If I were a tree, I would be one of those Purple flower trees that seem to grow out of the cement. I wouldn’t look strong, but I would have firmly planted roots, just as my roots are planted in my relationship with Christ.
My falling petals would be the part of me that tells my story. It would be told softly and often because I want people who saw me to know what God has done for me.
This is my cousin and I after my high school graduation
There are so many things that I would want to tell my younger self. The first thing I would say to myself is to cherish the relationships that you often take for granted because even those small things that annoy the hell out of you now will be the things that you miss when God decides he wants someone home.
The second thing that I need you to know is that you don’t have to be the girl who has a ten-year plan. At 14, you’re going to feel like you have everything in life figured out, at an event at USC is where you discover your love for speaking to audiences, but in your first speech, you tell the audience that your dream is to become a special education teacher, when what God had planned for you is to become a public speaker via cool technology that seems impossible to dream up.
When you get your final volunteer teaching internship, and you start to feel you’re not respected and treated as an adult by your peers, make the hard and fast decision to leave; it’s not giving up. At this point in your life, you’ve spent a decade doing something that you fell out of love with a long time ago but kept doing because you were the girl who knew what she wanted.
When you quit volunteering, you need to start something called a podcast, and it should be called Encouragement Notes. You need to do this because being a coach for a multi-level marketing company called Beachbody has led you to a life of taking selfies and talking about overpriced products, and the entire experience is making you pushy with your friends and family.
Starting a podcast will be easier than you think; find an app on the cell phone that you have, pull out your most recent sermon notes from your purse, and start reading them as if you are talking to someone who missed Church on Sunday.
Lastly, Stop using the words Just and Nothing when people ask you
1. What did you do today? or
2. What do you do?
Be confident that the Lord is using what you are doing, even though you are doing it from home.
This is today’s #bloganuary topic. One of my favorite things about myself is that I love making new friends, and I think that it is easy for me because I have never been a shy person. I try to be one of the first people to say hi to someone new at church and in life group. I’m also a good listener, and I’m willing to be there for my friends and family when they need me.