Unappreciated, or “It’s not over yet”

Of course, we start with the back-story:

For Kids College, I was the photographer/videographer for the weekend. I took in surplus of 600 pictures, and made a video for Sunday (the 3rd day of Kids College) during the weekend. I was busy doing all this stuff every second I had. I was either taking pictures or editing the video the entire time I was conscious.

Back, back-story:

Making a video takes a ton of time and work. A general rule of thumb is 1 hour of work per minute of video. This video took longer because it was made up of pictures that I had to get off the camera, in to iPhoto, resized with another program (because they were 8 megapixels, which is too large for my little G3 to handle), back into iPhoto, and finally in to iMovie, where each photo had to render for about a minute.

The real story:

Today I was informed I had to make a video that we were going to send to churches that donated money for Kids College. I was told this by a girl in leadership. When she said, "We need a video to send to churches." I saId, "I'll just use the one I made for the Sunday worship." And (these were her exact words, said with a mean, nasty tone) she said, "That's not good enough."

I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to say, so I walked away. But the whole thing just got me thinking and I realized how overlooked and unappreciated my gifts are. It even made me question why I have the gifts God gave me, why He gave them to me, and why I even use those gifts. I truly believe that they are gifts given to me by God. God gave me talent (I'm not tooting my own horn here, but God's) with technical stuff like video, editing, photography, and that kind of thing. Creative Communication, I believe it's call on a spiritual gifts test.

Now, I'm not asking to be praised for my work. I don't even really want thanks. I did the video because I like doing it. I did the video because I love doing videography. I honestly would rather people not notice that I did it, but that it got done, and that it was done for God. I'm not looking for recognition of myself, or my talents, I guess what I'm looking for is recognition that it's not easy, it's not a "slacker" job, that videography takes time and effort. I guess what I really want is for people to realize that it is a gift from God, and that people stop taking it for granted or for taking it for less that it's worth.

I guess it just really sucks when your work goes unappreciated