Gifts

I am reading through more of my mom’s journals, filled with her Sunday School lessons.  Sometimes it's more difficult to get through them than others.  Sometimes, I miss her so much that seeing her handwriting is like a stab in the heart. Other days, that same handwriting has the power to comfort me.  The book I’m working on is a labor of love.  Its called My Mama Says and its her stories, in her own words; not always grammatically correct.  But just the way she talked.  Reading them I hear her voice.  Oh, to hear that voice once again.  What a treat that would be.  I’m taking her stories and typing them out, then responding to her message  “her daughter responds”..then Chris, my son responds to us both.  Its a generational perspective of sorts.

For my blog purposes, I’m not typing the whole lesson.  Rather, I am taking a bit of what she is talking about and using that to base my own thoughts on.  Kind of a mini-version of the book I’m working on.

In the one I was reading earlier she was talking about Gifts.  Here is what she wrote:

So after Christmas is over and the house is quiet, I have a lot of time to think.  When my kids were home and out o school, the house was always cluttered with their new toys and games.  For two or three days I would allow the house to stay that way, cluttered.  But when I could stand it no longer I would make them gather up their gifts and put them in their closet.  After the toys were put up and out of sight, they weren’t played with as much.  They were put up and forgotten.  Sometimes months would pass before a toy or game would be taken out again.  Our heavenly Father gives us many gifts.  We play with them for a while but then they begin to clutter our lives and we put them away.  Sometimes we forget about the gifts He has given us.  Sometimes our closet gets so full of gifts that we need to clean it out. God looks down and says “I have given you so many gifts; when are you going to use them.  Why are you hiding them away?”    So maybe we should look in our closet, get out all the gifts that God has given us and start using them, giving them away.

When a lot of people think of gifts that God has given them talents seem to come to mind.  Musical talent, a beautiful voice, athletic ability, craftiness. Gifts that when used are easily indentified.  But there are so many more gifts and talents that God has given to us that maybe we don’t recognize as such.  Certainly someone with a talent for “helping” won’t be as noticeable as someone who has a talent for singing for example.  Yet in God’s eyes all talents are equal.   Sometimes its difficult to see something about ourselves as being a gift.  Sometimes there is some assembly required.

When we did the spiritual gifts class at Church, I think I mentioned that my gifts were hospitality and healing.  That surprised me.  Until I drilled down on what those things actually were.  Then I realized that they had been there all along, from the time I was young. I just didn’t recognize them as such.  For example, my sense of humor.  I have always been “funny”. Always had an ability to see the  humor in every situation.  What I see now is that it is a gift.  One that I am now using every chance I get.  There is nothing quite like making someone laugh or smile.  It’s the best feeling in the world. I have the ability to do that. A God given talent.  Laughter can heal the soul.  It may not be as fancy as a great musical voice or a brilliant mind but it’s a gift just the same.   Hospitality made sense once the “class” put a name to it. I love love love to entertain.  Nothing makes me happier (well other than doing my comedy) than to have a houseful of people interacting, just having a good time together.  I am usually the first to volunteer when it comes to having a place to congregate. Because truly I love to host.  Hospitality is putting  people at ease.  I think I do that pretty well. Just never really thought of it as a gift.

My mom had a lot of gifts that I don’t even know what to call.  There were no strangers in her world. She loved everyone and everyone loved her in return.  She had this ability to make you feel like you were the most special person on earth to her.  From a total stranger to someone she had known for years.  There was no distinction for her. Everyone that crossed her path was someone that God loved and so she loved them too.  Without hesitation.  That is a gift.  She didn’t have a great voice and her guitar playing may have consisted of 3 chords…..but she didn’t care.  She had a talent for not caring what others thought.   And encouraged others to do the same.    When she built her Gospel Barn it was not to showcase the best of the best singers and musicians. It was to have a place where anyone that wanted to sing could.  And did.    She had a Bible verse on a banner that hung in the barn that said something about  “if only the birds that had great voices sang, the forest would be quiet” or something like that. Need to look it up.  She made no distinction between talent and no talent .To her if you were singing your heart out to the Lord, it didn’t matter if you were off key or made the dogs outside the barn howl. LOL 

In her own way, my mom preached and a lot of lives were reached through that barn.  There was never a charge.  No one was paid for their performance.  Everyone was welcome and no one felt left out. It was the most amazing thing.  People who would hear about the barn and come from places 2 or 3 hours away just to sing.  Or just to listen.  When my mom died it made the Kingfisher headlines.  Gospel Barn Founder dies.  People still talk about the “barn”. You’d be hard pressed to find someone from Kingfisher that doesn’t remember it.  My mom took the gift God gave her, the desire he put in her heart, and acted on it.   And what a gift to all of us that decision created.

 In her final wishes she asked that her funeral procession drive by the barn before going on to the cemetery which required a trip north then back south to head west to the gravesite.  The barn was north of Kingfisher where my parents lived.  North on Hwy 81.  As we drove toward the barn to pass by it, cars on the southbound side of Highway 81 pulled over and stopped in respect.  The amazing thing was that the funeral procession was so long, that when our car, the one following the hearse  passed by the barn and back onto Hwy 81 southbound, the northbound cars were still coming.  We pulled over to wait for all of them to pass.  It was an amazing sight to see.  She was so loved.  I am honored to have called her mom.  What a gift.  The best gift of all.