Trust your gifts

"You're gifts will tell you where to go. Other people can't tell you what you need to do. Trust your gifts." Rev. Tom Stockdale, a warm and wise man who reminds me very much of my grandfather, spoke for the second time that afternoon about discerning your call by trusting and knowing your gifts.

Our conversation had started over the echoes of lunchtime chatter at Duff's in St. Louis' Central West End when Tom had asked me how I received my call to ministry. I explained to him that it had been sort of a process of elimination — there just wasn't anything else that I could see myself doing. I told him and his wife, Pat, that even though I am struggling to discern what kind of ministry I am called to, I know that I want to spend my life working within the church.

When I finished speaking, Tom thought for a moment, and then shared his perspective on the call experience. He said that over the years he had come to realize that not very many people receive their call in a single, identifiable moment or encounter. He had come to believe that our gifts direct our path.

In literature, repetition is a rhetorical devise used by authors to indicate that an idea or a piece of dialogue is important to the story as a whole. It's the author's way of saying, "Pay attention! This is important and you'll need it later," so when Tom spoke again of allowing your gifts to direct your call when he drove me back to Union Avenue after lunch, I realized that I had found myself right in the middle of a life-size rhetorical devise.

I have been pondering Tom's wise words for the past five days. He spoke them, and I listened to them, then he spoke them again, and I really heard them. I don't know that I believe in fate, but I do believe that God knows us better than we know ourselves, and that sometimes the Spirit moves with such intention that we end up hearing exactly what we need to hear, even if we didn't know that we needed to hear it.

Like so many things, it's a blessing and a curse — a blessing because wisdom is such a precious gift, and a curse because it forces us to (a) really think about the perspective we had originally taken, (b) begrudgingly admit that it was too narrow, (c) open our minds to the insight that has been offered to us and (d) think some more about our newly augmented perspective and how it changes what we had originally thought. It's all so exhausting, but, to quote Dr. Jim Atwood, one of the finest educators I've ever encountered, "You can stop thinking when you're dead." As far as I can tell, I am still very much alive.

In Zen Buddhism, a teacher will give his student a koan, or riddle, to meditate on. The koan usually seems very simple, but when meditated upon offer a much deeper insight. On Thursday afternoon, Tom became my sensei. I feel like I should pull out my yoga mat, find a tranquil place in the shade under a tree, and free my mind to the deeper insight that Tom's words are surely meant to reveal.

Instead, I have been asking a million questions, as we Disciples often do: What are my gifts? What if my gifts aren't what I thought they were? What if I have been walking one direction, when really my gifts have been pointing me in a completely different one? Did I get a C on my Spanish final because it's not one of my gifts?

Sitting here and sorting this all out on paper, on a very rigorous fifth day of contemplation, I am just beginning to understand Tom's wise advice. Our gifts guide our call, because God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, has lovingly gifted each of us with specific talents and abilities that will allow us to serve creation in our own unique way. It's kind of a twist on the cliché, "God wouldn't give us anything that we couldn't handle." God wouldn't call us to a ministry that we aren't equipped for. God planted the seed, and experience makes it grow.

I was expecting to discover my specific call in one neatly wrapped package, as if all of the pieces would come together and offer a bigger clearer picture of how I am to spend my life. In talking with Tom, though, not only am I glad that I paid attention in English, I am also aware that in discovering my gifts, I will wind up exactly where I need to be. As I begin to practice letting my gifts guide my call, I remind myself that it's not all about the destination; the journey is the joy. My short time at Union Avenue is becoming on of those experiences that will bring life to the seed that God has planted.

Loving Creator, I am young and stubborn, and I am so grateful for the patient voices of wisdom that are willing to repeat themselves, until I finally hear what they have to say. Amen.

Kelly Rand is in her second year as a HELM Leadership Fellow and is a member of St. Andrew Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Olathe, Kansas.