Moving past your fear


It’s graduation season again. It seems like every year we get at least one of two graduation invitations–mostly from kids we know from church, but this year we received invites from some very special kids, special to me, that is. Because these kids grew up right before my eyes. I swear it was only last week they were graduating kindergarten, and now here they are about to enter college. Even though they’re not my own, I’m so proud of them all, and their graduations remind me how little time I have left before my own kids will be sending out those invitations.

But that’s not the only graduation invitation we received. We also have a good friend graduating from law school. After three years of juggling a blended family with four kids (the fourth being born a little over a year ago), heading up the children’s ministry at our church, AND going to law school, she now has a law degree and a bright future ahead of her.

High school graduation gifts are as easy as writing a check, and that’s exactly what I’ll give to the high school graduates. But what do you give someone graduating from law school? A nice pen set? That would be good, I love a good pen set, but that’s so typical. In the end, I decided to combine two things I love: painting and a good quote:

In case you can’t read my scripty writing, here’s the quote again:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
~Marianne Williamson

I love that quote, and not just for the graduate. It’s for you, too.

Instead of thinking of a thousand reasons and excuses why you’ll never be the person you’d always dreamed you’d be, instead of insisting that you could never be good enough to do that thing that makes you feel truly alive, instead of asking yourself, “Who am I to think I could ever reach the stars?”, ask yourself, “Who am I NOT to?”

It’s your life. Live it or live in it.

Congratulations, Kerri. You’re amazing.

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