to continue reading your blogs. Maybe since we both live in Orange County, we can meet sometime.
Until then, keep writing and being truthfully sharing love & grace!
To answer your question:
My “deep gladness” and the calling I so much want to follow is for battered and abused women and children–victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and emotional/psychological abuse. I’ve never worked with a soul who’s experienced such tragedies, but my heart thrives to help these women and children. I don’t know what my career or future will look like with helping them, but I look forward to seeing where God leads me in this all. Until then, I am seeking healing and seeking to remember what Jesus thinks of me–His true feelings for me…not the lies that Satan throws at me every second of the day.
Thank you, Sarah.
In Him,
Lindsey Renee
So glad that you are willing to share YOUR “gift” with the world, Sarah. Your words inspire us and stir up a spiritual chatter in our souls that only Holy Spirit empowerment could accomplish. You are a real blessing, friend.
Wayne