A Peach or a Coconut

Adaptability is not the result of a hollow core, but of clarity and conviction about what is at your core. Don't confuse being rigid and unchanging with having convictions.

Some of us are more like coconuts - hard on the outside and hollow in the center. But we need to be more like peaches - fuzzy on the outside but solid as a rock in the middle.

What do you think? Erwin McManus seems to lay it out there exactly how he feels. I liked this chapter called "adapt" in his book Wide Awake.

I belong to a mommy message board. One of my favorite forums to visit is the debate areas. It's pretty natural in me to "fight" till I feel heard. To give my beliefs everything I've got. What I've learned in the almost 3 years I've been there though, is that I can have conviction without being rude or rigid or snarky.

Now that I've learned my lesson, new people will come in and they will come like a train steamrolling through. Harsh, closed-minded, stern and out of reach. I see them and realize how I could easily come off and it's a struggle to make sure that I'm full of conviction but that that represents my solid core, not a solid exterior.

McManus also says when we become peaches instead of coconuts it:

...dramatically changes the way others experience us as well as how we will experience life.

Ephesians 4

20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, [5] which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.