Greetings Beautiful Souls,
I was on a girls trip in Punta Cana, on my way to the spa, when I noticed something that stopped me mid-stride. A gentleman was high up in a coconut tree, chopping down these huge leaves. No ladder. No harness. No visible support system of any kind — just him, the trunk, and a machete. I sat there in awe. I mean, genuinely impressed.
Then I noticed what the leaves were covering.
Each time he chopped one down, a coconut was exposed. And these coconuts were green — not the golden-brown ones you picture when someone hands you a fresh coconut with a straw in it. I remember thinking, “I don’t want that coconut water. Nothing about that looks refreshing.” And then it hit me: that’s exactly why he was cutting the leaves away. Not to make the tree look tidy. Not because the leaves were in his way. He was clearing them so the sun could reach the coconuts and ripen them.
That’s when the Holy Spirit spoke.
Sometimes we can’t grow. We can’t evolve. And it’s not because something is wrong with us — it’s because we haven’t been exposed to the things that would push us there. Heat. Storms. Exposure. The very things we spend our lives trying to avoid, cover up, or shade ourselves from are sometimes the exact things standing between us and our ripening.
Think about that green coconut. Shaded, protected, covered by leaves — and still not ready. Not because it lacked potential, but because it lacked exposure. We do this to ourselves constantly. We stay under the leaves. We avoid the heat. We call it self-care, we call it protecting our peace, and sometimes it is exactly that. But sometimes — if we’re honest — it’s avoidance wearing peace as a disguise. We shade ourselves from the very conditions God intended to use to mature us.
I think about the seasons in my own life where I resisted the heat. Where I prayed for the storm to pass instead of asking what it was there to produce. I wanted the version of me on the other side of growth without ever agreeing to the process that gets you there. But ripening doesn’t happen in the shade. It happens in exposure.
James 1:2-4 tells us to count it all joy when we fall into various trials, because the testing of our faith produces patience, and patience has to have her perfect work so that we can be entire, lacking nothing. Not despite the trial. Through it.
So let me ask you what the Holy Spirit asked me that day: What leaves are you still hiding under? What’s the storm you’ve been praying away that might actually be the very thing assigned to ripen you? You cannot mature in the shade and be upset that you’re still green.
Let the sun reach you. Let the heat do what it’s supposed to do. You weren’t made to stay covered forever — you were made to ripen.
Until next time!
