Perspective on Gifts

I spend time pondering the gifts of my children and how I can nurture them. I guess that got my brain in gear for this revelation:

While my (9th and 6th grade) nieces were here this week we flipped through my old photo albums. They were very interested in the ones from high school and school pictures of friends. They would ask questions about the girls, and things like "did you go out with him?" about the boys. It was a brain strain to think back to that time and how naive I was!

The youngest pointed to one photo and asked, "why didn't you go out with him?" I paused to think. He wanted to go out with me at one point. He was nice, there was just no connection with him, nothing "special" about him to me.

While that was the answer I gave my nieces, I kept thinking about it. He wasn't the smartest guy, or the most athletic, nor do I recall him being the leader of any particular club or team. I thought about the fact that many people have not discovered their gifts at that age, and as teenagers most of us didn't take the time to consider the gifts of others. I started thinking back about the things I did remember him doing at that time, looking for his gifts as I did. And very quickly the fact that he was a really good coach/teacher to our Powder Puff (girls) football team came to mind. He explained and demonstrated, joked around and made it fun, and offered encouragement.

And then it hit me! Did the bio he wrote for our reunion a few years ago say that he was a teacher??? I found the bio, and not only is he a teacher, he is a special ed teacher!! I bet he shows the same kind of patience with his students that he showed with our girls football team. I thought that occupation was an odd choice for him when I read it two years ago, but now it makes perfect sense!

While this doesn't mean that I wish I'd gone out with him, it does make me want to work that much harder to look for the gifts of all the people around me and nurture and appreciate them NOW, not so many years later.

May God give me the grace to do that.