A young couple who got married last week had asked me to do the slideshow for their wedding. I've never done one before, and I'm not exactly romantically-inclined, but I said “okay” because they're good kids. Both of them are college students, they both work full time, both are actively serving God, and they're both short on cash, so I felt privileged to help them out.

They gave me a pile of baby pictures, elementary school photos, and their engagement portraits, and I had lots of candid shots I'd taken of them over the past few years. All I had to do was figure out what to do with all those pictures, so I scoured the internet for examples. I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the professional-looking, sentimental,tear-jerking videos out there, but I gamely set to work.

For nearly a week, I spent hours each day trying to put together a slideshow that I hoped would at least resemble the beautiful videos online. Then I got bored and gave myself a break by picking out a bunch of photos that lent themselves to silly captions, and I took a couple of hours to throw together a slideshow just for fun. It was still a lot of work because I'm a Type A personality, but I enjoyed the challenge of making the little cartoon hearts and the smart remarks come in at just the right time, in synch with the music and all. I just wanted to make the couple smile, since they were getting stressed from all the wedding preparations, but I assured them that their real slideshow was almost done.

You guessed it. They wanted to use the goofy one. Didn't even care to see the other one. “This one is perfect!” they said. “Just what we wanted.” Sure enough, they showed it at their wedding reception and it was received with warm chuckles and even occasional light applause. I was dumbfounded!

All those hours wasted, all the frustration and stress, all those gray hairs from trying to duplicate what other people had done! When I tried to operate in another person's gift, my efforts ended up ignored, rejected, and discarded. But when I did what came naturally to me, God used it to bless this young couple and their guests. Those kids knew full well who they were asking to do their slideshow, and they weren't expecting an elaborate romantic epic, they wanted one that reflected my personality and theirs.

When, oh, when will I learn to just be who God created me to be, to trust that He knew what He was doing when He gave me my particular abilities and sense of humor? His yoke is easy and His burden is light when we serve Him the way He designed us to serve instead of forcing ourselves to do things the way we think they should be done! He made us the way we are for a reason.