I used to think that my interests, gifts and passions were random.

To be honest it has taken me many years to realize that my interests, gifts and passions are not an accident at all.

Sometimes I have let a day get away from me as I think back to growing up and I let my imagination take me back in time.  Sometimes it is with fond memories and other times I can lose myself in the thoughts of “Why didn’t I?”, “What if?” and “If I had only!”.  I find myself picturing the artsy girl in high school that I dreamed of really being and making the loft of our barn into my art studio.  I can picture myself going to art school in Chicago and can almost taste it.  I can mentally beat myself up over not being stronger or wiser or more confident to just be me.    I have cried over lost years and beat myself up over trying to fit into someone else’s mold.  What a waste of time, guys.

What I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt is that we get second chances. The path that I have traveled has brought me here to this life, with this man and these children. THEY are the path that I wouldn’t want to change. The other stuff? I have been given a second chance to live.  You have second and third and forth chances too to do the things in your heart. Those interests, gifts and passions…no one else can do them.  The world is anxiously waiting for what pulls you!

I have often wondered why my heart isn’t for some of the things my friends or family members have a heart for.  That is because the Lord has given me my own pulls of the heart.  The Lord has called me for conversations with women and the message that we have all been creatively made.  I have a love for the Pacific Northwest with an indescribable peace that comes over me while I am there because that area is my path. That pull? It is NOT random. The women that I love there?  It is NOT random. It doesn’t make sense but I know that my heart is there because the Lord wants my heart there. I have art to make, women to love and a message to share there.  I have a huge heart to help women see the joy and honor of loving their family and caring for their home. To remind them it is not a burden but a part of making your whole life your art.  I don’t have a pull to be a missionary in far off lands but a huge heart to reach out to those right here in my city.  That is NOT random.  There are so many things about who I am, the places I love, the people I am drawn to that I know have been placed in me for a purpose.  The same is true of you!

Can you image if we all had the same pulls of our heart?  Don’t compare your pulls to the pulls of others. Big or small they are all significant.  How can my pull to reach out to the people in my city not be as important as reaching out to a people on the other side of the world.  There are people traveling far because of their pull and there are others right now bringing a meal to a neighbor that is hurting because of the same pull.

Look at your gifts, your interests and your passions.  Have you asked lately, “Lord, what do you want me to do with them?”.