Legacies Are Built On The Gifts We Already Have

​Maybe it started when I was a kid. I made a list of everything I wanted for Christmas. Some of those gifts showed up under the tree, some didn’t. But because there was a list—an inventory of sorts—I was acutely aware of what was missing.

I don’t remember throwing any ungrateful tantrums. Although I was a kid, so it’s possible. But to this day, decades later, I can still remember certain gifts I asked for but never received.

If we’re not careful, we can develop the same way of thinking when it comes to the gifts inside us. The gifts we’ve been given to become who we were fully made to become. The gifts we’ve been given to fully contribute to the world all we are capable of contributing.

Yet, instead of using the gifts we have, we focus on the ones we think we lack. The ones we believe we need before we can begin. The ones we think would change everything if only we had them.

But what if the real tragedy isn’t missing gifts—it's missing the value in the ones we already have?

A speaker I heard this week said this: our capacity to inspire begins when our passions meet our gifts. But research tells us that we spend more time addressing our weaknesses than building on our strengths. We focus on fixing what we think is broken about us instead of building on the parts of us that work best.

Here’s something worth considering—legacies aren’t built by fixing weaknesses. Legacies are built at the intersection of our gifts and passion. If you think of someone who's made a difference in your life, chances are it came on the other end of them being passionate enough about some gift they had that they ended up being a gift to you.

I lived this truth for years. I always wanted to write. Sometimes I was fully aware of that, sometimes it felt like a writer was just renting an apartment inside me. But one way or another, writing was always whispering to me.

Still, I never wrote. I told myself I’d love to be a writer, but since I didn’t have a job that made me a writer, I figured it just wasn’t an option. I was waiting on the right circumstances.

The gift of time.

The gift of a writing job.

The gift of validation.

Then Elliott was born. His rough start in life meant a week in the NICU, and I began writing hospital updates for friends and family. When he got better, I stopped writing. But then something surprising happened. People reached out and said they missed my updates. They missed my writing.

So, I kept writing. And one way or another, I’ve been writing ever since.

That moment taught me something that has shaped my entire life. God wasn’t waiting to hand me the missing gifts I thought I needed. He was waiting for me to wake up the ones I already had.

And I wonder—how many of us have ‘if only’ gifts inside us? Gifts we’d use if only the right circumstances came along. If only we had more time. If only we had more support. If only we had the right audience, the right opportunity, the right moment.

But legacy? Legacy pushes us to create circumstances to share our gifts instead of waiting on the gift of circumstances to invite us into sharing them.

Because when we do that—when we use what we’ve been given instead of longing for what we haven’t—something powerful happens. We don’t just find purpose. We begin to shape legacy.

We often remember people not because they worked hard to compensate for their weaknesses but because they were wise enough to lean fully into their strengths. (Even as I AM a giant fan of resilience). They gave the world something no one else could because their passion and their gifts met, and something lasting was created in that space.

How many people die with gifts that fell asleep and never woke up? Gifts that might have lived on long after they were gone?

Don’t let your gifts fall asleep waiting on the right conditions. Make a list—not of the gifts you wish you had, but of the ones already inside you. And then give yourself and the world the best gift of all.

Start using them.

Your legacy is waiting at the intersection of your gifts and passion.

Your gifts are waiting for their wake-up call.