Your job at any given moment is to bring all your gifts, all your talents, all your propensities, and all your passions into this thing called life and believe that they are good enough to produce the fruit that is expected of you.
This is a quote from a book I am currently reading titled The Resolution for Women, written by Priscilla Shirer. I re-read this sentence several times trying to grasp all that it is saying. This particular sentence is really speaking to me in this season of my life. No matter what situation I am in, I am to give everything I have in order to produce fruit. Not just any fruit, but the good kind, the kind you look forward to sinking your teeth in as you see it sitting on the counter top. God expects me to use the talents and passions I have for him. After all, he is the one that instilled them in me. He is the one that made me to be the person I am. I may not like a lot of who I am today, but it is my job to use what he has given me for his glory and to figure out ways to do that.
In this book, I have something underlined or a comment written beside it in almost every paragraph. So much of it feels as if it is written directly to me, as if the dedication page reads my name. Another part I feel that is written not only for me, but all women is the statement below.
Rather than seeking to impress and outperform others, and rather than feeling ashamed by what you don’t have and can’t do, relish the opportunity to stand as a living, walking, eating, breathing example of what God’s grace can do with a woman. He has set apart, weaknesses and all, to be a scared vessel to His service.
If we could just focus on what we are supposed to be doing and how we can fulfill God’s will, and stop worrying about how much prettier, smarter, wealthier, and more put together all the other women around us are, we could probably get twice as much accomplished. This is something I am really working on. It’s hard, seeing other women my age buying houses, succeeding in their careers, growing their family, and all their other accomplishments. It’s hard to not get jealous, but I’m working on it. Yes, I know that we will have children someday (one way or another) and I am content to not have children at this moment and that God will bless us financially. And I am actually content with the job that I have right now, I do feel it is where God wants me. I know that God does have his reasons, but it’s still a working progress.
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.
2 Corinthians 3:5
I am sufficient only through God, and without him I am not.
