Channeling Warren Buffet…sort of.

I was telling a friend about watching Warren Buffet on the Today Show. I wanted to purchase his new book so I could become rich like Mr. Buffet. My friend looked at me, shook his head and told me, “Warren Buffet’s gifts are not yours.” Even though I knew he was right, I gave my friend a blank stare. Buffet enjoys and looks forward to waking up each day to check the stock market. He loves the challenge of the numbers more than the money it makes him. My eyes cross at the thought of numbers. My friend answered my blank stare by telling me that God has a huge room with a stack of gifts with my name on it.  He is just waiting for me to claim them, and the funny thing is nobody else can claim theses gifts but me because they are mine. I want to know where this gift room is located and why doesn’t God help me find it?

Gifts? What gifts?

This was not the first time I’ve heard a story about a room filled with boxes of unopened gifts. The story is about a person who enters heaven only to see all the gifts she didn’t open while she was alive. I never want that to be my story. I have always been taught to exploit all my gifts. Yet, I was starting to think I had some unopened boxes. I was feeling like I was falling short. I was falling short because I did not have Warren Buffet’s disposable income. I was falling short because I was not all I should be. I was falling short because I should have more by now. Surely, if I had opened all my boxes I would not feel lack or feel incomplete.

When visiting my cousin Audrey, I told her about my gift room dilemma. She told me, if I tapped into God the way I was trying to tap into Warren Buffet, I would find my room of abundance which holds my gifts. She told me if I seek God the way I search for the other stuff I will find my gifts. I have to put in the work.  I have to make sure I am not subconsciously putting myself on punishment. Her last comment stopped me. How was I putting myself on punishment? Did I secretly think I wasn’t worthy of receiving what I wanted? Had I become comfortable with struggle? I cannot think of a time when God did not bless me, so why did I think he was playing hide and seek with my gifts?

Tackling those unopened gift boxes.

After the Warren Buffet discussion my buddy told me to create a vision on the wall as a reminder of what I want. It reminded me of my friend Liani and her prayer wall that she touches daily to ensure her prayers for others are answered. My gifts are like her prayers. The gifts God bestows upon me are gifts to share with others to bring greater wealth to the human family not to just me. I was confusing my gifts with tangible items. It occurred to me that my ego got caught up in the ribbon on the box. In order for the ribbon to become untangled I had to let go of my ego.  My ego is concerned with what I look like, what I have and what I have accomplished.  It has nothing to do with my gifts from God. If wealth is the measure of our gifts, there are a lot of gift-less people on Earth. If wealth is the sign of a person who has found the gift room, all wealthy people would feel complete and happy. They are not.

I am afraid of coming to the end of life’s journey and finding a room full of unpacked gifts. This would mean I left things undone. I don’t want to enter that room and see a box left unopened because I was too scared to try something new. I don’t want to see a plethora of boxes with my name on it that I did not have the faith to open. I don’t want to see a familiar box that I didn’t open because I thought it belonged to someone else. I am thinking of one my favorite spirituals which asks, “did you help someone along the way?” That is the gift wisely used. At the end of this journey, I want to know I had the courage to claim and to open my gifts, so that my living was not in vain.