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"To be truly excellent, one must give up their need to 'be everything' and choose to 'be something'."
I don't actually know who said that (yes I tried Googling it) but I heard it at a recent leadership training conference I was invited to and I jotted it down as it was said.
It really stuck with me. Have you ever tried to be everything to everybody? Have you ever tried to have it all together? I have. I've worked on keeping up that charade for a really long time.
It's interesting how God will use a little quote, a conversation, a song, a speech, or a verse to whisper the same message to you heart over and over again.
This is something that just keeps coming up in my life. Slowly but surely God was getting my attention. Maybe I don't have to be "like her". Maybe I don't have be strong like her. Smart like her. Creative like her. Charismatic like her. Funny like her. Pretty like her. Professional like her. Successful like her. Maybe, just maybe, the world already has enough talented girls like her. Maybe it needs a talented girl like me. Or like you.
It's often said that God doesn't make mistakes and I fully believe that. Of course I do. But if I really believe that, then why would I get so worked up trying to change who He made me? Maybe it's all in the name of "personal development" or "personal growth" or whatever you want to call it. But where do we draw the line between growing and maturing and just trying to transform into someone we're not?
If I had to guess, I would say we could start by looking at what brings us joy, what makes us feel alive, and what we are actually already gifted in. Have you ever actually taken pen to paper and written those things down?
Maybe if we started there we could see who we ARE first. If we knew who we were, then we would know who we weren't as well.
What if today we gave up being the total package and we became excellent using the gifts God gave us to use?
What if we stopped trying to hold it all together and we just embraced the girl we already are?
What if amazing things happened when we stopped being a second-rate version of "her" and stepped into the girl He made us to be?