Our being – who we are – is shaped by knowing our true identity and belovedness in Christ. Our being is important, as all of our living and loving comes out of who we are.
The lights are red in every lane. No one is moving. There is no choice but to wait. We’d prefer to keep hitting green lights, to keep moving forward and get where we want to go.
But it’s not all about us. There are other people, in other lanes, getting their green lights while we sit at a red light. There is a practical plan with traffic lights; we understand the pattern that promises our lane will get a turn to go.
I like how the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment reveals what is good and right about us! There is so much positivity and potential in our themes. Discovering your Top 5 Strengths Themes is like being given a bouquet of five beautiful flowers. 
The parking lot was brimming to overfull, only a few hundred feet from where the girls and I were playing in the Virgin River at Zion National Park. But from the place we were, all you could hear was the babbling of the river.
You’d never guess we were close to so many cars and people. We had paused and set up “day camp” by the river where we could arrive, enjoy, and soak it all in.
The stakes that landscapers use for newly planted trees provide a great metaphor for coaching. These stakes are there to support the tree so it can thrive and grow, and after a while they are removed. Similarly, coaches come alongside people in times of growth, change, or hardship in order to support and encourage them for a time.
Our strengths are what we can most naturally live and love well out of. We each have different talents that help us live well. There are many ways we can love the people in our lives well. When we know our natural style for living and loving, we can be intentional and more effective in our own unique way.
Each of these pictures represents one of the Top 5 Strengths Themes that I live and love out of. My themes are Responsibility, Empathy, Discipline, Connectedness, and Positivity. Can you guess which picture goes with which theme? (See answers at the end of this post!)
Live a Life of Love 