Which Favors Will You Deny?

I have a cousin who is an evangelist and she's awesome.We were sitting having a conversation one day a couple of years back and I began to cry because basically, she told me that I wasn't following my true purpose. She saw that God had other plans in store for me and I was running from them. Trying to do the politically correct thing. Whenever people would ask me "what are you up to now?", I would always give the politically correct answer, afraid of their reaction to what I really wanted to say. I would try so hard to deny myself, I even went so far as to try and make myself believe I didn't have the gifts I did. I just wanted to be regular. I didn't want to be special. I was trying to put out my own light! Why do we do that to ourselves? And it didn't even matter what I did because those desires to follow my dreams never went away and would always come creeping back. In fact, I have been having these visions for my life since I was about five years old! I would be blessed with so many gifts and given so many opportunities that I didn't even ask for or seek out, they just came. The way that you can tell the difference between a desire that God has placed in your heart and just wishful dreaming is it never goes away...When you finally decide to follow your God-given dreams, there are no limits to where they will take you.

This is one of my favorite quotes from Marianne Williamson. I have to remind myself of this constantly..
“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 most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”