Your Growth Will Look Different

Part of embracing where you are is also knowing that your growth will look different from those around you. You can’t compare the growth of yourself to those who have different circumstances or resources that you do not. A flower growing in the sidewalk cracks is going to bloom differently from one planted in a flower bed and fed fertilizer and kept warm and watered on a schedule.

Some of us have to take what we can get and work with it. Soak up every drop of the last rain storm and conserve our energy and soak up the sun and wait to grow until we have enough. The point is, you can still grow right where you are but it is going to look different. You may not have a free hour each day to work out but if you have time to scroll you have five minutes to try ONE yoga pose. You might not have money to buy a bunch of fancy snacks from Whole Foods but you can switch out your morning cereal for some eggs instead. You might not be able to sit down and spend an hour in your devotions but you can steal away time to read a verse or listen to worship music on your drive to work.

If there is something you want to do and you’ve always just told yourself that you can’t, think of something you can do in five minutes that will move you towards who you want to become. You CAN. You do not need to have her money, her time, house or family to be able to move towards what you want. Every little bit counts and every five minutes spent well adds up. We have to start breaking down our all or nothing mentality. The thinking that we have to be amazing or be nothing at all is literally what’s stopping us. There will always be someone who seems to be growing faster than you and there will also be those who are lagging behind. Stop comparing and only look at yourself and focus on where you want to go not where everyone else is.

If you only lose 10lbs this year or write half your first draft or run a 5k instead of a marathon, all of it’s better then nothing and all of it is better then where you were last year. Flowers, they don’t know to be dissatisfied with where their seeds have fallen, they only know to grow. So let that be us this year. May we work with what we have, and stretch towards the Sun and soak up the rain and grow right where we are. May we be gracious with ourselves and with others as we have all walked into this year with wounds and heavy hearts and the fact that the calendar switched to 2021 didn’t change that. May we be patient with ourselves and eachtoher as we all try to do better. You are loved, you are growing, you are enough right where you are.