One Life

I’ve just come back from another amazing weekend! I was away with the girls Onelife Learning Community: a group of incredible young women who take their character and leadership development seriously and know how to laugh. Between lots of chocolate and ice cream, we talked about everything from relationships to reading, what leadership is anyway, and how not to give presentations to old people.

Here’s one of the gems I found over the weekend, thanks to the book we were reading (Developing the Leaders around You): ‘There is no such thing as a full grown tree.’

Think about it. The day a tree stops growing is the day it starts dying. It lives as long as it grows. That’s pretty black and white. And when it’s applied to my leadership, it gets a little scary: I cannot keep leading if I don’t keep learning.

But here's the thing: with trees, growth is subtle – you don’t walk out the door to find the little sprig you planted last week has become the full blown giant. You can’t really see a tree grow, not unless you have years to spare and limitless patience. (Wait - isn’t that what God has?)

You see, the temptation is to go for the growth spurt: I’ll take a year out, grow massively and learn loads, and then I’ll be sorted for the next decade. We like change we can see and measure...we like to watch the percentages go up, we like getting A’s. But we have to be willing to grow like trees – it will take years. It will take steady investment. It will be hard to see sometimes.

Until one day, years from now, we’ll suddenly look around and realise we’re actually quite tall. We’ll have grown right up into the clouds, like Jack’s bean stalk, and we’ll see our King face to face. And all those years will be like no time at all, because of Him. And it will be worth it.