So, I've been working on a couple of the things on my little "things to do before I'm 25 list". Namely, the reading ones. :) Which means I'm currently reading about 4 books AND the Bible... :)
I've read the first three of the Anne of Green Gables books and have definitely fallen in love. I really can't believe I have never before read them! Anne Shirley is the sweetest, most bewitching fictional character I have ever met, and I'm pretty sure that if I could write like Lucy Maud Montgomery I would be the absolutely happiest person in the world. But, alas, I can't write like the wonderful L.M. Montgomery; I can't even write like the sweet, sometimes silly, fictitious Anne-girl; yet I'm still awfully happy. Because I happen to know that it is just as sweet to brighten someone's day with a simple card or letter as it ever could be to be a "literary giant" writing "best-selling classics". So there! :)
And...there's someone else I'd dearly love to be like: Jim Elliot. Yep, I'm slowly working my way through his journals and I just become more and more amazed at this guy! His passion, his focus, his all-out, sold-out, diving-in-the-deep-end approach to a life lived solely for God...it's all so incredibly inspiring! It makes me want to burn all my old journals and start over and make them ever so much more like his! It's not so much that he was perfect as it is that he was perfectly in love with Jesus and it showed so perfectly in his life! And I want to be like that...but I so continually fall so far short of who and what I think I should be.
So I'm coming to another conclusion: my life is entirely too much made up of comparisons and imitations. There is, of course, nothing wrong with having good, strong heroes and even striving to be like them in various ways. But when all that I am is an imitation of someone--besides Jesus Christ, unadulteratedly--something is not quite right. Why is "just me" not good enough? God thinks it is! My life and the way I live it is not going to look just like anyone else's, whether it be Jim Elliot or Anne Shirley. I wasn't made to be Jim Elliot or Anne Shirley, I was made to be me, Haley Nicole Miller. And the funny thing is, God kinda likes me just the way I am; just the way He made me. That makes me feel pretty special... :)
I've read the first three of the Anne of Green Gables books and have definitely fallen in love. I really can't believe I have never before read them! Anne Shirley is the sweetest, most bewitching fictional character I have ever met, and I'm pretty sure that if I could write like Lucy Maud Montgomery I would be the absolutely happiest person in the world. But, alas, I can't write like the wonderful L.M. Montgomery; I can't even write like the sweet, sometimes silly, fictitious Anne-girl; yet I'm still awfully happy. Because I happen to know that it is just as sweet to brighten someone's day with a simple card or letter as it ever could be to be a "literary giant" writing "best-selling classics". So there! :)
And...there's someone else I'd dearly love to be like: Jim Elliot. Yep, I'm slowly working my way through his journals and I just become more and more amazed at this guy! His passion, his focus, his all-out, sold-out, diving-in-the-deep-end approach to a life lived solely for God...it's all so incredibly inspiring! It makes me want to burn all my old journals and start over and make them ever so much more like his! It's not so much that he was perfect as it is that he was perfectly in love with Jesus and it showed so perfectly in his life! And I want to be like that...but I so continually fall so far short of who and what I think I should be.
So I'm coming to another conclusion: my life is entirely too much made up of comparisons and imitations. There is, of course, nothing wrong with having good, strong heroes and even striving to be like them in various ways. But when all that I am is an imitation of someone--besides Jesus Christ, unadulteratedly--something is not quite right. Why is "just me" not good enough? God thinks it is! My life and the way I live it is not going to look just like anyone else's, whether it be Jim Elliot or Anne Shirley. I wasn't made to be Jim Elliot or Anne Shirley, I was made to be me, Haley Nicole Miller. And the funny thing is, God kinda likes me just the way I am; just the way He made me. That makes me feel pretty special... :)
Comments
God made each of us different in His own purposes.
Thank you for the reminder.