Jack of all Trades, Master of none

I’ve had the opportunity to do many different things over the last week.  Not having a job to be at first thing in the morning has given me the chance to explore some new occupations.  Of course there has been the continued project of cleaning and organizing, preparing for THE BIG MOVE.  I spent an hour sorting socks!!!  Let’s just say after discarding all the black socks that looked dark blue and the white socks that looked gray I’ve “cut back” to 20 pairs of black socks and 20 pairs of white socks.  I kept all of the novelty socks; really can you have too many pairs of multi-colored socks adorned with the smiling faces of cartoon animals? 

 

In addition to purging my sock drawer and other household chores I kept stats at a basketball game, a much more intense job than I ever expected.  Who would’ve thought counting points by twos, marking down fouls, starting and stopping a clock and running a scoreboard could be so involved.  I was thrilled to be able to assist a couple awesome coaches as they focused on leading my Panthers (I’m the girls’ volleyball coach) in their first Basketball game of the season.  It was a tough game to watch, especially marking down the other team’s fouls, but I was thankful to be there helping out.

 

Another project I undertook this week was baking 6 dozen cookies.  Now this may not seem like a Blog-worthy event for all of you amazing bakers out there, but if you know me at all you understand this is epic.   I am a terrible baker.  I have this awful habit of disobeying recipes.  In cooking there is room for creativity, a little extra hot sauce here, a little less broccoli there.   .   .but in baking there are rules that must be followed with fear and trepidation.   At cookie exchange time I buckled down prepared  to cast aside any whims of fancy and do precisely what the recipe said to do when the recipe said to do it!   And by golly it worked!!!  I made six dozen (plus two for tastingJ) delicious cookies and packaged them with a decorative recipe cards.  Now the cookie exchange never happened because of a rowdy snow storm, but I was ready!!

 

The cookies made their way to Cornerstone Manor, a women’s and children’s shelter in downtown Buffalo.  My church does a service there once a month and we provide a snack along with that.  It was good to see my plans for cookies to trade at a party changed into God’s plans to send an extra treat to those ladies and children.  We did a special service for them with Christmas carols, a wonderful craft and the story of Christ coming to save His people. 

 

It has already been so incredible to take a step back from the weariness of the same old, same old and start again to consider “What am I supposed to be doing?”  One thing that has been made perfectly clear to me is that I am what my mom calls “A jack of all trades, master of none”  there are a lot of things that I am fairly good at, but nothing that stands out and shouts “YOU’RE AWESOME AT THIS AND SHOULD DO IT FOREVER!!!”  For me that is a wonderful discovery because in reinforces in my mind that whatever I do next cannot be stagnant.  I cannot dive into another job where I will do the same thing day in and day out.  I love variety.  I love moving from one task to another.  I love wearing different hats, a coach one day, a baker the next, a storyteller, a musician, a janitor, a clown, a counselor.  .  . I love days when the possibilities are endless.  While I struggle still with letting go of my plans, I love that the Lord’s plans are better than what I have for myself.  Whatever lies on the road ahead I am excited to learn more and more how I can best use the talents I’ve been given to glorify the Lord and enjoy Him forever because that is my chief end.