I used to be a video editor. I can remember the first really big project I did. My church does a conference for Jr High through College students every year called Love Is Red. I was putting together a promotional video for it which took me several weeks to pump out. During that period of editing, I was cutting clips and fitting them to a music track, which meant going back and forth over the same music track and the same clips of video over and over and over again.
The same music.
The same clips.
For hours on end.
For weeks on end.
By the time the video was done, I never wanted to see it or hear that music track again! To everybody else, it was brand new and awesome! To me, it was stale and old and overplayed. Not to mention, I knew every little hiccup in the video. Every spot that I wish had turned out one way but didn’t, every spot I had to splice things together that really shouldn’t have been spliced together, every spot where my lack of experience made for some rough or choppy animation – I could see all of it. The people watching may not have seen any of it, but because I knew the content so intimately, I knew every single imperfect moment. I hated it.
Isn’t this how we are with ourselves most of the time? Nobody knows me as well as I know me. Nobody else knows the struggle going on inside me when I’m smiling and waving and cracking jokes on the outside. I know when there’s anger, when there’s bitterness, when there’s brokenness. I know when expectations go unmet, when I feel like I’m letting others down, when I’m not measuring up to the man I think I should be. We know ourselves so intimately that all we can see are the imperfections, all the little things that don’t add up to what we wish they did.
But that’s not all that’s there.
In my video I could be focusing on the one little effect in the background that I wish had looked a little smoother, but everybody else is focusing on the fun happening in the foreground and they’re loving it. In my life I could be focusing on the one illustration I could have made better in my blog, but everybody else is focusing on how it challenged them and helped them change their thinking. I could be focusing on the imperfections of my weaknesses while others are looking at me as a role model for how I use my strengths.
I have a Post-It that’s been sitting on my computer at work for months, maybe even a year. This is what it says:
Did God Make Me?
Do I believe that God has intricately designed me? If so, I am confident in both my strengths and weaknesses, because I know He formed me.
If I allow insecurity to rule me, what do I really believe about how I was made and the sovereignty of God?
The truth is that we all have weaknesses. We have places that we fall short. We do mess up. And the truth is that most of us tend to focus solely on those things. But it is just as true that we have strengths. We may not notice them as easily. They may not be as glaringly obvious to us. But if we begin to ask the people around us, there will be things that seem to come so easy to us that our friends just don’t understand it. It may simply be the way you can smile and be friendly to those around you even when you’re having an awful day. It may be how you can diffuse a situation before it blows up and people start fighting. It may be how you can take a bunch of seemingly random thoughts and arrange them to form a cohesive theme. It may be how you tend to just take charge in a group and people just seem to listen to you. It may be how you just hear a song once and you can instantly sing it or play it perfectly. It may be how you can look at the clouds and see beautiful pictures.
The truth about our strengths is that to us they usually seem ridiculous or insignificant, but there are others who wish they could do it as well as you! Take that last one for instance: seeing beautiful pictures in the clouds. That seems childish to you, but there are people so caught up in their world of practicality that they wish they could just stop, look up, and see something beautiful. There are people who wish to be artists and who strive and strive for inspiration, and all you have to do is look at the clouds. They comb books and google and museums, and they still struggle. You lay in the grass and look up and you can’t contain all the ideas that come rushing in.
We downplay things in ourselves because they are common to us. Others would give anything to have some of your strengths.
I think I should note here that just because you can’t get paid for it at your job doesn’t mean it isn’t a strength. When God created us, he wasn’t thinking about capitalism. He was thinking about humans interacting with the world and with each other. He was thinking about beauty and healing and love and community. You may get fired for staring at the clouds while you’re on shift. But you may also teach your neighbor how to see beauty in an otherwise bleak world. That, my friend, is a strength.
I feel like I’m rushing through this thought a little bit. I feel like there’s a lot I could say. But I do want you to be able to finish reading, so I’ll end it with this.
I believe God has made us. Some of you may disagree. That’s fine. But I believe God made us, and He did so with intentionality. I believe I have the strengths I have on purpose, and I believe I have the weaknesses I have on purpose. My strengths allow me to help the people around me, to complete them. My weaknesses allow me to learn and gain help from the people around me, to be completed by them. It’s easy to live in a place of insecurity about our weaknesses. But it is very freeing to live in a place of security about our strengths.
Let me encourage you to stop worrying about things you can’t control. Some of us will just never be artists, or singers, or actors, or engineers, or poets, or police officers. Some of us will never be leaders of men, some of us will never be content with following somebody else’s vision. Some of us feel like the day is a waste when we haven’t checked off our to-do boxes; some of us have never even thought of making a to-do checklist. Stop worrying about what isn’t an innate gift and start looking at what is. What comes easy to you? What do you love to do? What have you always loved to do? What did you used to dream about before you became such a grown-up? Start feeding your strengths. Realize that God made you, and that all the little parts of you – imperfections and all – are just like the many nooks and crannies and juts and jogs of a river. They may be rough and sharp and cause the water to be unruly, but they also give the river it’s amazing and unique beauty.
The Endeavor 