Four Ways We Make Our Gift A Curse
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My eldest sister (or the 1st born as she calls herself) reminded me of something my grandfather used to say that his father told him. He would say your gifts will help you, but they’ll also hurt you. See, he knew his gifts were a blessing, but sometimes they felt like a curse.
I loved my grandfather dearly (he was my person), but I don’t think he ever found his way past this point, and I doubt my great-grandfather did either. They stopped at the painful part of the process and accepted it as the reality of a gifted life. Honestly, I’m at this point right now. The cost of my gift feels so heavy, and it seems like everything I’m trying to do out of obedience is blowing up in my face. I am tired of being drug by the struggle bus.
Can I be real?
Sometimes being me is exhausting. I feel misunderstood, taken advantage of, devalued. It seems other people get off soo easy, and so much is required of me. There are times I wish I could unsee the issues in people I detect, go without noticing the needs of others and give back this helpful heart. I don’t want to enlighten you, help you see what God is saying to you, or write another blog, social media post, or podcast. I want to close my eyes, shut my mouth, and put my brain on sleep mode, but I can’t turn it off. It’s as natural to me as breathing. And it makes me wonder, if I could have chosen my gifts, would I have chosen these, or would I have happily let someone else become this person?
I understand we should be grateful for our gifts, but what do you do when you didn’t choose what you were given, and what’s required of you seems like too much? Honestly, how do you rectify the cost when deep down you would consider giving the gift back if you could?
Sidenote- it doesn’t matter what the gift is. Whether you are wise, funny, organized, have a great voice, or can cook. Anything you do well is a gift from God that can be used for His Glory. We all are multi-gifted people that are equipped so we can be who we’re supposed to be and do what we’re meant to do. No gift should be minimized or discounted. Every gift is valuable, and every gift requires a cost.
What I See Clearly
The conundrum is our gifts may come naturally to us, but they require us to pay a seemingly unnatural cost. They require our sacrifice in the most strategically excruciating ways, but it pays divine dividends. The point of every gift is to draw humans to God, ourselves included. For others, our gifts remove the obstacles to allow them to better experience God. For us, it removes inner obstructions that hinder God from existing in and moving through us. The cost we feel is what’s required of us to allow these two-goal to be reached.
But that’s the thing. It’s when our gifts stop being easy that we are forced to face the cost of being who we are. Helpful hearts can be bruised frequently, givers taken advantage of, encouragers forgotten, creatives misunderstood, the dependable ones weighed down with pressure, and defenders left defenseless. We don’t get to choose the cost of our gifts, but it is on us to decide if we’ll pay. And that’s where we typically get hung up.
So where do we start? I feel like I’m at the same point my ancestors reached, but I can’t respond as they did. It didn’t seem to work for them, but what I’m doing isn’t working either. Then God told me that their understanding wasn’t the end of the revelation. If they would have kept going, they would have reached transformation. See, it’s not really about the cost. It’s about our response to it.
What I See Clearly
When you don’t truly understand the purpose of your gift and value it enough to go through the process to mature into it, that’s when you make it a curse.
So the way I see it, first we need to understand what we may be doing to make our gifts feel like a curse? And then we have to decide if we’re going to keep doing these things or stop?
When this first question came to mind God shared with me His thoughts about what shifted the way I felt about my gifts. He showed me four things I was doing that were putting my gifts at risk to become a curse.
#1: I Forgot the Purpose of the Process
Honestly, I blame my parent’s affinity for group punishment for my “but what about them, they should be in trouble too” tendency. Comparison often distracts me from the purpose of my process, and I forget this is a game of one. My gifts are for my development. The point of the process is us learning our gifts and how to be a temple for them. These frustratingly painful people problems exist to develop the faith, trust, peace, and compassion we need to better operate in our gifts. Regardless of how we’re gifted, character development is the foundation of our success.
Every time I start feeling burnt out I forget that there were moments I was excited about this gift. At one point I was amazed at what God did through me and I celebrated the results almost as much as the people who benefited from them. When all you can see is the cost of your gift remember it’s not just that the world needed your gift. You needed it first. We are always the first partakers of our gifts, and no one truly benefits from them more than we do.
Our gifts are meant to help broken people true, but they’re also carried by imperfect humans (a.k.a us). Why God entrusted divine gifts to human vessels I’ll never know, but the process of maturing into our gifts develops us into the right dwelling place for our gifts to be protected and effective. But remember this, before our gifts can make room for us, they must make room in us, and this is what the process is for. Every imperfect situation you experience, every time you tried your best, but the results weren’t what you wanted that’s the process of the gift-making room in you, maturing you, developing you, and purifying you so you can have a divine impact. When we see it that way we don’t become overwhelmed by all the things that don’t go quite right because we know the purpose of it all is to make us better, stronger, and more impactful.
#2: I Didn’t Understand My Gift So I Abused It
I think my life would be easier if the point of my gift was to make me feel celebrated, valued, and safe. Since that’s not the world we live in, I must admit I have been guilty of hijacking my gift to satisfy these cravings. When your gift is hijacked it becomes a perverted version that attempts to fulfill your own wounded needs. My gift to see others’ needs, my heart to help, my solution-oriented mind all became tools for my Ms. Fixit nature. But that wasn’t their intended design, and I had to unlearn how I operated in my gifts because my habit was to use them to offset the areas I refused to heal.
So much of how I operated in my gifts was to satisfy my need to be useful and wanted. So when certain people rejected my help, they weren’t rejecting my gifts, they were rejecting me. We have to be careful to separate our identity from our gifts. They aren’t who we are, they are just how we operate. When there’s not proper separation the hits of criticism and rejection have a much larger impact than they’re meant to, and the cost of our gift is much higher than intended because we’ve tacked on our value, identity, and self-esteem. Your gifts are how you are but not who you are.
Let your identity expand past your understanding of your gifts. When we allow them to be the totality of who we are, we limit who we can become. I thought I was just a writer, but who I always was wasn’t who I was forever meant to be. Now I’m a blogger, vlogger, and podcaster. Our gifts are meant to expand our view of ourselves because even we don’t fully comprehend what all we possess.
As you mature, you will see the definition of your gift change. For me, I have always been a helper, but how I define what help looks like from me is changing. For so long help was me by your side, in the trenches with you, conversations and helping hands. My version of help required me to be present, either visually or vocally, because I had only learned to let go when I was mad, if I wasn’t, I would risk going down with a sinking ship if I thought I could save you. I have discovered that I confused help with a savior/martyr complex, so to me, disconnection felt like abandonment. But God used some painful experiences to show me the truth and refine how I define my gifts and purify them. Now, sometimes help is me walking away and allowing God to take it from there or remaining silent and allowing you to find the revelation on your own.
This process with my gifts is maturing me and I’m learning not to assume I’m being asked to fix every problem I see. When God benches me, it is always an opportunity for growth because He will sometimes hold back a gift to reveal or strengthen another one. I may be hyper-focused on one of my gifts but God never is. It’s never about being strong in one gift with Him, but developing every gift within us, whether we know they’re there or not. That’s why we have to follow the process. So don’t be too proud to let God show you who you are and stop telling Him who you’re not.
So a few questions for you.
«Consider This»
– Is the execution of your gift pure? Be honest with yourself.
– Is any of how you do what you do really for you?
#3: I Had Unrealistic Expectations of People
It’s funny, the very gift that allows me to do this blog and podcast is the same thing I feel I don’t get enough of. I see so clearly others and their needs, the root of their issues and whatnot, but those I have wanted it from in return it seems when I show them, they don’t see me, and when I voice my needs they don’t hear it. And if I’m not careful that’s when I start wondering if it’s worth it, and that’s when I start slipping into hostage mode.
Now, I would always give it a different label though. You know put the PR spin on it so it sounds better. I called it being more strategic with my gift, conserving my energy, taking me time, but the preluding feeling was always I was tired of feeling taken advantage of. I didn’t want to feel used anymore so I tacked on extra requirements for how and when I would use my gifts. Fine Lord I’ll speak to them, but only if they really seem like they’ll listen. I’ll do this for them, but they better be grateful. See the hostage mentality requires a reward. And it’s hypocritical because you’re trying to exact payment for something you freely received.
So often I have made people responsible for my reward and the source of my validation. It was always subtle, never overt, but there was always a judgment of their response, and that’s when my gift was no longer freely given. Did they do anything with what I told them? Did they value my gift by responding in the right way? In my head, I knew I shouldn’t be focused on people’s responses, but when you don’t see God as your rewarder, you’ll find someone else to give the title to. But the right title to the wrong person still ends in disappointment.
Say it with me, it is not people’s responsibility to reciprocate or to reward me.
Don’t get me wrong, reciprocation would be great, but sometimes we’re trying to get blood from a turnip. I think we forget that the situations that require our gifts are typically filled with people who aren’t gifted in the same way we are. We expect people who don’t have what we have to give what we give. Everyone is not you. You will constantly be disappointed if you expect you in other people. Face the reality of what they have to offer you. Let who called you be responsible for rewarding you and value the reward He promised.
#4: I let The Pain of the Process Derail My Compassion
When operating in our gifts, it seems we are at our most powerful and vulnerable state. We are doing things we may not have ever thought we were capable of, but we are lights on a lampstand, and the attention we attract may bring comments, criticism, lies, attempts at sabotage, all kinds of foolishness- regardless of what it is specifically, it can all be categorized as pain.
Too often we stop at the pain of the process but when we do it gives us an altered reality and a victim’s mentality. I realized this month that that’s what had happened to me. There has been one experience that was so painful that when I looked at it all I could see was how I had been taken advantage of, hurt, and abused, but it seemed like God kept sending me back to that situation to help, and I couldn’t understand why He wouldn’t just leave me alone. Send someone else. But sometimes our healing comes from facing painful places, and our gift is purified from being used in ways that are a sacrifice.
The pain is an evident, unavoidable part of the process, but we should never accept that the pain should hurt in the same way for the rest of our lives. We should grow to the point where what hurts us has to evolve too. That means the same things won’t hurt me forever, not because I’ve become jaded or have stopped caring, but because I’ve matured to the point that some things don’t affect me like they use to and I no longer attract some things. Some pain comes to teach us a lesson, but once we’ve learned it, the pain is no longer necessary. Also, some things hurt only because they trigger a wounded place, but healing alleviates our pain points.
We must make sure we don’t decide that “this is just how things are meant to be.” When we do that, we sign ourselves up to experience more pain than we’re meant to, and staying there changes us. It breaks us down, makes us guarded, hardened, and bitter. Pain steals our strength and jeopardizes our gifts because it kills our compassion. Every time Jesus operated in a gift He was moved by compassion so that’s the genesis of every gift we have and the reason we are gifted. Without compassion our gifts plateau or become inoperable because they’re cut off from their power source. See, we have to fight to maintain compassion for those we’re called to, regardless of their response. It has to become our priority. The only way to do that is to stay in the presence of God. Staying connected to Him keeps us in a cycle of giving and getting compassion.
So What Will You Do?
If you started this like me, feeling like your gift was a bit curse-like, and if any of the 4 points I shared helped you see your situation a bit clearer you have to decide what are you going to do?
Will you accept the gift and pay the cost, or are you content to stop where you are in the process?
Will you become this gifted person you have the opportunity to be, or is there another version of yourself you’d rather become? The choice is yours.
But remember this articulation of your gift is not the end. There is so much more for you. Our gifts grow and evolve as we continue through this process. If we stop here or try to use the gift without God’s process, we make it a curse, but if we choose to pay the cost and continue in the process, transformation is waiting. I want everything God wants for you. I pray you want it too and that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to have it.
Let’s have a conversation about this. Share your thoughts below.
