When my son was in middle school, my husband and I began going as chaperones on choir tours. We started with the church choir my son was in and eventually added his high school show choir. Overall we went on over 20 trips with these large groups of youth.
When we first started going, the choir director spent a lot of the trip taking the kids to outlet malls and amusement parks. After a couple of years there was a new choir director and he added more concerts (since technically they were on tour to share their gift of song after all.) He also did a wonderful thing and added some outreach work.
We did everything in the next few years of trips from serving in soup kitchens, reading and doing crafts in an orphanage, and painting over graffiti on a storefront.
Every year while my husband was in charge of the sound equipment and being the head techie for the show, I was his flunky and the treasurer of the trip. Having been a banker and a bookkeeper in my former life I often get asked to fill that role.
This new choir director wanted small envelopes with money for each child for each meal. This took hours of prep before the trip. When I was first told of this new plan I thought it was nuts. But it worked out fine for the kids and the trips ran smoother than they ever had before.
The down side to all of this was that I had to carry all of this cash around with me the entire trip. I had a backpack that was bright purple with my first name embroidered on it and a purple haired troll doll clipped to it. It looked like the backpack of a seven year old which was a) kind of the plan and b) suited me.
I was relentless in keeping that backpack on my back at all times. I felt very responsible to be holding not only the meal money for the kids, but usually other cash for incidentals and checks to pay hotels, etc. The only other person I ever let carry the backpack was my husband Tim, but even with him I felt that it was my responsibility and not his to deal with.
There was the one time we were in an airport and had a small emergency. We stood in one place for a long time, so I set the backpack down right beside my feet. When the group was suddenly off and running, I also ran to keep up with the kids. A few yards away from our original spot I realized I didn’t have the backpack and I have never felt such panic. As I turned to run back one of the young men on the trip handed the backpack to me. He had seen what happened and swooped in to pick up my bag and run it to me. I gave him a small cash reward to spend on souvenirs of the trip and a big hug of appreciation.
On another trip, we were at a free daycare on the border between California and Mexico to do some work and a concert. Our large group was split up into two sections, one to work in the lot across the street where they hoped to turn a barren area into a vegetable garden and the other to paint the outside of the main building.
Being that I have two strong guys, they both went to clean the lot and haul topsoil and gravel, while I was on the group to paint. ( I should add that it was a scorching 100 degrees plus that day.)
I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the backpack in the bus or in the school building, so I strapped it securely on my back with the extra strap clipped around my waist. I then proceeded to climb a ladder in order to paint the trim of a window. I kept feeling like the weight of the backpack was going to pull me backwards off of the ladder so I went slowly and carefully about my work. There were other kids and adults painting all around the building.
At one point one of the other chaperones came sauntering around the corner of the school, camera in hand, taking picture of us as we worked. Now I am not too keen on photographs of myself. ESPECIALLY when I am in awful work clothes and sweating profusely! I wasn’t just glowing, I was drenched!
As the photographer came by and spoke to me, I told her where the extra paint brushes were if she wanted to come join the fun. I was hoping for more help and less pictures. She looked me pleasantly in the eye and said, “Painting is not my gift, photography is.” And with that she continued on around the building snapping pictures.
I was floored. Painting isn’t my gift either! I am not sure what my gift is, but judging from the mess I make when I try to paint something, getting more paint on me than the wall, I am pretty sure it isn’t painting. At that moment I thought I should claim my gift as reading decorating magazines with a glass of wine in air conditioning, but I didn’t think that would fly. The “photography gift” excuse didn’t hit me at that moment either.
Now I don’t know if this person had a real reason to not pitch in and although I was infuriated at the moment, I tried to give this person the benefit of the doubt. (Not really, I am just saying that because I know I should. I was MAD!!) But the whole incident has stuck with me.
In the past few years I have gone back to school to study theatre, a passion mostly rekindled by going on these tours and helping “backstage”with the sound. I have decided that having a passion for something doesn’t necessarily mean that it is your gift. I am still searching to try and figure out what my gift is- besides the reading magazines while drinking wine thing.
I tell this story to share what I learned from it. Sometimes my only gift in a situation is that I am alive, willing and able. No, I am not a great painter of houses, but if the need is there I can at least try. I am constantly called on to do things in which I question my abilities, you guys know that. But often we are asked to do something that we aren’t trained or gifted in- we just have to be willing and try.
It would be lovely if we never had to do anything except what we feel gifted to do. But real life isn’t like that. We all have bills to pay and people to help and things like laundry and dishes that have to be done. Life isn’t always fun.
I think if we look on these opportunities as not really using our gifts but as a gift, we might feel differently. I have a friend who loves to do laundry- my least favorite chore. But after spending time with her, I come home and enjoy the feel of the fabric and the clean smell as I fold. It doesn’t last for long, but hearing her joy in the chore lets me know there is something there if I just try to see it.
I still hate to go to the grocery store, but I know I am fortunate to have a store down the street with everything I want in it and that I have the money to buy food for my family. Again, I don’t think my gift is grocery shopping, but what a gift to be able to!
We have gifts handed to us everyday. Sometimes we are called on to go outside of our usual idea about what our gift is. I have to push myself past the preconceived notion of who I am, what I am capable of and what my gifts might be in order to realize what a gift I have been given in just living another day, in being presented with a situation where I have to stretch and bend my abilities. I have to know that sometimes I am called on to do something where the only gift required from me is showing up.
While I am in the process of figuring out what my one true gift is, I certainly can’t just sit around waiting. There is too much to do in the world, things that if I try I might be able to do sort of adequately. And while I am trying, maybe I will realize that what I am doing was my gift all along.
