I have recently become aware of the gift that eyesight really is.  To see the world in color, clarity with all its texture, shape and complexity, sight is a great privilege to those who are able to use it.  I empathize with those who struggle with failing eyesight, or who have never been able to see the world yet am amazed at how their depth of insight into other areas of life often surpasses those who have sight.

Musician Ginny Owens is a good example.  By the age of three a degenerative eye disease quickly limited her eyesight until she was completely blind.  This set back in her communication with the world did not deter Ginny from expressing herself.  Ginny discovered music as a means to communicate her emotion and talent.  Music became her “journal” as she made observations and her unique perspectives on life. 

As Ginny grew up, she chose to attend Belmont University in Nashville TN and received a bachelor’s degree majoring in music.  She solicited her talents shortly thereafter as a music teacher.  Many people became skeptical of hiring a blind music teacher.  Ginny quickly ran into several perceived obstacles on the road to her dream of teaching other people how to have a heart and passion for music.

 It was through this struggle that Ginny accepted her reality and found other ways to teach others music.  Ginny quickly found a calling as a musical artist and was signed to a record company.  Since then, she has sold nearly one million records and performed over 1500 shows presenting her talent and gift for music to the world. 

Ginny does not let fame prevent her from touching hearts and lives of people through other means.  She started her own charity called Fingerprint initiative.  This organizations partners with non for profit organizations such as Compassion International, International Justice Mission, and Habitat for Humanity to help the less fortunate of the world have a voice through social justice initiatives.

She has since encountered several other challenges and has chosen to rise above them.  Her mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 while choosing to become an independent artist.  It was through these struggles that Ginny decided to teach middle school students music in New York while also choosing to take a sabbatical from her music career to be present with her mom during her cancer treatments.

Ginny’s mom is now cancer free and believes “God intends for each of our lives to be filled with meaning and purpose, and my desire is to communicate that through the lyrics I write, the music I sing, and the life I live.”

It is easy to see the dark spot on the white page and focus on that dark spot.  For Ginny, she chose to see the white on the page and used the dark spot to highlight the white.  What dark spots in our lives are causing us to only see black?  How can we use the dark spots in our lives to magnify the white?

(image taken from www.brianmason.com) 

Recently I was encouraged to read Let your Life Speak a title from Parker Palmer.  What struck me immediately about this book, as do many books I read is the title.  Allowing our lives to speak as a book for others to read on a daily basis occurs through our actions, our thoughts and our visions that we portray onto the world.  What is presupposed by letting our life speak is that we are breathing out a life that has desires, talents, gifts that have been instilled within us to discover with all the adventure, struggles, failures and victories that are associated with that discovery.  Take the story behind the creation of WD40 ™  for instance. Now a household name for its performance in lubricating and enhancing the performance of simple machines, WD 40 ™ came out of a time of fierce competition and struggle.   
In 1953, during an age where space exploration was expanding, several chemical companies were called upon to come up for fluids that could perform at high altitudes and under extreme conditions.  The first applications of these fluids would be used to prevent corrosion on rockets that were tested in under desert hot and arctic cold air.  Under the leadership of Norm Larson,  the 3 man Rocket Company in San Diego California was determined  that they could make a water displacing fluid that could be used to repel water and prevent corrosion.  After 40 attempts to make what they felt was possible to make, the 3 man Rocket Company was satisfied with their discovery.  When the applications of this displacing fluid were found to be effective for personal use within the company,  Norm Larsen decided to experiment with putting WD 40 ™ in aerosol cans. In 1958 WD 40 ™ hit store shelves and has since been known to be part of 4 out of 5 households in America with 2000 + uses that people have tried over the years. 

Now did the 3 Man Rocket Company know that all these applications were possible for  their product when they designed it? Of course not, yet they knew over time that what they had developed had many more uses than just what they had originally discovered about their product.  The same is with our lives, when we come out of the womb, nobody knows right off the bat that this child is capable of becoming a lawyer, a firefighter, a talented musician yet they are encouraged to discover these and apply them in their life. 

In one of Palmer’s other books, To Know as We are Known, Palmer identifies that the root of the word education is to “draw out.”  This suggests that any knowledge we do acquire is something that is already innately there, it is just waiting for discovery.  What a tragedy when an individual or a group feels that they have to live a life that was not designed for themselves.  When the 3 Man Rocket Company was developing their product, they may have encountered the “well, you’ve tried 20 times to develop your product, don’t you think it is good enough,  I mean, it helps protect corrosion right?”  Or they may have encountered, “what?  Use WD 40 ™ for household use?  That is not what WD40 ™ is for, it is for rockets and rockets only!”  Now don’t get me wrong, knowing anything about oneself, there is a light side to a use of a product, skill or ability and there is a shadow side.  Anyone who is deemed as generous, or as courageous, or is talented in music can attest to the fact that there is a pride that can overshadow the innate gifts and talents of the design of the gift or talent.  Those who are generous may be unaware that they are unintentionally feeding an addiction, or those who are deemed as talented in music may be unaware that they are hurting their family when they choose to hone their skills way more than building relationships. 

WD 40 ™ is not a miracle product either and has limits in its application.  Because we are human we must come to terms with the fact that we do have limits.  That is why, getting to know the inner self (as it was designed to be) helps to develop the outer application of those innate jewels that can be used for the good of the world.  That is why it is so important to live out the unique life that you were intended to live and not merely imitate the life of another.  If we imitate, we fail to live out the purpose that was intended for us in the first place and we fail to live out the adventure of trial and error to find out where our lives shine.  

It would seems that life would be much easier if we knew the “instructions” to how our life works and what we are good at and what we are not good at in the first place.  Using an efficient way to view the world this would be true; however,  there is a Divine mystery that surrounds life itself, a mystery that causes us to trust in the author of life more than we trust in the gift itself.  It mirrors the fact that the road to the destination is often more beneficial than the destination itself. As with any story, merely reading the first chapter and last chapter, you miss the relational familiarity and growth of the characters that are introduced in the first chapter.   Similarly, when people choose to  use WD40 ™  for uses other than a rocket ship, they trust the company who designed it knowing that it can be used for household use.   They trust the story that the inventors of WD 40 ™  has merit because they lived a life of perseverance and courage to break through their obstacles to discover the truths that surrounded their product.  At the same time, the company who designed it leaves room for creativity and innovation to flourish with the individual consumers knowing that their product is not a mere puppet of a one track application, but that it mirrors the character of the ones who invented it in the first place.   We too can trust that our lives our meant for so much more than a “one time application” of our victories, failures, and talents of this world, but is a preparation for an abundant life with many limitless possibilities still to come.  How are you discovering your unique potential today?