This week is Part Four of our series on raising up your kids to Excel in their Gifts. Check out Part One, Part Two, and Part Three if you haven’t!
Remember, the purpose here is to partner together in having consistent messages with students from both school and home. These points are the same as those we’ve been through in chapel, so if you talk these through, they should be review for your kids!
This week we’re covering three tips. They are simple, but they are vital for students to understand what excelling in gifts looks like in the context of Christian community.
Tip #4: Don’t be embarrassed about your gifts.
In I Corinthians 12, Paul writes:
The body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
What Paul is getting at here is our propensity to look down on what we have been given. Or to be shy about it. Or to think what we are gifted in is not that great. Our kids do this all the time, and so do we.
When I was a kid I loved art, and I loved photography. But from a very young age, I was also embarrassed about these interests because I am quite colorblind. When I took art in school I would constantly ask my friends what color paint and pencils and markers were. Teachers would correct me, and I would go back and fix things. Eventually I just sort of gave up on that passion.
But, years later, as an adult, I met Ann Kram, a brilliant art teacher at a school I taught at. I told her over lunch one day that I never really got into art, even though I love it, because of my colorblindness.
“Oh no, Joe,” she said. “One of my favorite art students was colorblind. I just told him to paint what he saw, and the stuff he came up with was incredible!” 
Isn't it funny how paradigm shifts birth a barrage of inner dialogue?
Why on earth did I care so much about how exactly the colors turned out? Who was I making art for, anyway? Why wasn’t I seeing my abilities as a gift this whole time? Why was I letting others’ critique be the sum of my view of myself? Oh my goodness, I’ve been missing out on art!
Do your kids – the incredible creations that God has made them to be – look at their gifts and say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong?”
My guess is that 50% of our current Middle Schoolers have this sentiment about themselves. Don’t let your kids be one of them. Help them resist the lie that they are not filled with incredible gifts and skills and abilities from the Father.
Tip #5: Don’t look down on the gifts of others.
Paul goes on in chapter 12:
If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
In Middle School, adjusting to “diversity in giftedness” can be brutal. If you are gifted in some things you are “weird” or “a dork” or you don’t really fit in. I really liked gardening and theater and poetry when I was a middle and high schooler. Sometimes that didn’t go so well.
When you see your kids start to belittle the gifts of others, jump on it. As adults we have the unique perspective of having seen many of our “weird” peers grow up to be absolutely brilliant in their future careers. We have also seen many of our “with it” friends unravel. Our kids need that perspective. They need to understand that “being cool” is chaff in the wind. Whenever we hear our kids belittling the flaws of others, let’s direct them to finding the strengths.
Tip #6: Don’t be jealous of others’ gifts; honor them.
Paul continues:
But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Many years ago I had a parent come into my office quite upset about our academic awards assemblies. You see, one of her kids, among several others, hadn’t received an award. This made for hurt feelings that she was struggling to parent through. The proposed solution was to either award every student with some kind of an award or to not have an awards ceremony. Either of these options seemed to her much more biblical than what we were currently doing.
I don’t agree, and part of that is because of Paul’s line above: “If one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
When we see our gifts as gifts, it shouldn’t be too difficult to say to someone, “Wow, you have a gift from God and you use it well!” It’s worth celebrating and encouraging and applauding. And someday you, too will be celebrated as you use your gifts well. It might just be a different time and a different context. But regardless, we celebrate because our gifts are the result of God’s goodness.
As our kids struggle with jealousy and self-doubt – which is inevitable – our default sometimes can be to insulate them from not feeling those feelings when instead we should be encouraging them to stand up, have confidence, and rightfully celebrate the gifts of others – and to continue to excel in theirs!
—J.T.
