Another Reminder On Core Gift

I wanted to post this as a comment to one of your blogs, but it turned out to be quite long. So I decided to write it in instead.

I make use of all 24 hours in a day - and feel like asking the Lord for 1000 more... I work in events and marketing and have been known to work from 6am to 6am. And yet the work is never done. There is always something to email, some small bit to complete.

I am primarily a writer (mostly I write scripts and event concepts). But I am also an event programmer-slash-production manager-slash-talent coordinator-slash-account manager-slash-sponsorship marketer-slash-voice talent-slash-entrepreneur-slash-whatever else I need to be. Little wonder why I have so little time. Though I am a writer by profession, I have yet to write a single blog, despite its extreme popularity; it's been years since I've even kept a diary. I'm so busy writing for other people, I barely have any words left for myself.

Except today. I read your article on Manny Pacquiao which my mom forwarded to me. It has led me to question - what is MY core gift? I've always thought of myself as a Jane of all trades. (Whatever I did, I had to be good at it - not because I had "natural" talent but because I wouldn't stop until I got it right.) But the one thing no one taught me to do, the one thing that I knew I had since I was young, was a certain way with words. I recognize it as God’s gift to me.

And now I wonder if I’m using it wisely. Since the onslaught of events for the Christmas season, I wake up at 8am each morning with my heart beating so fast, worried that I might have slept in too late although I’d been awake the previous “night” until 4am. The first thought in my mind as I jump up from bed would be “S***! (profanity edited) What did I not do? What have I not finished?”

After weeks of this, it had to take its toll. On my way home from work today, I had shortness of breath; I was just sitting and I felt my heart constricting. Not a sharp, piercing pain, but a slow squeezing of my chest. I was running all things I needed to do in my head: write new concept paper, revise a website article, finish my event checklist… block the anxiety attack that’s coming.

Then I got home and checked my mail. I happened to come across my mom’s email of your article. And just now, as I was reading your words, it was as if God whispered in my heart, “Be still.”

“So you can hear me. So you may know this is not what I planned for you. You never have enough time because I do not mean for you do all these things. I only need you to FOCUS on what is important.”

And so tonight, I won’t be doing a new concept paper, revising a website article, and doing an event checklist. All that will have to wait for tomorrow morning. I will breathe deeply, lie in bed, pray, and wait for my mom to get home so I can hug her in a way I haven’t been able to do since I started working more than 5 years ago. In the coming weeks, no matter what needs to be done, I will not panic. I will do my work but it is not my life. And hopefully I will learn to wake up each morning and think “Thank you, Lord, for this day. I will do my work; I will let you take care of the rest.”

But before I do that, I just wanted to write and say “thank you.”

Thank you Bo. I hope more people hear God through your words.