What the fudge?: What I Care Most About When I Meet People

It's what's inside what I want to discover

This past weekend, I went to a Called and Gifted Workshop at my church St. Andrew the Apostle and I found out some things about me I didn’t know before.  The point of the workshop was to help us discover our natural charisms, or gifts of the Holy Spirit, that is given to us naturally by our Baptism.  We took a 100-plus question inventory to see which of the gifts apply in our lives, then they had us rank our top five or six.  Here are mine:

My top five charisms are:

Encouragement
Faith
Intercessory Prayer
Pastoring
Writing

    I also have hints of Leadership, Giving, and Discernment of Spirits, which is also described as the ability to feel that there is a good or bad spirit in a surrounding area by mere presence of a person or place. 

    Some things didn’t surprise me (like the charism of writing), but other things were encouraging to see there were already definitions for things I feel is in me naturally.  For example, Encouragement.  The definition of Encouragers are people who see the potential in others and desire to extract that out of them.  It’s the reason why when I making small talk with compete strangers, one of the early questions I’ll ask is “So, tell me, what are you passionate about?”  Hearing what someone does for a living bores me unless it is truly what they care most about.  I want to hear what makes people burn, what makes them come alive.

    I one time asked someone this question, and he blew me away with the funniest thing.

    “My passion?” he said. “Oh, that would have to be fudge.”
    “Wait, what?” I said, perplexed.
    “Yeah, fudge.  I love making fudge.” 

    And he then told me all about his side business of making fudge, the process, and when he makes it for individual people he often offers up their prayer intentions because the actual making of it hurts his back, so he offers his pain for the sake of his customers.  What?  I was completely fascinated.

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    On this Web site, I often talk about sexual virtue and especially how to be free from porn addiction.  I participate in two different purity accountability groups for men and do a lot of one-on-ones not only because I care about getting guys off this addiction, but mostly because I see pornography as the biggest distraction and impediment for men to fully discover what he is truly capable of. 

    It is impossible for a porn-addicted person, or any kind of addicted person, to fully know who he is.  It’s as if seeing the world in a different lens, almost like looking through those cheap blue and red cardboard 3D glasses we used to get out of cereal boxes as a kid.  I say this because I’ve been there in the past, and I am here now and see the world and people completely differently. 

    Imagine a world of individuals fully alive.  Imagine a world of individuals who know their gifts and use them to their fullest potential.  Let’s all continue to keep dreaming and working towards it together.

Amén.