Years ago, I wrote a quote on a post that I still remember:

“It is just as hard to convince yourself you are happy settling for scraps as it is to claim the whole d*mn feast as yours.”

At the time, I was writing about women allowing themselves to want more- in their businesses, relationships, and their overall lives.

I was learning how much energy I had spent surviving.

I had worked myself to the point of utter depletion, made mistakes, numbed, hustled, fought, failed, got back up, and tried again.

And eventually, I got REALLY tired of settling for scraps.

So I decided I was going to claim the whole dang feast. 😂

There was something important in that shift.

I stopped believing that depletion was simply the price I had to pay for being responsible.

I started believing there could be more joy, freedom, capacity, impact, and GOOD available to me.

But I can see something now that I couldn’t see then:

Even my determination to stop settling could become another way of trying to take control.

I was still deciding what the feast should look like.

Still trying to make it happen.

Still assuming that if I could just become capable enough, healed enough, disciplined enough, strategic enough, successful enough…

I could “finally” build the life I wanted.

Eventually, the deeper shift came through surrender.

I began learning how to release the outcome I was trying so hard to create and hand it all back to God.

I started letting Him lead me in what to pursue, what to release, and who I was becoming along the way.

And THAT changed my understanding of “the feast” entirely.

I still have enormous compassion for the version of me who thought the answer was simply to stop settling for scraps.

She knew something wasn’t right.

She knew there had to be another way to live.

She just didn’t yet understand that she didn’t have to choose between accepting scraps and demanding the feast.

She didn’t know how much God wanted to prepare a table for her, with a feast that was more satisfying than anything she could imagine.

My work was learning how to faithfully receive, steward, and develop what He had actually entrusted to me.

And as I’ve learned to do that, something else has changed:

I stopped trying so hard to become someone God hadn’t created me to be.

I started paying much closer attention to what He had already put in me.

The way I naturally think.

The things I notice.

The contributions that bring me joy.

The work that feels deeply meaningful.

The gifts that have been there for a very long time (even when I didn’t have language for them yet.)

And I started noticing where my God-given gifts had been shaped by all the life I’d lived.

Where I’d diminished parts of myself because they weren’t particularly convenient for other people.

Where I’d distorted good things through fear, pressure, pride, pain, or survival.

Where I had become incredibly competent at things God wasn’t actually asking me to keep carrying.

Where I still needed practice, wisdom, maturity, and development.

And where God seemed to be saying:

Yes. THAT. I’ve given you that. Now let Me teach you how to use it well.

Where He wanted to show me how he could take all my crooked lines and straighten every single one of them out, for GOOD.

Today, I have much better language for what I think I was REALLY reaching for underneath all that distortion and diminishment:

I want a life that produces good fruit.

In me. Through me. For the people God has entrusted to me.

By His grace, and for His glory.

THAT is the feast I’m interested in now.

I don’t need more responsibility simply because I can carry it.

I don’t need more achievement to prove I’m capable.

I don’t need to diminish the parts of me God intentionally created because they make someone else uncomfortable.

And I don’t need to force a good gift to produce something God never asked me to produce with it.

I want to know what He’s entrusted to me.

I want to develop it.

I want to recognize what has happened to it along the way.

I want to become increasingly skilled at using it where He directs.

And I want to pay close enough attention to the fruit—in me AND through me—to recognize when I’m stewarding it well.

That’s what Grow In Your Gifts™ is really about.

Yes, we’re going to learn about all seven Primary Motivational Gifts.

You’ll identify your own Primary Gift and use the SAGE Diagnostic to look more deeply at how all seven gifts are currently functioning in your life.

But identification is the beginning.

For seven weeks, we’re creating space to ask what faithful stewardship looks like for every single one of you, in the uniqueness of how God created you.

And the particular work God has entrusted to you now.

Because I don’t want to hand you another label for who you are.

I want to help you become increasingly capable of faithfully developing who God already created you to be.

We begin Wednesday.

Seven weeks. Seven guided modules. Four live formation calls. Your SAGE Diagnostic. The Grow In Your Gifts™ workbook. Conversation and support between calls.

And space to practice using what God has given you in your actual leadership, relationships, responsibilities, and life.

​JOIN THE GROW IN YOUR GIFTS™ OCTOBER COHORT​

Faithfully rooting for you,

Lee

P.S. If you truly don’t know your Primary Motivational Gift yet, start with the free assessment: DISCOVER YOUR PRIMARY MOTIVATIONAL GIFT. Identification can happen pretty quickly. Then we get to do the much more interesting work of learning how to steward what you discover. 🌱