Are you inspired? Are you looking for inspiration? Are you looking for encouragement or answers? I’m sure you’re not looking for stories that have been repeated in the same exact language from generation to generation without a deeper look or a different perspective. Today I want to share with you my story about why I decided to begin this blog and what my purpose is in writing.
Inspire
I’m always looking for something inspiring and fresh ways to observe what I already know. I’m always looking for ideas and there’s no better place to share that than in a blog. My story begins when I was experiencing a lot of trials in which I was working to come closer to God and I kept feeling like I was getting the wind knocked out of me every time I would make a new observation and commit myself to keeping it.
I’m His daughter
I have always read about God being my Father in Heaven and I have always recognized that. However, one day, an acquaintance of mine said something that totally blew my mind! It should not have. I mean, I had thought about this thing, but I just didn’t know completely what I thought about it. She called me a Daughter of God. I think I just kind of went numb with shock because just hearing that statement at the time I heard it . . . well, it kind of knocked me in my core.
Reality Check
I knew it was true what she was saying and I knew that I had been searching for statements about that very thing. I had just never heard anyone say it out loud. In all my life, I had not heard anyone state beliefs out loud that I held dear in myself like that. Because of this conversation, I was super inspired and all I could think to do was to write about it any chance I got.
Same Old Thing?
I have often felt that we studied and discussed the same things in group studies that we had always discussed and that there seemed to be no variation. It seemed that I was having difficulty finding inspiration in it. I felt that because I have been the youngest person in most of the groups I have studied with that I didn’t have a place for my voice.
A Peach?
If we were ripe apples on the tree, I would be a peach. I have not seemed to have the same vision and mission that the people around me have. I realize that everyone is given gifts by God. I also realize that some gifts seem to be extremely different than the norm. There are people who view these differences as a threat or a danger. God gives different gifts so that His people can complement each other in ministry. Paul mentions this in his different letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Ephesians.
Belonging
When I was a young girl, I experienced a lot of bullying because I didn’t do the same things the other girls did. I didn’t think the way they thought. I didn’t observe the same way they observed. It was tough because I had a different perspective. We are always going to meet people who think and act differently than ourselves. Just because it is different, it does not mean it is wrong or broken.
It IS broke! Fix it!
An example of this is found in the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it!” To me that’s like repeating the same verse in a song or the same statement of belief every day without making a conscious thought about it. Conscious thought is life-changing. Conscious thought is inspiring. Conscious thought and vision is motivating. It’s what builds great leaders. It’s what builds this Daughter of God. So maybe the thing that we think isn’t broken is because it has been a habit for so many months or years. Maybe it’s broken into a monotonous rhetoric of habit like a wheel turning on an exercise bike. It just turns and turns and turns and it doesn’t go anywhere. There’s no inspiration or motivation behind it except what was in the past is still in the present. Maybe if we put a wheel on the front of that exercise bike and search for places to go, we get an observation of the present and a vision for the near future and that bike is not just for exercise anymore. That bike is taking us on the mission where our vision is leading.
My Epiphany
This is where inspiration comes in! I don’t like repeating the same thing over and over again. I’m not a robot. I don’t like doing everything that everyone else around me is doing. I’m not them. God didn’t make us alike. He made us all to be different. All my life I have been “the different one.” I laugh sometimes when I think of that because I was not always okay with my differences because I was often told how annoying my differences are. One day, though, I had an epiphany of an experience. I was practicing singing with a group of other ladies. At one point, the choir director stopped abruptly and yelled at me in a defiantly annoyed manner. She yelled, “Why do you always have to be different than everyone else!” Wow! She was so angry and so pointed! I didn’t even realize I was doing anything different. I was just being who I am. It was the one time that I publicly stated out loud that “for the first time in my life, I like who I am and that I don’t have a problem with me.”
Aspiring to Inspire
So this is my story, my inspiration behind this blog. I want to write things that I’m inspired by so that I can inspire you, God’s Daughters.
