Our Good Gifts
“That you can see these things when she plays is a gift. Never try to become its master, but serve it. Allow [the gift] to be what the Maker meant it to be.” (Nia Igiby, The Wingfeather Saga)
The C written atop my first college English paper dumbfounded me. After recovering from the shell shock of falling from my straight-As high school glory, I swore to do better. But I didn’t want to do better for learning’s sake; I wanted that A atop my next paper for affirmation. Honestly, I’d turned outward to make myself whole for so many years that no one could have been surprised at my reaction. Grades. Accomplishments. School. Friends. Tender infatuation. Leadership. Projects. Recognition. Make me feel good about myself, I begged each thing in turn.
The first time my writing was singled out, I won a fifth-grade essay contest (and still have the plaque). Affirmed. Then, in my thirties, someone else published my writing and came back asking for more. Affirmed. I published on a few more platforms, hosted my own blog, joined a writing community, and am interning for a New York Times bestselling author. Affirmed, affirmed, affirmed. In the secret places of my heart, I still begged to be made whole by what others said was good and worthy in me because of the words I penned.
Writing was simple for me as a child: I wrote because I liked words (and they came more easily than fractions). As I grew, writing became a catharsis for swirling emotions and teenage drama. When my adult world went sideways with a complicated genetic diagnosis for our oldest child, I felt like Alexander Hamilton, writing like I was running out of time. The words and sentences poured out of me.
Recently, though, I’ve felt a lot of angst about my writing. Angst that has driven me to production instead of cultivation. Angst that has pushed me to see my writing as a problem to be solved rather than a gift to form my soul. Angst that has urged me to quit instead of remaining faithful to God’s vision that words send restoration, redemption, intimacy, joy, and delight out into the world.
Why is it so easy for all of us to turn our good gifts into tireless idols? Despite the voices shouting at me to find significance in the world’s approval, the Spirit whispered to my heart, Be still and listen. Let go of the outcomes and lean into me. Write because it’s a gift from me. Write because it changes you. Write because through it you feel my good pleasure. Write because it’s a gift to others. Let go of algorithms and outcomes. Grab hold of me, your faithful God who has already looked at you and declared you are good. You have infinite value to me. You are forever secure in Jesus.
Because, Helena Sorenson warns, if we try to send our gifts—whether writing or building businesses or making things with our hands—out into the world without answering the “deep questions . . . Am I loveable? Am I worthy? Does this matter? That is not a gift to the world. That is a debt they have to pay you.” With the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, her words laid bare the crux of my heart issue: I want to master my gift so that it serves my yearning for wholeness disguised as success.
Ask anyone in the publishing industry how to be a successful writer, and they’ll tell you to build a platform of thousands. Take your gift and trade it for followers and likes and shares. While it may make business sense, I am not intended to bear a platform. I am not equipped to manufacture influence. I am not designed to be a walking advertisement. When I am consumed with marketing my gift for consumption, I too easily forget that in Christ, I am already whole and affirmed. I forget that God has given me this gift because it creates deeper intimacy between me and him.
Through this gift, I recognize how God has created us as his image-bearers. Through this gift, I more clearly see how we are created in God’s likeness, his goodness, his rightness, his power, his love, and his beauty. And here’s the real, honest-to-God truth: We are loved by God because of his pure, unfiltered delight and joy in redeeming people, in redeeming us from our self-consumed lives. I am struck by how God is relational and not transactional.
When we think of God as transactional, we believe that he asks us to trade our good behavior for his perfect love. When we think of God as transactional, we believe that if we follow his checklist, he checks off our bucket list for us. When we think of God as transactional, we try to make his purposes fit our priorities and desires instead of placing him at the center of everything we do.
But thank God his entire being resonates relationship. In relationship with him, we leave productivity for being known. We cast off aloneness and cast on his Spirit, infused into every breath we take. We replace the I’ve-got-to-do-this-for-myself mentality with knowing that in him we are held and safe. We move beyond human fickleness toward God’s steadfast, eternal love. And in him, we do not have to beg for these good gifts. He freely and abundantly gives them to us.
He is the gift, and in Christ, we are loved. We are worthy. The work of our hands matters. We can cherish the gifts he’s given us to share with the world because they deepen how we know him, and they bear witness to his presence in the world. So the question is, can we let go of the outcomes and simply hold his hand as we walk the path he is laying before us?
is a writer, Ann Voskamp intern, editor, and journaling instructor from South Carolina. A lover of the beach, the stars, and the lattes her husband makes, her favorite things to write about are motherhood, special needs parenting, mental health, grief, and faith. You can connect with her over at Writing Is Cheaper Than Therapy, Facebook, and Instagram.
Photograph © lilartsy, used with permission
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