We are created unique for a reason. My talents do not diminish yours just as your skills do not diminish mine. We spend a regrettable amount of time comparing our talents, our image, our choices against the talents, images, and choices of the stranger across the room or the confident soul seated beside us. We are meant to use our differences to enrich one another. So the next time the demon of discontentment presses you into a corner, pull out your weapon of truth and defend yourself. You have the right to defend yourself.
I envy the ease with which some people can pick up a pen and draw exactly what is in their head. I can become engrossed in time lapsed videos of artists painting, and watch in amazement as someone runs deft hands over fabric and transforms it into clothes. These are not my talents. I can draw a passible picture and sew a passible skirt, but I will never create with these hands what these people intuitively express. I can, however, choose to be enriched by them, to celebrate them, and to saturate my world in their color.
I imagine there is a person out there in the vast ether whom you admire. I might, humbly, suggest that it is some element of their personality you admire rather than one quantifiable skill. Are they gracious? Are they confident? Are they bold? Are they even aware of how amazing you find them? You might never possess the talent you admire in them but you can certainly bolster your own confidence, make an effort to show more grace, or take the brave breath into boldness. You can be brave enough to compliment them. It might be what they need to see themselves as you see them.
Talents are not always translatable into a monetary value. Who cares? We will never have enough money for it to be enough and living for that moment is chasing windmills. Instead, can you imagine what a blessing it is to have someone give you their full attention? Attending is an astounding gift of self and, if you are ever blessed with it, you better value the moment. If you have the talent, I consider you amazing. The child that comes to his or her mother with the 100th tale of some imagined or virtual accomplishment basks in the light of an attending parent. A father who sits, uninterrupted, with his child when he comes home is sharing a talent for attending which models good fatherhood.
Take a few moments today to attend to your own talents without comparison or criticism. Don’t judge yourself for wasting any talents or not investing in them. Just give them attention. Consider how they enrich your life and the lives you touch. Honor who you are right now on this step.
We are called to be unique and to enrich each other. We are not called to diminish.
…on that note, I call anyone who has a talent to write or draw:
Calling on creative writers: Looking for uplifting submissions for a fundraising project called, “A Few Rows Back: Thoughts That Found Me In Church Today.” If I get enough donated submissions (poetry, essays, short stories…) I will donate all proceeds to a local VA charity that we will vote on November 10th. The deadline for submissions is November 9th. This is a Christmas fundraising opportunity which might only take you as long as it takes to open your church notes. I WILL TAKE NO MONEY FOR PERSONAL PROFIT. Please share this.
Limit yourself to 5 submissions.
Send all submissions to reese.m.snell@gmail.com with the heading “A Few Rows Back” and attach .docx or .pdf as LastNameFirstInitialAFRB.docx or.pdf
Any local artists that would like to submit cover art should email me at reese.m.snell@gmail.com with the heading “Cover Art” and attach .jpeg, .jpg, or .pdf as LastNameFirstInitialAFRB.jpeg, .jpg, or .pdf
Breathe Deep Books 