We all have
them. As young people, we cultivate them. With dreams of notoriety, we hear the
“Parable of the Talents” and feel certain we are meant for great things. As we
grow, they are the stuff of broken hearts. Even when we’re perfectly happy with
our lives, there’s that lingering regret that we have left them behind. We were
once so certain they were our purpose, our destiny.
Perhaps you are a musician. Maybe your instrument is hidden away, protected against its
need in the future, but largely forgotten in the present. Perhaps you are an
academic who still gets excited when you see bits of calculus in the real world,
even though you never use it for your work or family. There are athletes out
there too, a championship trophy gathering dust in a basement somewhere. They
sign up for marathons to remember the thrill they get from competition. But
they always find that the time for training isn’t as readily available as they
had imagined. For my sisters, it is dance. They teach when they can, but mostly
they just feel the occasional sense of loss sandwiched in between thoughts of
their to-do lists and actually carrying out the daily tasks. For me, it is
writing.
I love to
write and I’ve spent the years since all notoriety vanished nursing unspoken
hopes. At first there was college. I was able to use my talent and get credit
for it there. It lacked the trophies and praise I was used to, though, and so
it was harder. After graduation, things got even worse. As I supported my
husband through graduate school, I got my fix by writing his papers, keeping
journals and helping friends and family with their work. I wrote beautifully-worded
letters to the youth when I worked with them at church. I took delight in
writing talks for anyone who would let me. When we moved away from family, and
I was home with young children all day, I wrote a book. I just knew I’d find a
publisher and fiction writing would replace the sense of loss I felt as I saw
my talent slipping away from me.
My guilty
little secret, the one that I didn’t share with anyone, was that I did try. I
sent the manuscript to publishers and agents alike only to receive form
rejection letters. They wouldn’t even read it. It tore my heart out. I didn’t
want to let go. I wrote a sequel to my unpublished book. I started on a third.
My inspiration came from the occasional compliments I received. I would get
weeks worth of encouragement from a family member telling me they enjoyed what
I’d written. I kept a blog. A single comment would keep me writing, wishing for
more.
It took time
for that to change. I received my last rejection letter on the day I discovered
I was pregnant with my fourth child. I didn’t have time for it anymore. I didn’t
want the discouragement to interfere with being the mother my children needed.
Don’t
get me wrong. I didn’t give up. I self-published the book with help from a
friend whose great talent is art. I wrote personal statements for my husband
and his friends as they applied to residency. I cherished comments they shared
with me from their interviewers if they touched at all on my writing. But four
children turned into five, six, and, finally, seven.
I don’t blog
much anymore. My third book remains unfinished and my second, unpublished. I do
occasionally have a neighbor or friend say something about my writing and my
heart still leaps as it used to, but even the regret is not what it once was.
This past
week I sent an email to a new friend. A relic from another season of life,
my emails still bear the URL to this forgotten blog in the signature line. She
came over a few days later to tell me how much she enjoyed my writing. It
stirred up familiar feelings and made me reflect on how each of us has a “great,
wasted talent.”
This past
weekend, my babies were sick. I spent an inordinate amount of time holding
them, rocking them, singing to them. I’m not a naturally patient person. I hate
being idle and I’m a lousy singer. But, as I found myself enjoying the things
for which I have no talent, I started to wonder how much of me is really
wasted.
The hands
that could be typing were, instead, rubbing a tiny back and smoothing down crazy
cotton hair that had been rubbed against a pillow until it stood straight up.
The mind that used to dream up new concepts to write was, instead, taking mental
pictures of the children I love so desperately, grasping hold of a moment that
will never come again. The heart that used to yearn to be heard by
strangers, now felt completely content in my own home.
And what of
my talent? Is it truly wasted? Of course not. When the Master in Christ’s tale
returned to see how the talents he had given were invested, he did not go to
his neighbors to ask about whether his servants had made an increase. He went
to the servants themselves. That is because our own abilities are not measured
by how much attention they gain. I realized I was never really looking to
improve myself, but to gain notoriety. It wasn’t the writing itself that I was
seeking, but the praise that came with it.
As I write
this, my sweet little ones are sleeping off the sickness that I had the privilege
of tending. I am writing, because that is something I love to do. But even
though I’ll never be as good at it as I want to be, I love being a mother more.
This blog probably won’t see another post in the next year, but I no longer see
that as a loss. I’m cultivating other talents now.
I think the
young me would see this as a sad tale. But that’s only because she truly did
not understand, as she was making her big plans, the joy that would come from
just being a mom. Heavenly Father led me down this path because he knew much
better than me what it would take to make me happy and that was his plan
all along. I should have known. Parenthood is, after all, what he chose as his great work.
