My Gift To You

My husband uses a story called Acres of Diamonds to illustrate that in our quest for life direction, the answers we seek are often right under our noses. The answers we need are so simple that we fail to see the obvious because we are so mired down in sifting through the trivia and minutia of everyday life. We make the process inordinately difficult and think it too complex to muddle through on our own. We need someone to tell us what to do. Christians pray about it......sometimes for days, weeks or years.....waiting for an answer and frequently doing nothing to act upon what God puts right before them because it might not be specific enough or obvious enough to them.

I believe that our inner passions are a gift from God. Without passion and joy I am destined to lead a dull, boring and mediocre life. But when I tap into what truly makes me happy and at peace I can feel assured that I am "hearing" God say, "THIS is my GIFT to you! You need look no further." God opens windows of opportunity for me to determine His will and desires for me every day of my life. If I but open my eyes to see......

The irony of this philosophy of life is that often people feel if they really enjoy what they are doing, are passionate about it, then they question the validity of their efforts. Could something that makes me feel this good, this fulfilled, truly be God's calling on my life? Shouldn't my work be more tedious? More drudgery, less joyful? It doesn't make sense to me that God would reserve joy and passion for seemingly insignificant and trivial life experiences. Is He not great enough to include vocation and life's work in providing fulfillment and peace? I have felt no better harmony and joy in my life than fulfilling God's calling to be a nurturing parent to two amazing children of the Kingdom. It's the most incredible career I can imagine........

The difficulty in determining life's direction or calling lies primarily within our own life experience. We can usually trace back through our past to determine what our future course should be. The novelist, Graham Green (The Power and the Glory) once said, "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." This is a simple premise, thus not often taken seriously. We inadvertently want to make the process so much more difficult than necessary.

I have always loved the written word. Books have always been my friends. My mother relates how I loved to be read to as a toddler and how amazed she was the day when I began to read the words myself at a very early age. When I was eight years old my mother started college. In that era, a single parent of three small children attending classes was an unusual sight on a college campus. We lived right on campus and had the benefit of the library within walking distance of our home. To me, this was Heaven. I visited the library several times a week and became so fascinated by what my Mother was learning through books that I read the same books she did. We often had discussions and debates about the books she was required to read for her literature classes. This was the background laid for my lifelong love of reading and writing.

The written word for me is more than the knowledge within the pages of a book. Reading has been an integral part of my passion but the actual act of putting words to paper has gone hand-in-hand with my intrigue. I love to write. As a child, I enjoyed writing reports for classes. The research interested me, yes, but the actual penning of my thoughts and ideas was more than a casual assignment to me. It was art. The flow of pen across crisp white paper has always held a fascination for me. Occasionally I would write childish poems and stories which evolved into a true love affair with the written word and penmanship.

I have spent countless hours putting pen to paper writing letters to family and friends who simply needed a kind personal word of encouragement and hope. As a young adult I took on the responsibility of creating and writing a church newsletter, then later a business newsletter for clients.

I relate all this to illustrate how these windows of experience in my life have been windows that have been God's inaudible voice to me saying, "This is how you are wonderfully made. THIS is my GIFT to you!"

These windows have given me broad hints about who I am and what is my calling. Theologian and author, Frederick Buechner, once said in a graduation address, "The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is? Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint or canvas? Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words? Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit? I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives."

"The calling voice......" What an amazing statement. The trouble is we don't recognize the importance of these windows, this voice in our lives. We don't validate them. They seem too trivial in the complexity of our everyday lives. But, in reality, they are showing you something of who you are, what you love, and what you should be doing with your life if you just listen and recognize the patterns.

Our lives may take many paths that seem to be scattered and unrelated. But if examined are often connected by windows of God's gift to us. Life experience, education, relationships, spirituality....all shape our lives but in and out are woven glimpses of our futures; and times of joy and peace and fulfillment. The patterns that are revealed to us if we simply take the time to bring them into the present.

Ken Gire, in his incredible book Windows of the Soul, relates a prayer for JOY that has greatly impacted me. Perhaps it speaks to anyone seeking God's calling and not "hearing" His voice:

A Prayer For Joy
Help me, O God,
to listen to what it is that makes my heart glad
and to follow where it leads.
May joy, not guilt,
Your voice, not the voices of others,
Your will, not my willfulness,
be the guides that lead me to my vocation.
Help me to unearth the passions of my heart
that lay buried in my youth.
And help me to go over that ground again and again
until I can hold in my hands,
hold and treasure,
Your calling on my life....


Joanne F. Miller