Ever since I was a young Christian in desperate twelve-year-old love with a boy who attended a pentecostal church, spiritual gifts have been at the forefront of many of my conversations about faith. This boy (bless his heart) told me that I was not a “Real Christian” because I did not speak in tongues, therefore he could not date me. My seventh grade heart was shattered. But this was where my curiosity about Scripture and what it actually said about gifts and their purpose in the body of Christ began.
I dove in head first into the concordance of my research Bible. I tried to combat his logic with Paul’s words: “do all have the gift of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ”(1 Cor 12:30) etc. He stalwartly replied, “those are questions,” much to my chagrin.
His grasp of rhetorical strategies asides, I am grateful for that interaction, because it was the first time I started really reading my Bible in ernest to learn what it *really* said. It was also when I learned that even among Christians there is significant disagreement about what it actually says.
A decade later, I began learning about my own gifting—and it did not come without confusion and doubt. My “overly” sensitive nature began to be identified by friends and leaders in our church as a “Mercy gifting” (another phrase for a sort of empathic gift) and I was connected with another woman in our church, one whose name I had heard long before I ever met her.
When everything went arry she was known for being there. When tragedy struck, she often went to the very center of it, like a moth to a flame. And when you knew that she had been there with such-and-such a person as they went through a terrible time, you felt a sort of relief. Where she was, people were cared for. She wept with those who wept on a daily basis. And she gave me some fabulous wisdom that I’d love to share with you here.
Throughout her years of being an empathetic, mercy gifted person, she had encountered times and seasons where even her closest friends did not understand what she was doing. She was often questioned and challenged even by leadership about where she chose to be and why. She knew her own finite limits, her inability to care fully for all the cares that surrounded her. She instructed me: “You get your marching orders from Jesus.” And I’m sure it must say something about the culture I was in that those words felt like a such a weighty relief.
A couple years later, I took a Spiritual Gifts assessment with our small group and was shocked by the results. Now, while I don’t think these assessments are a fool proof method of identifying gifting, they can offer some interesting insights and with that in mind, a couple friends and small group members and I took this test. I expected my top gift to be Mercy. But instead my result were as follows:
Shepherding
Knowledge
Mercy
I was floored. And terrified. (Did I mention I was in a fairly conservative setting where women’s gifting in leadership avenues felt like shoving a square peg into a round hole? If there was any hole to shove yourself into at all.)
I prayed in terror that day, saying to the Lord: This can’t be right. And I can still hear the way God chuckled at me: Do you think I made a mistake? He asked. Do you think I didn’t notice that you were a woman when I gave you these gifts?
I sat on that spiritual gifts test for years and hardly told a soul. I was so afraid of losing everything, (that is belonging, acceptance, approval etc) that I decided I’d rather be the square peg in the round hole, or just be the peg that had nowhere to plug in at all. I was not “getting my marching orders from Jesus,” as my wise friend had instructed me too. I was waiting for human men to approve and sanction my gifts before I used them—at least publicly.
Of course I couldn’t help but shepherd wherever I went. The mercy and shepherding gifts go well together when you can pickup on the distress of anyone in a room, and are immediately drawn to listen and pray for them. The needs surrounding me were deep enough to drown in, and I did not know how to roll the weight back onto Jesus’ shoulders at the end of the day—though at my mentor’s instructions, I certainly tried to. Depression and anxiety hounded me. Spiritual burnout was just around the corner. It only took one last straw for me to completely shatter under the pressure I had put myself under.
But my gifts weren’t the only thing the the body of Christ needed from me.
I began reading author K.J. Ramsey’s work about six months before her first book came out. I don’t remember who first shared her words with me, but obviously something must have immediately resonated. But one thought she continually brought to mind as I read her work was that the body of Christ doesn’t only need our gifts: she needs our suffering and struggles. (K.J.’s book This Too Shall Last deals much with this topic—be sure to give it a read if you haven’t already!)
In 2018 I burned out—epically. The result of too many difficult life events, laid on already over-burdened shoulders made me feel useless to the body of Christ. Where before I had been “high-capacity”, leading a small group alongside my husband, bringing meals to at least one family a week, and mentoring various individuals alongside my rolls as wife and mother; suddenly I felt like I had nothing left to give. What good was I?
But in many ways, that season was where The House of Rest was born. It was on the eve of that season that I read Shelly Miller’s wonderful book Rhythms of Rest and began learning how to Sabbath with my family.
Now, it’s five years later, and I’m still tired (twins! haha) but I no longer carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I have learned (and am still learning) to filter my sorrow through the hands of Jesus—to weep with those who weep, and then, when I feel the mobilization rising in my nervous system to ask myself and Jesus: What is mine to do? As another favorite author of mine, Emily P. Freeman wisely guides, I focus on my “next right thing,” and just do that.
Sometimes it’s simply to pray. Sometimes it’s to be a listening ear. Sometimes its to bring delicious vegetables. Sometimes it’s more than all that—but walking this way with Jesus, I no longer fear being completely overwhelmed by my mercy/empathy gifting. It already happened, and I survived. And thanks to other empath friends on the internet (K.J. being one prime example) I have learned much healthier ways to protect my finite empath energy and my tender mercy gifted heart, so that I can do what is mine to do when the time comes.
I am not God. I am not infinite. And neither are you. In Church cultures where we put a lot of pressure on leaders to do, be, and say all the “right” things (and make sure the people under your leadership do too) this fact can be extremely inconvenient to remember. Though one of my gifts is indeed shepherding, I can only guide—it is not my job (nor should it be) to make anyone do the “right” thing. But the “faith” of my small group members and how “well” they were doing in life quickly became conflated with my ego and my own desire to perform, so you can imagine how well that went once actual problems (gasp) started to emerge in our group.
Oddly enough, after our season of burnout, once the pressure of being a “leader” was removed, I felt like I was actually shepherding a heck of a lot better. In my experience, humility brings a whole heaping ton of freedom.
I am learning, to quote Emily P. Freeman once more, “how to walk into a room.” In my ministry here at The House of Rest, in my fiction writing, in my poetry, in my speaking, in the interaction I have with strangers to whom I am privileged to sell vegetables; both my natural God-given gifting, and my deeply painful life struggles are needed. I am learning that showing up as my full self doesn’t mean only showing up with the “good parts” as I had previously thought. Not only the parts that are palatable to present company, not only the parts that have been “sanctioned,” not only the parts that seem tidy and presentable: all of me is needed at the table where God has asked me to both serve and feast.
And I believe this is true for you too. Your gifts may be different than mine, and your struggles are as unique as you are. But none of it disqualifies you from participating in the life of God, and in the work he is already doing in the world. It’s not all up to you. And yet, you are both needed and wanted.
I would never have asked for my season of burnout. But because of it, I know better than others the need for spiritual rest. I would never have asked for 2 years (and counting) of pretty intense sleep deprivation, but that struggle is one that continues to bear fruit, both here in my writing on the internet and in my relationships with beloved people in my in-person life. The House of Rest would not be what it is without those things. In fact, it wouldn’t exist at all.
What gifts do you have to bring? What gifts are you perhaps, a little bit afraid to embrace because of social pressure within/out of the church? What struggles have shaped your life? How do you see these being beneficial to someone else in the body of Christ?
What I really want you to hear today, Beloved, is that you are valuable—just because you exist. And your gifts are needed—please don’t be afraid to share them with us.
Warmly,
Grace E. Kelley
A little poetry book update for you:
As many of you know, I have been working my butt off on getting my first book of poetry ready to release into the wild in the coming months. I had been hoping for a late fall release, but I may be needing to pivot towards a winter release. Between the farmers market, my husband changing jobs, lack of sleep with teething toddlers; there just haven’t been as many hours in a day as I have needed to get things ready in the time frame I was originally hoping for. Then I discovered that hardcover books take longer to get printed initially (sounds like it might be 6 weeks or so) so that threw my timing off a bit as well. But stay tuned! An official launch day is forthcoming, I promise. In the meantime, how about a little cover sneak peek?
Ain’t she pretty? And here’s a little peek of what the back is going to look like (though I haven’t gotten all the endorsements for it yet which is why there’s a bit of space.)
I’m also busy planning and plotting how I’d like to run my launch team, and fellow haters of facebook groups can rejoice because I have figured out how to run a launch team from right here on Substack! I’ll be inviting you all to join me for “a journey with the Sparrow” before you know it. (I’m running it as a totally separate newsletter for those of you who are worried about your inbox being flooded, you won’t be bombarded by additional emails, unless you sign up I promise.)
I can’t wait to share this work with you…it’s been a long time coming.
Gracie
Hi Grace, I really appreciated all that you shared. I could relate to so much of your story, and I've been writing about similar things. Your comment about humility made me think of a story that Parker J Palmer shared in one of his books. He said that he came to view depression as someone pressing him to the ground, but that was okay because it gave him a place from which to rise and stand again (or something to this effect). Life can be very humbling, but having gone through a very tough season of time emotionally during the pandemic, I now have so much more freedom and joy, finding fulfillment in serving Him from my heart. When we let go of expectations and all of the things that deplete us, and simply live in synch with His heart in transformative ways, we grow and heal. I find that my work with clients (I am a retired counselor and still do some coaching part-time) I am effective ini ways I never could have been without first experiencing such a dark season in my life. I think there's tremendous joy in living out whatever calling God has on our lives in a gentle, dependent on Him for everything, manner. Abiding in Him and simply serving Him through our weaknesses or struggles with authenticity seems so much more powerful than the old ways of relying on ourselves (even subconsciously) ever could have been.
My gift comes with...a lot! Was just talking about this with my husband last night. Thanks for sharing your heart and encouragement. Looking forward to reading more. Blessings.