Am I the only one who has trouble embracing their strengths as well as their weaknesses?

It sounds weird to say, because why wouldn’t you want to embrace the things that you are good at? Perhaps if your strength is something that is seen as odd to be good at, you might hesitate to embrace it. My strengths that make me shudder are organization and punctuality. I am freakishly organized with my reminder and to-do lists and with preparing things the night before. However, when I read mom blogs and stories, the picture of a mom with young children that emerges is a frazzled mom who is always late, doesn’t know where the kids’ shoes are, and has a pile of messy dishes in the sink. I can give into comparing myself instead of owning what God has given me and using it to for his glory. I am not saying that I am the picture of grace and beauty, but I am the mom who is usually on time and has a clean house most of the time because I spend my free time cleaning.

I cannot relax if the house is messy. Sometimes I can give into comparing myself instead of owning what God has given me and using it for his glory. When people comment on these things, I feel like it’s a bad thing that I am so organized and have my reminder grocery list on my phone. I actually feel like I need to be late sometimes and not wipe down the counters before friends come over. What I have come to realize is that God created me with the strengths of punctuality and organization. These were given to me for a reason because we all know that God does not make mistakes.

Since God gave me these strengths, I am going to use them to the best of my ability and to glorify God with them. It is important that I not deny these. My goal is to discover how I can best serve the Lord with them.

I also learned that I should not expect everyone to have these gifts. Some might struggle to keep their life organized and may find it challenging to be punctual. It’s important that I look to find the gifts that these women were given, so that I can delight in how they are loving and serving the Lord.

If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else (Gal 6:3-4).