Gifts Are Bridges - HOLDING ON - Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary

Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary (2016)

Part IV. HOLDING ON

Chapter 38. Gifts Are Bridges

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

—Howard Thurman

I think God gives us each a gift or two so that we have something special to offer to others. But sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that the things we’re good at are common to everyone. We don’t recognize that our gifts are unique and therefore worth offering. For example, I am a good writer and a good listener. When my friends think of me, they think, “Glennon—she’s a good writer and a good listener.” But I never knew these skills were unusual until one afternoon in my friend Michelle’s kitchen.

We were talking about an upcoming party and I said: “You know, Michelle, parties stress me out because everyone brings delicious fancy dishes to share and I don’t really even own any dishes to put a dish on even if I wanted to make a dish. Which I don’t, by the way. So sometimes I avoid gatherings just because I’m too annoyed about all the dish bringing. I mean, even stopping at the store for a bag of chips seems overwhelming to me. I don’t know why. I have a sign in my house that says, ‘WE CAN DO HARD THINGS,’ and sometimes I think I should add a second one below it that says, ‘BUT WE CANNOT DO EASY THINGS.’ ”

And Michelle said, “Yeah. You don’t bring amazing dishes. But you know what you do bring? You have a way of making me feel important when we talk. You really listen to me. That’s why I like having you at our parties. You are a great listener.”

And I thought, hmmmm.

Now, when people invite me to things and they ask what I’ll bring, I say: “I will bring my amazing listening ears.” If they love me, this will be fine with them. They’ll understand. If it is not fine with them, they will stop inviting me to things. Win-win.

Another one of my gifts is writing.

Dana is one of my dearest, best friends on earth. Dana lost her daddy recently. It was shocking and horrifying, and it still is. Dana is a daddy’s girl, and she honored her father and their relationship by writing and delivering the eulogy at his memorial service. Can you imagine? A week after she lost him, she stood up in front of hundreds of his friends and her family and spoke eloquently of his greatness and their loss. It was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. Certainly one of the bravest. Heroic, really.

A few nights before the memorial, Dana asked me to revise her eulogy for her father. It’s a good thing she did, because after reading it several times with a very critical eye, I had to admit that in my expert writing opinion, she should consider changing the but in the third paragraph to an and. Dana didn’t really need me at all. But she thought of me because she knows I’m a writer. And since I’m a writer, I got invited into one of the most important moments in her family’s life. It was such an honor to read that love letter to her daddy. To read it first. To feel, at the memorial, that I was up there on the altar with her.

That got me thinking about all the other ways that writing has served as an invitation into important moments of my friend’s lives.

My friend Joey and her fiancé Brock invited me to help write their wedding vows. Those were pretty damn good vows. Now I kind of feel like all three of us are married to each other—Joey, Brock, and me. The gift of writing, it turns out, has been my ticket into others’ lives.

And I’ve realized that these bridges go two ways: others’ gifts are their tickets into my life as well.

My friend Gena has a gift for hostessing. Gena doesn’t just use her beautiful home to hostess; she uses her whole heart. She throws opens her doors and invites people to step inside and celebrate life. Her gift is celebration, creating an atmosphere in her home and presence in which her friends feel loved and honored. She has hosted each of my last four birthday parties, and she hosts a huge Christmas party every year for all of us. Being a hostess doesn’t stress her out; she loves it. It’s her gift—­welcoming people. And because she offers it to me, Gena’s face will be front and center in our family’s celebration memories forever. Because of her gift, there are many, many bridges between Gena and me.

And then there’s Sister’s best friend, Allison. Allison is an artist, and her medium is the camera. She feels at home behind the camera, and God has given her the gift of noticing important moments and capturing them. So her friends and family invite her into their important days to help them grab the magical parts and keep them forever. And Allison becomes a part of those days, those memories, forever. She’s all tangled up in there. It’s funny: Allison is quiet at events—she’s more of an “ahh, there you are” person than a “HEY! Here I am!” person, but when you look at her photographs, you realize that she was actually more there than anyone else. She detected and documented every meaningful moment.

I think sometimes we get confused and believe that our gift must bring us money or success or fame. Sometimes those things do happen, but not usually. The only thing a gift needs to do is bring you joy. You must find the thing that brings you joy in the doing of that thing, and not worry about the outcome. Your gift might be crucial and obviously helpful, like being a good listener, or it might be odd and unique. For example, one of Sister’s many gifts is finding incredible deals at thrift stores. She dresses like a movie star, and every time someone compliments her on a fabulous blouse, her face lights up and she yells, “Fifty cents! I got it for fifty cents!” Then she usually tries to give the shirt to the person who offered the compliment, which gets a little awkward. Her gift helps the world because she always shops at Goodwill, so her shopping is like charity work, and buying recycled clothes is very green. But really, the important thing is that it makes her feel alive. It’s a gift. It brings her joy and satisfaction. Happier people make a better world.

Writing brings me joy and satisfaction. My gift has happened to turn into a career, and parts of that are wonderful and parts of that are not. I am happiest not when I am congratulated on a book deal, but when I have finished an essay that says what I mean. That’s all. Expressing myself effectively brings me great joy. You will know your gift because it will bring you joy and satisfaction, even if it’s hard for you to do. You will go about using your gift quietly, and eventually someone might notice and ask you to share your gift. If you agree to share, your gift will become a bridge. I suppose it’s possible that no one will ever ask, or that you will be too afraid to accept. Consider Emily Dickinson. Her gift was poetry, but she kept that gift to herself. Then she died, and her writing was found, and her gift became a bridge into millions of hearts. I think it’s pretty hard to keep a gift from becoming a bridge, somehow, someday, someway—if we use it. Because I think that God must really want us to connect with each other. He must want us to become a part of each other’s lives and memories, and he must want our hearts to get all tangled up with other hearts. We are each an island, but he gives us gifts to use as bridges into each other’s lives. When we lay down our gift, we walk right over it and straight into another heart.