Count Your Blessings #75 – Extraordinary Experience

How do you view the experiences of your life – do you think of them as extraordinary, ordinary, or plain dull.

I’ve always regarded myself as quite ordinary. I was born, I went to school, I got a job, I got married, I had children, I get older. Nothing too extraordinary there.

Recently I have found myself in situations where someone has been describing something wonderful that they have just discovered. I have been polite, I have smiled and listened, but inside I have been thinking something quite different. Inside I have been saying to myself that this wonderful thing that they have discovered is obvious.

Other person: “Graham did you know that (insert something interesting)”

Me (outside appearance): Smiling and listening politely.

Me (inside): “Well obviously”

Is this because I tend to interact with people who are a little slow on the uptake? On the contrary I talk to all sorts of interesting intelligent people, people who amaze me most of the time.

Why are these things obvious to me then and not to them? Because my experience has been extraordinary. There is no-one in the world who has had the same set of experiences that I have, not one. There is no-one in this world who has seen what I have seen, not one. There is no-one in this world who has thought about a situation or an experience in the same way as I have, not one. My experience is extraordinary.

Each individual experience might occur millions of times throughout the planet, but no-one has had the same set of experiences as I have.

Every one of these experiences has contributed to who I am. These experiences make me unique.

Your experiences make you unique too.

That uniqueness means that we should look at ourselves with a sense of wonder. That uniqueness means that we should look at each other with a sense of wonder. Things that are unique are special.

I have recently been re-reading a book called The Grace Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll. Today I read these words:

“Variety honours God, predictability and mediocrity bores Him. And if there is proof that He differences, take look down the long of fame in church history.”

and

“He [God] wants each one of us to be unique…an individual blend and expression unlike any other person. That is by His design. There is only one you. There is only one me.

Uniqueness is good. Uniqueness is wonderful. Uniqueness is a blessing.

I suffer with a problem that I think many people suffer with – comparison. I compare myself with others. Is my career going as well as theirs? Do I have this thing that they have got? Am I as fit as they are? These comparisons traps me into a desire to be just like someone else and detracts from my uniqueness. It’s a trap, a snare. My uniqueness makes me special, I don’t need to be like anyone else.

I need to learn that I am unique and that my uniqueness is a blessing – I suspect I’m not the only one.