I’m not a people person.
But I kind of wish I were...
I want to be the kind of guy who excells at small talk and not the one who’s soul withers when it is required...
I wish the love that I have for people wasn’t eclipsed by an inability to display it coherently, and that I had more the ease and grace of a Sam Malone and a little less Louie DePalma...
Dueling sitcoms, I know..
The point is, if given my druthers, the boxes I would have checked when God spoke into existence this particular strand of DNA, certainly would not have matched or remotely resembled the final draft, let alone first printing...
Have you ever looked up to the sky, head tilted, eyes a bit puzzled and gently inform The Creator of All that perhaps a few letters weren’t dotted correctly or properly crossed? Not that He made a mistake, per se, but just a few tiny oversights...
I’m probably the only one who has ever had that conversation, I know...
The crazy thing is, that when I enter this place, if I’m being completely honest, often it is not regarding the qualities ( softer heart, gentler spirit, sacrificial giving, etc., etc., ) that truly matter in this world, but almost always in the externals; wanting to appear more graceful, appear more confident, appear a few points smarter...
I tell God if I had those qualities I could be more useful to Him.
How Loving and Patient He is...
Words come informing me gently that although His Love is Infinite for me, His Work does not require my presence or even existence...
Ouch.
Followed by much relief...
I find that I probably should focus a whole lot less on the social graces I wish I had, and a whole lot more on the the actual Graces He has placed in my life; That the woman I love and adore is off put by the Sam Malone type anyway, and never would have given me the time of day, if that was who I was; bumbling and bouncing and walking into doors evidently has there own particular charm, I guess...
God equips us perfectly for His purposes, but how ironic it is in how ineffective that equipment becomes when we insistently drag it to the wheres and hows of our own preferences, not His...
He doesn’t equip me for my purposes.
Thinking I should remember that...
So I show up and continue where I am not gifted, but where I am used.
Maybe that is true Grace, after all, not to be polished or comfortable, but to be used; not because of inherent value, but because of inherent brokenness ; not because of who we are, but Who He is, working inside us to reach another ...
My social ineptitude is not enough to hinder Gods work, just as all the social graces in the world are not powerful enough to advance it one tiddle...
I needed to remind myself this, today...
