Unlocking the Creative

The other day a friend and I were catching up. She was casually talking about an organization she was associated with and stated that the leader was incredibly talented, but had low capacity. She also mentioned that others see the high talent and mistake it for capacity. What's the difference? Talent is the shining star who takes center stage and receives all the accolades while capacity is the ability to visualize and build the stage. Capacity means creatively manage resources for the betterment of the whole and stewarding the talent of the people around them. While talent allows us to rise to the top faster, capacity allows us to stay there once we arrive.

As she spoke, it totally rang true for me. I thought through several situations that I have been in and I realized how often I have mistaken talent for capacity and the truth is they are two very different things. Although this conversation was several weeks ago, sometimes there are thoughts that need to simmer and then they unlock clarity unlike any other thoughts. This was one of them.

First- I realized I am a low talent type of gal but have developed a good foundation for capacity. When I have said that to a few friends they want to console me with "That’s not true!" However, I actually take comfort in it. Growing up, I wasn’t the smartest, the fastest, the prettiest, the most musical, or the most artistic.It’s been a struggle to rationalize my life’s calling (even to myself!) as it wasn’t as immediately obvious as it might be for those who have more visible talent.
But I think I do have three subtle talents that have helped cultivate capacity. The first one is that I am teachable. I am always willing to learn and hence always willing to change. Being willing to change allows me to discover the lies that I believe about myself and the world around me. Our willingness to discover and deal with the lies we believe, are a key limit or boundary to our ability to cultivate capacity.

Secondly- I have a gift of friendship. Loneliness and pain were my companions growing up but at key times in my childhood, there were a few people that looked past my circumstances and gave me the gift of friendship. It was that friendship that created a bridge to me continuing to have hope. Because I was so grateful to them, all I could do was commit to developing that gift of friendship and sharing it with others along life’s way. Even as I am writing this, I truly believe that friendship has probably brought more healing and hope to my life (and in the lives of those around me) than any therapy/ministry I can think of.

Thirdly- I have the gifting of being persistent or as some others may call it, stubbornness. Whether it is Winston Churchill or Joyce Meyers - a key value I have gleaned from their lives is that the choice is available to whosoever will to never, never, NEVER give up.

 I think having this persistence, and it being linked to teachability and friendship, has really been a secret to success for my life as well as great ingredients for creating capacity.

As I looked up in the 1828 Dictionary talent and capacity, I gained new clarity that I wasn’t expecting. To summarize- capacity is a passive power; it’s the ability to receive. Talent, however, is an active power; it’s the ability to give.

One of my various “random thoughts”  has been that life is truly about giving and receiving. Often times the Enemy will twist or damage some aspect of giving and receiving for us and that in turn is what causes damage in our relationships with both God and man.

Our physical heart is a great picture of what healthy giving and receiving looks like. The heart has two receiving valves and two giving valves. One set receives oxygenated blood from the lungs and the other gives/releases the oxygenated blood into your body. In a similar way, we need to have healthy giving and receiving valves with people as well as unblocked giving and receiving valves with the Lord. Often, you can see in people's lives where the breakdown of relationships has damaged or blocked one or more valves in their lives and it just causes them continued pain.

Part of my life journey has been the Lord healing and unblocking those receiving valves in my life that were so damaged. But most of the time, I associate receiving with an entitlement mentality. But the reality is that healthy receiving IS a part of capacity. I read a book about healthy giving and in their last point, they asked you to try and only exhale and not breath in. Their point is that we have to breath in AND out or we will only live for a few moments. Part of healthy giving, truly is healthy receiving.

So, Wendy Clark- what’s the difference between entitlement and healthy receiving? At this point (and I reserve the right to add to or change this thought) it is how you steward what you receive. I ask myself: is what I receive for my own consumption only or is it for what our Lord might desire? The weight of that call to stewardship is what keeps me on my knees.

Cultivating my talent is what builds up healthy giving valves. Cultivating capacity, builds up my receiving valves. We need to cultivate both.

Wendy

I think a lot about stewardship. In many ways, it’s easier to be poor. There are limited choices that you can make with your resources. As you grow in resources of time, talent and treasure; the amount of opportunities and choices exponentially increase. 

When I went to UNC for a semester, I took an economics class. One of the principles I am still remembering almost 20 years later is that of opportunity cost. This is the hidden, difficult to assign a metric or value to, reality that no one talks about - the cost of the choice that you make vs the choice you didn't make. If you choose to go to this university, then you have not chosen to go to hundreds of other schools. The job you chose dictates where you live and where you spend your time versus taking a another job which might have led to a totally different living situation. Opportunity cost is neither inherently good or bad, it simple is what it is.

But when I think through stewardship, opportunity cost is a significant aspect of my thought processes. Life is the sum of the things we have made priorities as a result of our choices. How do we prioritize and weigh the value of at least two competing choices that are often screaming at us? Part of wisdom is the ability to discern and then make the choice today that we will be glad we made tomorrow. How do we cultivate wisdom? I believe having an appreciation and awareness of opportunity cost while we are thinking through our options is one of the keys. 

We speak a lot about needing a financial budget, however, I once heard was that we should also have a time and an emotional energy budget, as they are finite resources that we have to steward carefully. It is in those two budgets that I most carefully think through opportunity cost. 

One way I do this is I try to think through the tasks that I must accomplish during the day and assign a monetary value or cost to them to clarify their priority in my day. Washing the dishes: that costs around $10/hour. Entering in bookkeeping data: well, that can cost $25/hour. As I think through the what I need to do, I begin to ask myself: what is the cost of me doing all of these things and not doing other things? What I can delegate and consolidate so I can spend that time on what only I need to do - that which I am called and specifically gifted to do? 

If I had to say what my two unique gifts I bring to the world were, it would be the gift of friendship and the ability to think/problem solve. As I plan my time, emotional energy, and even my money, I place emphasis on these two priorities in my life. This means my dishes don’t always get done. But sometimes they need to get done so I can  have a place for people to come and visit me and feel comfortable. This means I may need to employ a creative solution as to how to get those dishes done. Maybe it means I don't always buy the newest clothes when I want them but instead I provide a job for someone who needs it, get those dishes done, and have the time I need to think/problem solve and invest in relationships.

Weighing opportunity cost many times unlocks the clarity of thought I need to find the solution to prioritizing my life so I can achieve the goals that are in my heart. My deep desire is to live as purposely as I can and not end up at "Oops."

As I thought through why I started this particular blog, it is because these are some of the fundamental aspects of how I think. When you look at my life and my choices, underneath them, most of the time, has been some aspect of this thought process because one of my main beliefs is that we will be accountable for how we steward the number of talents we have been given. So, I often ponder the parable of the talents. They each got a different amount of talents. But the bottom line wasn’t how many talents they had but the attitude of faithfulness towards them. Many times I want to lament about not feeling like I am a 5 talent gal but then I have to shift gears and think about how I am being faithful with what I have been given?

He is not asking me to be what I am not. He is not asking me to do what I cannot. He is asking me to count the cost and be faithful with what I have been given.

Grace and peace,

Wendy

"This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God." 
1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Grace and Peace,

Through a leadership seminar I had the opportunity to hear from Durham’s former Chief-of-Police, Teresa Chambers.  Someone there asked her what was it like to be a female in a predominantly male career and she shared how when she first began her career, she received the best advice: Be the best policewoman you can be.

One of the struggles I believe we have in our culture as women is that we define ourselves by male standards and we want to measure the success of our life by what we do. However, I think the Lord wants us to measure our lives by who we are instead.  Part of who we are as women is our ability to influence and I believe we are especially called to influence through the gift of friendship.

A summary of the 1828 dictionary definition of influence denotes "power whose operation is invisible and known only by its effects, a power whose cause and operation are unseen, or a moral power of truth operation on the mind, rational faculties or will, in persuading or dissuading, as the influence of motives." 

Yet influence is different than power in its expression or outcome. How many times have I compared myself to Billy Graham, yet would I have been satisfied to be the person that shared the Gospel with Billy Graham? Which has done the greater work- Billy Graham or the person who shared with Billy Graham? It’s too easy to misjudge the works of our lives if we judge by what we ourselves accomplish instead of focusing on being who God has fully called us to be.  We can trust that as we show up in faithfulness that we will indeed be amazed at the impact of our lives- not by our own works but by the works that others have done in part because of the openness of our own lives.

Additionally we have friendship, which is the foundation of community. No one wants to be thought of as "a project."  The need to belong is one of the deepest of human needs and yet is regularly assaulted by injustice.  I once had a friend who had lost a baby days before he was due. She shared that in her healing journey of grief, a key moment in that process was when another friend came and wept with her. We need people to weep with us. We need people to laugh with us. We need others to experience life with us to know that we are living and that we will be okay.  Many times injustice will wrap walls around us of isolation. And though we may not be able to or called to bring down cultural walls of injustice, we can be a friend to another. It is the gift of friendship that can open doors of healing that go both ways.