It’s hard to admit that you’re good at things. It feels like bragging. My experience in pastoring and counseling, in fact, has shown me that people are far better at listing their weaknesses than their strengths. But everybody is good at something. Here are some things I am good at. By the way, you might try this someday, and if you do it, I dare you to write your list without qualification. Don’t discuss it. Just make a list. Here is mine, in no particular order, or level of “good”-ness.
1. Coming up with lists of things I’m bad at
2. Writing
3. Playing guitar
4. Knowing what to do in complex relationship situations
5. I’m a good father
6. I’m a good husband
7. Fixing computers
8. Conversations about deep things
9. Making gourmet coffee drinks
10. Writing backwards in cursive
Here you go. You weren't just going to take my word for it, were you?
11. Pig-Latin and ubby-dubby
12. Counseling
13. Teaching
14. Staying up late
15. Memorizing things
16. Making jokes with a completely straight face so people think I’m serious at first
17. Making my family laugh
18. Encouraging people
19. Shooting clay pigeons
20. Ping pong
21. Typing
22. Songwriting
23. Bass guitar
24. Piano
25. Drums
26. Making spaghetti
27. Telling jokes
28. Thinking through details and making a plan
29. Managing our money
30. Learning
31. Listening
32. Leading
33. Singing
34. Shaving my head
35. Making Christy happy
36. Preaching
37. Introspection
38. Saying “I’m sorry”
39. Backing my cars out of extremely tight places
40. Learning from my mistakes
41. Making pizza
42. Steadily improving myself
43. Serving other people
44. Making complex things easy to understand (comparisons and analogies)
45. Verbalizing my feelings
46. Appreciating the meaning in small moments
47. Encouraging, developing, and guiding my children
48. Being content with what I have materially
49. Figuring out how to use technology
50. Recalling the words to nearly every song I’ve ever heard, along with artist name, and year of release, plus or minus a couple years
51. Bringing out good things in others
52. Getting sentimental
53. Doing more than is required
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Many of these things have been true about you for a long, long time and most likely are the basis for the others. (not sure what to say about the backwards cursive but I bet you could do it way back then too! Also, how does one figure out he can do such a thing?) I’m glad you know your list!
Learned how to do backwards cursive in college. Had been doing backwards printing since grade school so I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to learn cursive. It wasn’t. I was challenged to learn it when I heard that Leonardo DiVinci used to write his notes this way so that other people couldn’t rip off his ideas.
I’m glad you are good at these things. I found your blog by googling “struggling with faith”. I have been making it through days and nights by reading your posts and your FB page. I’m struggling and it is not easy, but thank you for blogging. Thank you also for your suggested books on faith. I’m excited to choose one and start reading.
I’m glad you got to my blog! Spend as much time here as you like, and I’ll keep the posts coming!
I’m quite impressed by #10.
Not sure why it never occurred to me to put up a picture before,but there’s one up there now. Link to larger version is http://thefallencleric.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/backwardscursive.jpeg.