The truth about "calling" and peach bellinis

Darling Magazine

"The truth is that calling is not about what you are producing, but what God is producing in you."

If you know me well you know I have big dreams. These ideas and little pieces of ideas that only the Holy Spirit could have stirred in me...because I certainly wasn't looking for them in my big bow-wrapped life of contentment.

For the first time in my short but sweet 25 years I feel like I am truly on this Earth for something greater than me...but where do you even start with something so grand as a "calling" to be something, do something, change something. How do you even start to wrap your mind around that?

A few months ago I read this article in RELEVENT Magazine and I finally feel like I can give words to the chaos that has been my free time over the past year. And by that I mean the company I'm in the process of founding (more on that later).

"Bearing fruit" seems like such an elusive and overly spiritual term, but it makes sense when you break it down into real life....

"To “bear fruit” means for a thing to reproduce that which resembles its very essence. Trees were created as God created them, and they bore fruit that was true to its God-given nature. And it was good."

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So I'm the tree, you're the tree. I'm probably a peach tree, because those are just delicious...but if I decided to produce lemons one day it would be a disaster. A complete disaster.

The point? When it's right it will reflect God in my life. So what is He producing in me? He is producing an awareness of my selfishness. A freedom to be who HE created me to be, not the version I asked for. A calling beyond my wildest dreams.

And that kind of fruit, when it's ripe for the picking, actually tastes like what is on the outside....

How often, as women, do we (A) decide what the outside [persona] is going to look like and then (B) fail in our attempt to live that out? 

I lived like this. and it was exhausting. 

We allude to the fact that the forbidden fruit Eve ate all those years ago was an apple....did you know that there are more than 7,500 cultivars of apples in the world? Now there is clearly a lot of historical data and evolution of plant species that I'm leaving out in this analogy, but humor me for a moment. Eve has it all; all the delicious fruit in Eden to chose from to eat and even 7,499 other types of apples, but she choses the one that leads to death. We know we were not made to be someone we aren't, but yet we strive to be just like her, because she has perfect hair, the perfect husband, the perfect car, the perfect job, the perfect calling on her life. There are 7,500 kinds of apples people! God cared  about the apples - crazy!

I don't know your story or what kind of fruit you're striving to be, but I do know that you were made to be YOU. It's really that simple and that huge all wrapped into one. When I finally discovered this truth it changed everything and gave way to a freedom that no striving could ever produce. 

HIS vision for your life, for my life, the one he has had in mind all along, is so much more than what we could think up on our own. He has a calling on your life, it just may take a few bare seasons before the harvest comes. Good thing it's worth it. It's always worth it.

Now, who's craving a peach bellini? Cheers!