Monday, July 14, 2014

Heart-burn

I'm a harper.  I harp on my kids.  Say you're sorry. Have some integrity.  Always be honest. Take a shower!  But one of the things I have been really stressing lately is the notion of using ones talents and gifts.  My eldest, in particular, is forever talking about how he's not good at anything.  If he tries to build something and it doesn't modify the molecular structure of the universe, he's a failure.  Two problems with this self-image.

   1. It's not true
   2. It bugs the crap out of me

Some other time I will have to vent about why God gives us the children that are the very embodiment of our greatest struggles, but today it's simply a tangent.  Or maybe a foreshadowing.  "Victims" bug the crap out of me - people who are never at fault and talk of life's trite tragedies just so others will say something that's patronizing at best - yeah....drives me to drink.

Anyway, in an effort to combat his perpetual negativity without using words like "annoying" and "get over yourself", I try to focus the both of us on his gifts; his talents.  Because, his opinion to the contrary, he does have a few.

And here's how I often finish the conversation: "you know, the Bible says if you don't use the gifts you have, God will give them to someone else".   I know.  It's parenting vomit.  This is the stuff that doesn't really "agree with me" but I keep stored away somewhere until suddenly I unload it onto my children with the most unladylike sound effects.  It's a mechanism I use to manipulate my children into believing something I myself find difficult to choke down.  Then the other day I was talking to my youngest about this very issue when suddenly I find my back firmly slammed against the far wall of a room with no door:  "Mom, what are your gifts?"

This, see, is what I call parenting heartburn; when you are forced to eat your own words and then they gurgle at the back of your mental epiglottis for days until finally you're forced to medicate or swallow your own hard truth.  And here's the real problem with my little angel's question.  If he doesn't know what my gifts are, then clearly I'm not using them.  Ugh.  Pass the Pepto.

So I'm fighting with this notion for days, right, and trying to convince myself that I actually know what my gifts are and certainly use them regularly.  But I've got no proof.  That's the problem.  Nothing to speak of that I can hold as testimony to my own offspring.  I used to.  Once, when I was 22, I had a great job that should have been filled by a Dr. Someone but thanks to my relational abilities I was making a hearty sum sitting in a leather chair.  A few years later I'm the "visionary" of a new company because I dream big and have "wisdom beyond my years".  Then when I was in my 30s I started writing a blog as a means of therapy and suddenly everyone I know (and some I don't) are telling me I should write a book.  Even God Himself once told me "This is what the Lord the God of Israel says: write in a book all the words I have spoken to you". (Jeremiah 30:2)  Newsflash: no Barnes n Noble, Walmart or garage sale carries anything with my name on it.

But here's the heartburn: it's been nearly a year since I've had the desire or ability to write more than a "get out of gym class" note to the school principal.  "For whoever has, will be given more.  Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them". (Matthew 25:29) 

I never wanted to be a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do parent.

So that's why I'm here tonight.