Living in your sweet spot

In my women's bible study, I'm in a class based on a book called S.H.A.P.E. by Erik Rees. It's about discovering your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences; putting them into a put and mixing them around to come up with your "shape;" then using that shape to fulfill your Kingdom Purpose. I missed the first maybe 8 week sof the study due to my hospitalization then time in partial, but I've been back for a couple or three weeks now. Today, we talked about the movie Chariots of Fire (while I am not old enough to remember this movie, clips of it were shown at various presentations throughout my 4 years at a Christian college). We talked about the statement that Eric Liddell makes- "God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure." Pastor Betsy asked us how we would fill in those blanks. I said, "God made me see the world uniquely, and when I write, I feel His pleasure." What I really meant is that God made me with autism, but I was too shy to say that in front of a room full of people, so I more carefully worded it. My point remained, however. As we were talking about this concept, this statement, one of the things Betsy brought up from the book was the concept of a sweet spot. In case you don't know, a sweet spot is the spot on a bat or racquet where, when the ball makes contact, it goes the maximum distance with the minimum amount of effort. Applied to our lives, the sweet spot is then the place we fit in where we get the maximum effectiveness with the minimum amount of effort. Make sense? Well, this is where things begin to get sticky, and I begin to get stuck. I'm not sure what my sweet spot is outside of my typing. As I see it, I make the greatest amount of impact through my blog, message boards, emails, and they require little to no effort. But is that... real, I guess? I know it's not right for me to compare myself to other people. That's a very dangerous game. I suppose the more helpful way to think of it is that there was a hole in the autism community that my blog and book and writing was able to fill. It made me think that I could live in my sweet spot more often. Why do I force words out when if I just waited until I got home, I could type them? If I get SSI (hearing June 17th, in case you were wondering) my big purchase with the back pay will be an iPad or iPod touch (haven't decided which yet, leaning toward the iPad though) so that I have portable typing if needed. I mean, yeah, a lot of times I'm able to force through it and talk, but why? It's really uncomfortable. Sometimes it even makes me sick. I do it to seem more normal, I suppose, but is that really the goal? And at what cost? And what about cats? I love cats. Okay, so I can't really be more involved with cats than I already am, but they sure are part of my sweet spot. Can I say it again? I do love cats. And my dolls! Oh, do I ever love to sew for them. If I thought anyone cared, I would post pictures of them in some of their outfits that I've made, but I don't think anyone will be interested so I haven't so far. I get so much enjoyment out of my 3 dolls and their clothes and their accessories. I have babysitting money to spend on new things to sew this weekend, and I can't wait! The most recent addition to Lissie and Zoey's wardrobe is jeans... Lissie's came out more like jeggings or skinny jeans, so I made Zoey's bigger and they fit well. So do Lissie's, I guess, once they're on... which isn't an easy task. I could continue, but instead I'll encourage you to think about your sweet spot. You were created with specific gifts, talents, and passions. How can you best use them?