In case you haven't noticed, it's been a little quiet here at Grab Your Greens. We're still here. We took a little step back to enjoy having our children home for the summer. To read some books. Tend a garden. Enjoy the beach, the pool, Disney. To take a breather and slow down. And to do some soul-searching. Especially in regards to this itty bitty little blog venture of ours.
It's easy to get burnt out, even doing something you love. To wonder if it matters, if it makes a difference. It's easy to look at "fancy" blogs and start feeling sorry for our very humble 'home'. And to see the corresponding Facebook pages, where there is lots of community response, and wonder what we're doing wrong. It's easy to see the number of views of each blog post, as a direct correlation of our worth. It's hard not to get discouraged when you feel you've been given this great gift, but don't have a clear vision as to how God wants you to use it.
We both recently read this fabulous ebook, Be Quiet and Say Something, by Jessi Connolly of Naptime Diaries. It is worth way beyond its $7.99 pricetag. I'd like to share with you a passage that spoke so loudly to me:
God has given you influence.
He has given you a voice, a life, thoughts, and emotions. He has given you pain, blessings, trials, joy and heartaches. He has given you words. He has given you favor. He has given you all of this, with SOMEONE and most likely MANY SOMEONES who will willingly and expectantly listen to you for one sole purpose; that you would make much of Him.
And right now, the one thing that the enemy of your soul and His kingdom would like you to do is to stop reading and discount yourself. To believe that no one listens to you or wants to listen to you. To believe that if someone did listen, you'd say the wrong thing. That enemy wants you to think that you're too crippled, too busy, too loud, too ugly, too pretty, too rich, too poor, too ANYTHING to make a massive change in this world and in the eternal world of God. And he is absolutely dead wrong.
But if he can get you looking anywhere but up, you'll be too preoccupied for any words to yank you up out of this life and into the birds eye view of your Father's good and holy purpose for your life. And what's scarier is that if you're distracted enough not to be pulled up, you'll never be thankful enough to want to yank up the hearts around you. Who could, in turn, yank up the hearts that are around them. Who could yank up the hearts that are around them.
Wow. That makes my heart soar every time I read it. The simple message of this book, is that we all have our own sphere of influence. There are people in our lives that are watching and listening. Each and every one of us have them. You don't have to be a Bible scholar, or a dynamic speaker. It doesn't matter if you have a blog audience of 7 or 7,000. If you make minimum wage or millions. Your voice matters. You are loved by the Creator of the universe and you matter.
Jessi addresses the time she spent looking at the number of people who viewed her blog and wondering if her blog voice mattered:
At that point I started to realize that even if they were low numbers, they were people. Women. With beating hearts and real lives and more important things to do than sit and read what I had to say. And yet they were. I had their attention and it was time to begin thinking about what God had given me to offer them. Even more than that, what did He want me to tell them through my life, my experiences, my faith?
So, it is with absolute certainty, that we're still here. Even with all the doubting, there has never been any doubt that our passion and knowledge about eating for health, is a great gift from God. It is meant to be shared and to change lives. And if it changes just one life, that is enough. At this point, it is not clear what His plans are for us. But this thing we know for sure - what matters most is that we use this gift to make much of Jesus.
For His glory-
dawn & leanne
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