Talking About the Uniqueness of YOU

Good morning darling!

Goodness what sort of flow of thought and purpose is with us this morning, hmm!

I was going to talk about my greenhouse (yay!) but then that paled, PALED, I tell you, in the wonder of you, of God's creation in you.  I am.....awed.

I touched on something in the previous post regarding your uniqueness.  Your specialness.

Now wait, before you say "I am not special!" let me stop you, dear one :).  Yes.  You are.

On a human level, I have observed that we all, myself included, tend to measure ourselves against others.  Many of us see someone who is {prettier, smarter, more organized, richer, more popular, more talented, more, more more} than us and think "Well, that's it.  I am not as much as they are, so I am just sort of average, nothing special".

Do you think that way?  Do you sort of consider yourself just another drop of water in the sea of humanity?

Let me tell you to stop!  Right now!  And I will tell you why that is not true :)

Yes, there is always someone prettier, more talented in one thing or another, smarter, more capable, whatever. 

However...

That is the COMPLETELY wrong way to look at it.  That is the human way, the competitive way, the pitifully small way to see you.

Let's say that you are a piano composer. Is it wise to say "Well, I'm no Bach, so I am just nothing special"? NO! Only Bach was Bach.  The Piano Guys are not Bach, but Bach was not the Piano Guys.  Each have their own niche, their own purpose, their own time.  He makes EVERYTHING, even us :)  beautiful in its own time. :)

You see, everyone has a specific set of personality traits and talents and abilities.  Would you compare, say, a rainbow and a sunset and say "Well, the rainbow has more colors, so the sunset is just another common, unspecial thing...."  NO!  How many sunsets have you spent with a loved one in a perfect moment of quietness (or of fun and enjoyment!)?  Yes, the sunset has fewer colors, but a rainbow would not quite be the same way to close the day on the beach of a long awaited vacation, right?

But a sunset would not quite right for the Lord's promise to Noah, and for prisms, and to elicit the delighted squeals of children seeing their first rainbow, then their first DOUBLE rainbow!  Lisa Frank stickers would not look nearly as eye candy-y if they were only in shades of gold :)

It is not one trait that we must look at, but the fact that we are a wonderful, complex, diverse set of traits that were made ON PURPOSE by God for a REASON.  There is not one person who does not have a purpose that is unique and only for them.  Your purpose is unique to YOU.  I cannot fulfill your purpose.  Bach cannot fill YOUR purpose.  That gal in the apartment two floors up who always looks put together and throws the best parties cannot fulfill YOUR purpose.

Think about that.  Understand that the Lord has a path that is just for you.  He has specific jobs just for YOU to do and fill, and He made you, on purpose, to have just the right amount of this talent, a little less of that one, a little more of this other one so that you fit perfectly into the purpose and life He has for you.  He made you "to will and to do for His good pleasure".  He made YOU  to WANT to do His plan for you and to DO His plan for you.  He knit you, my friend, on purpose while your mom was still pregnant with you.  Perhaps in the first month He gave you a talent for, say, music--not "Next American Idol" talent, but a strong affinity for music.  Maybe in the second month He decided not to give you so much ability to spell.  Maybe in the third month He made you an introvert.  Maybe in the fourth month He gave you incredible manual dexterity.  Maybe in the fifth month He gave you kind of half of talent for math--you don't do math super well (especially that one trig class--ouch!) BUT you DO have an incredible ability to find patterns.  Maybe in the sixth month He gave you the ability to overcome your introvertedness when you teach.  Maybe in the seventh month He gave you a deep and abiding raw heart for the elderly.  Maybe in the eighth month He gave you the ability to not work from a recipe, but just cook from instinct.  Maybe in the ninth month He gave you a normal IQ.

See?  On and on, He did a little bit of this, a LOT of that, none of the other.

And what could you become with that brief list I just made?   Your ability to see patterns helps you break down music you hear and register it in your mind, subconsciously, so that you can make patterns when you write.  You do not spell well, but you do not need to--that is what spell check is for ;).  The Lord arranged, before you were born, that sometime you would meet up with someone who was starting a therapy program for stroke victims to help them regain motor skills by playing the piano, and He arranged for you to accidentally meet them in the veggie aisle of the grocery store.  You had been looking at jicama and wondering what the heck you do with it, but it looked entirely too good to pass up, so what the heck? You will figure it out what to do with it and you buy a couple.  The occupational therapist sees you buy the jicama and asks you what you are cooking with it.  You sort of chuckle in a way that is endearing and you say "I have no idea.  But it looks good", and the OT is charmed by your daring and is emboldened to talk to you more.  You do not know it, but three months from now, that OT will bring you on board to work with her, answering a prayer for a part time job in your home that uses what talents you have to help others.  Your introverted nature, plus your ability to see patterns AND your ability to improvise (which you developed while cooking stuff like jicama) makes you have great joy as you are an active participant in the healing of stroke victims--see, you have to pay attention to what struggles the stroke victims have, see the patterns, then compose small, progressively difficult, pieces of music for the patient to practice.  You dig into the challenge and are deliberate, thoughtful, and calming when working with them.

So...perhaps your time gets away from you.  Yeah, you will continue to struggle with that until the Lord comes, but your husband is a good man who gets a chuckle out of your "Chicken Breasts with Jicama-Lime Whip" that you thought might sound good.  It actually works out wonderfully (much better than the "Mango Tango Meatloaf" you tried the other day...but that was a rare stone in your usual basket of improvised culinary diamonds :) ).  Your husband is a good, hard working man.  Your IQ's are very similar, so you find that discussion comes easily and makes for a good marriage.

While your introverted nature sometimes makes you weary of too many people at a time, you see that He gives you some incredible ability to be able to play in an old folk's home.  You know that comes from Him because you would normally avoid crowds.  But one of your stroke patients has a wife who volunteers in the old folk's home and the person who was supposed to play for the Christmas celebration got the flu.  You do not REALLY want to go out in public and play, but the Lord moves your heart and, with a bit of a clenched jaw ;), you say yes.  You are astounded by how NOT awful it was to be with the forgotten, precious elderly, and you observe that your music made them tap their toes.  There was one gentleman there who, obviously very ill and seemingly not aware--alzheimers, perhaps?-- turned his head and lifted one finger slightly (God also gave you incredible skills of observation....let's say that happened in the 2nd month of your gestation :) ).  You come home and, full of heart and weary of body, you dissolve into tears and know that you will be playing there often.

Your compositions never become top 40 hits, though when you were younger, that was the dream you had for yourself.  You never move out of the town you were born in.  You sometimes wonder if you ever really DID anything.  But when you die and the Lord talks to you about your life, you realize that, in that sea of humanity, your drop of water was the exact right drop of water to quench the thirst of the mind, body, or spirit of the people the Lord brought into your sphere.  He arranged your life.  He gave you some talents and opportunities He wanted for you, and He WITHHELD the talents and opportunities that would have kept you from being where He wanted you.  You had asked Him to open and shut doors for you, and He did just that.  You walked in the path that He chose for you, and you did good, unsung, but VITAL work.  Your sphere of influence was not huge, but it was brilliant and and good.

"Well done, My good and faithful child!" You hear as He wipes your tears and hugs you.



Now, I did not go through EVERY possible talent and personality trait--that would take forever for me on the blog, but He does. He goes through EVERY possible EVERYthing and decides how much of each YOU got to be the perfect one to do the work that He gave you.  He knows everything, keeps track of everything, works everything out for your good if you love Him.  He has a purpose for you, and a reason you were not the beauty queen (or were!) and a reason you were not the smartest in your science class (or were!) and a reason you married an extrovert as an introvert (or vice versa...or both introverts, etc).

When we peel away comparisons to other people, and just do the work that He has placed in front of us, walking in His will and being diligent in His gifts and the way He made us, and are diligent not to eat the bread of idleness and deliberate to remove as much sin as we possibly can that might misdirect us away from His will, then we will not suffer from insecurity or feeling useless or one of a nameless crowd.  We will not need to overcompensate or be judgmental or gossip or feel jealous.  We will not suffer from pride or shame.  We will understand that our work, big or small, is HIS work in us and that we do not need to stress.

So ask the Lord to reveal what He made in you, what He put in you.  Be honest.  Understand, too, that He may choose to reveal talents later in your life (I did not know I had a talent in archery until my 30's).  Do not wait for your life to start, it has already started.  He has arranged you and your life, specifically, on purpose. 

Isn't that the most amazing thought?  You.  Specifically.  On purpose.

Amen!