Giftings and Church

It is unfortunate but true that there aren't many slots in the church that fit someone with my giftings. So it is very rewarding when I can do something I'm actually good at.

So we have sewing circle once a month. I'm good at sewing, but we don't sew much at sewing circle. We knot comforters, which I don't mind except I'm not very efficient. And we have a meal together and also provide food for the school kids, which involves fixing food and bringing it from home, which always takes me three times as long as I think it should and involves deciding what to make, which gives me gray hairs.

But overall it's a good experience, really.

Today there were several boxes on the table with stacks of random squares of fabric intended for comforter kits to send overseas. Unfortunately no one quite knew how many of each size it would take to make each kit. So Zelma asked me if I could do some figuring. I sat down and crunched numbers for about half an hour, figuring out, for example, how many 4.5-inch squares it would take, across and down, to make a 28x40 toddler bed quilt. I did this for 3 different sizes of blankets using about ten sizes of blocks, and brought the finished chart home to type up properly.

It was very cool to feel like I was actually doing something I was good at, at sewing circle.

Then there's the prayer chain. For years we had a system like the old "telephone" game, where I called Anne and she called Zelma and she called Jean, etc. etc. Then Paul worked up this system where we call one number, record the message, and it gets sent to every number in church.

It's a wonderful system except for the fact that I end up making a lot of the recorded calls and I was feeling like surely everybody else must be getting as tired of the sound of my voice as I was.

Then Anita pulled me aside one evening and said she just wants me to know that she loves the new prayer chain system and wants to compliment me on how I'm doing, that I'm good at taking what people say and putting it in concise form for everyone else. Now that was encouraging and affirming--that my passion for saying things right and in the fewest words possible actually had a practical use in the church.

I think we should all look for ways that others' gifts can be used in the church, and compliment them when they do.

Quote of the Day:
"Am I the only one that does things like this?"
--Emily, when she sneezed and her chin hit her knee and started bleeding again where she gashed it last week when she fell out of the top bunk at a friend's house when the alarm rang and she thought she was in her bed at home. She also broke a tooth in that fall.