Finding and Using Your Gifts

Teachers - like me - tend to view life as a predictable pattern, with age-appropriate goals. At a certain age, you start school, graduate, go to university or college, begin to work, then marry and have children... That is the pattern my parents expected me to follow. They would have been disappointed had I not followed that path.

Occasionally I meet people who don't do life like that. They find their own way - like a former teacher colleague who worked at a butcher shop after graduating from high school. Only when she became bored with that job did she think about going to university and becoming a teacher. I admire people who intuitively choose their own way.

I have been reading an interesting book entitled Following the Path: The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Joy. The book is interesting to me for two reasons. One is that the author turns 80 this year: She wrote the book when she was in her 70's. In it she was obviously reflecting on moving forward - at a time in life when most people think of retiring, slowing down. The second reason the book interests me is that the author, Joan Chittister, doesn't stop at the idea of finding your gift or talent. She goes on to state that true satisfaction comes at "becoming that gift to others."

She then adds: "...no one I know thinks it all happens in a straight line. Life is far more exciting than that... Finding our own particular challenge may be difficult at first. But we do. Finally. Eventually. However difficult the way."

In retirement I'm still looking for "gifts" - untapped interests - for my present stage of life. There are so many things I'd like to do!

Like all of us, I have undoubtedly used a number of "gifts" to get me through life until now. So my quest now is to uncover more "gifts" - and use them well, so that they become gifts to others. I like to think that God created us to become a blessing to others.