A Servant's Heart *snarf*

On Saturday night.....

...and oh, could I regale you with stories of WHY this occurred to me on Saturday night....

...it came to my awareness that my family thinks very highly of my spiritual gifting of Service.

(Stop laughing Joyce)

See, I've read the books. I've taken the tests. I've mentioned this before. My spiritual gifting is Prophecy/Mercy. Which means I am, not bi-polar....more....split-personality. I make instant, accurate, judgements about people and an instant and a half later find their excuse for their dreadful behavior.

It makes me a really crummy friend to have because I can almost always find an excuse for the person who treated you poorly, even while being furious on your behalf, I'm making excuses for the jerks in your life.

(Right, Wendi? Mandi? Can I get an Amen? Thought so.)

I can't help it. God made me this way. I don't know WHY, but I know it to be true. Sadly, Mercy always, ALWAYS wins. Which means I go through life angry at jerks and being forced to excuse their behavior, anyway. And getting on the wrong side of my friends' woes when I'd rather lend an enraged listening ear.

Guess what? Prophecy and Mercy are spiritual gifts that cancel each other out on most tests. Which is why, for years, service kept rising to the top on those simplified tests.

(Stop laughing Brent. And Brent's mom.)

I KNOW. It's utterly laughable. I am SO very not a servant. Prophecy: 49.4% Mercy: 49.5% Service: 0.1% (WHY can't I make this math work?) My house isn't the place you come to relax. You are welcome to my chaos, but don't expect to be served, and for the love, don't expect it to be clean. If you are hungry, find some food and eat it. But after I've done the dishes for the night, do NOT ask me to feed you. And have a little respect and put your dish at least near the sink.

So you would think that after fifteen, eleven, ten, eight, and/or four years, my family would have caught on to the fact that I am no servant. Not a service bone in this body. Judgy, yes. Merciful, yes. Servant, unequivocally, no.

So I'm going to consider it an HONOR, that my family considers me to have the spiritual gift of service so strongly that I would WANT to do two hours worth of kitchen weekend restoration before cooking for the next day's potluck, so that I can do THOSE dishes, and rather than sit on the couch with the rest of those slackers, I would be excited to prepare for them Second Supper just as their movie is ending.

It means I've come a LONG way, baby.

In their defense, they did offer to wait the movie for me and I did tell them no, because, they would, in fact, still be waiting, now, three days later.

It's a dreadful curse, this mercy. And an amazing gift.