Blooming Where You're Planted and What You Are

This week I said to a long-time friend, "With most people I feel like I'm either too much or not enough. All my life I've been trying to be myself in a simple and balanced way. It's amazing how often being yourself doesn't actually work out."

This week I've been all emo, angsty, ridiculously introspective, and kind of annoyingly insecure. Basically I've been 13.

I know it's dumb, but it's hard to stop.  Like cocaine? *shrug*

It's hard to rein in the wild horses of self-doubt that stampede through your heart and make you want to run away from everything and start over in a fresh country where no one knows you're actually 13 on the inside.

Doubt is a cancer. It drives you away from friends & community. It drives you into your little hole.

It makes you feel unloved. Worse, it makes you self-focused when you should be fearlessly loving others.

Doubt is a joy killer! It takes the delicate flower, or wild rambling vine, or hearty tomato plant of your personality and shrivels it. It makes the functional tomato long for violet petals and the lily feel stupid for being purely ornamental.

Being yourself DOESN'T always work out... but that's ok. If you're a tomato you're going to be great at being a delicious summer snack... but you'll probably never be in a wedding bouquet (unless it's the new hipster thing).  If you're a lily, you're going to be an incredible ornament in a significant event... but no one wants you at their cookout. If you're a violet, you're going to pop your head out of the brown dirt first in the spring and brighten the bare times, but you'll never be surrounded by other glorious blooms... you'll stand alone.

We are all different. We all have our seasons. We have to bloom where we are planted and give the gifts we have to give.

Sometimes it's just hard to be ok with it.