Three Questions to Tap Into Your Hidden Strengths

by Irini Fambro

Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom, and Propel Sophia seeks out the voices of truly wise women and asks them to share worked examples of how they express faith in daily life. Pull up a chair at Sophia’s table, won’t you? There’s plenty of space. Learn more here.

I didn’t expect to cry reading a Dr. Seuss book. I’m pretty sure that was not the author’s intended reaction to Oh the Places You’ll Go. Yet, there I was reading to my newborn son about the waiting room,

for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Enter tears. I was waiting for my “Yes” and hurt by all the “Nos.” The waiting room felt like being in a holding pattern, endlessly circling your destination until an opportunity to land presented itself. Two kids and two degrees later, I was circling with no place in sight to land. My degrees were in Business Administration and a Masters of Divinity, ministry was my landing pad. I decided to keep myself occupied until my opportunity appeared; I would teach aerobics. Strange I know, just hang in there with me. In my mind this challenge would keep me busy while I waited for my kids to get a little older and the rhythm of my family could handle me pursuing my dreams.

I was an aerobics instructor for SEVEN years.

For seven years I got up on a 10-inch stage and taught everything from total body conditioning to weight lifting to kickboxing classes. I felt unseen, undervalued, and rejected from my destiny. Seven years of wondering, “What am I doing? This job is boring. It isn’t my landing pad. How many times must I circle? Surely I am wasting my time here.”

But was I?

After seven years my name was called in the waiting room for an unforeseen opportunity to revive a dead dream, my PhD. As I stood in the group fitness room one last time, the Holy Spirit showed me what He had been doing all along.  While I’d thought I was just passing the time, God showed me I’d been honing my craft on a 10-inch stage for all those years, gaining unforeseen strengths and skill-sets. I’d grown in competency in:

Organization
Planning
Relational Skills
Emotional Awareness
Time Management
Conflict Resolution
Adaptability/Flexibility
Communication

Communication was what I loved…teach, preach, you name it, but I only saw that it could develop in one narrow environment. It wasn’t where I thought it would happen, it wasn’t when I thought it would happen, and it definitely wasn’t how I thought it would happen, but it happened nonetheless…and on a 10-inch group fitness stage of all places.

Maybe you find yourself in a job you don’t like or waiting season that won’t expire. In hindsight, I wish I had asked myself these questions to help me process better in the middle of my waiting room experience:

1. What skills am I gaining formally?

There are formal positions that I held, but never took the time to articulate the competencies that I was gaining. My silence fed my feelings of being undervalued and rejected. By taking the time to list the skills I was gaining, I could have celebrated those while still setting my intentions on competencies I still needed to develop.

2. What skills am I gaining informally?

With my eyes on only one type of environment to grow in, I was missing the opportunity to intentionally join what God was doing in me as an aerobics instructor, a mom, a wife, a daughter, and a friend. I believed my informal positions were diminished, so I felt diminished. Western culture celebrates competencies gained from formal means, but Jesus’ culture also valued competencies gained from experience.

3. What people and situations  am I resistant to learn from?

As I reflect on this season, I realized there were obvious sources and environments I was open to learning from, and others  I was not and quickly dismissed.. Looking back I can see that my resistance revealed places of silenced pain and offense. To make the most of any season means choosing to be open to learning from different influences.

In I Corinthians 4:7 Paul helped the church at Corinth understand that everything they had gained was because they received it, not because they created it, conjured it, or were the source of their gain. This was important for the Corinthians to understand because the Greco-Roman cultured highly valued gaining intellectual advancement. Paul described a counter-cultural idea that God—and not striving—would source them. Everything I have, everything you have, is because we received it from God. In every season, God sets before us gifts, anointings, and competencies through formal and informal opportunities, the question is whether we’ll recognize them and make the most of them? I am thankful for that 10-inch stage that was unknowingly the answer to prayers that I had prayed and ushered in so many unforeseen competencies.

Irini Fambro

Irini Fambro is a wife and mother, teacher and student, speaker and listener. She and her high school love, Kenneth, have two children: Kalila and Kenneth. She is an ordained minister that has her Masters of Divinity from Beeson Divinity School and just recently finished her PhD in Organizational Leadership from Regent University.  

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