Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”.
I honestly believe I owe all of my personal success and healing to living this philosophy. At my core, I believe life on this earth is truly about helping and serving others. I also believe that we are all blessed with gifts to be able to do just that. I was blessed with the gift of empathy, helping, and teaching.
I’ve been a helper and teacher my whole life. At an early age I was teaching and caring for 3 younger sisters. After college, I became a classroom teacher. I then continued to serve in my role as school counselor. Later, I went on to serve as a high school principal and eventually district leadership serving and teaching adults. I always felt like my career was more than a job; it was my calling. I tried to be a servant leader and poured my whole heart into every position. As a high school principal, I served my school, my community, my staff and my students with everything I had. It was the most exhausting yet rewarding position I ever held. When Larry and Landon died, that service came full circle. My students, staff and community began to help, support, and serve me in a way I never could have imagined. They literally wrapped their arms around me and held me through my darkest days. It was truly a beautiful picture of God’s love.
My greatest healing has come through service of others. When we take the focus off of ourselves we began to see our place in this world. In serving others, we can reframe our own circumstances and begin to put our own lives in perspective.
Whether teaching kids or adults, I’ve been blessed to be able to use my gifts, my calling, to serve others. When our gifts, our passion, our service come together it’s a perfect beautiful picture of love.
I’m now getting ready to retire from 27 years of public education. I have dreams of Carribean life, diving, and watching beautiful sunsets from the front of a boat or with my toes in the sand. I have books to write, stories to tell and more people to help. Maybe, I even have some children to teach to scuba dive. I’m not sure what it all looks like, but I don’t think God is through with me yet.
How are you serving others? What is your calling? What gifts have you been blessed with? It’s not too late to change your life by losing yourself in the service of others.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Matthew 25:42-45
Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed…. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good…. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
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