I have always been an introverted type, but God has always placed my blessings outside my comfort zone of being exposed. When I was in elementary, I wanted to be a cheerleader more than anything in the world. 

I would spend all day outside preparing for when I was older and could cheer for a college team. I had a mini trampoline and I would spend hours mastering my flips and doing split jumps. 

When I heard about the elementary cheerleading tryouts, I wanted to go and give it a shot…desperately. The problem was, I was terrified and immensely shy. So I decided to skip the tryouts and accept my life as it was. 

However, my mom came to the rescue, but her rescue took me outside my comfort zone. She told me to get in the car and I didn’t know where we were going. Then she dropped me off at the cheerleading tryouts and made sure that I entered the tryouts to be a cheerleader. 

Without any troubles at all, I was selected. I was over the moon with joy! Being pushed out of my comfort zone brought hidden talents out of me that I didn’t even know I had. I ended up being excellent at cheerleading, and I was living a dream. 

I cheered all the way up through High School and I became a master of my sport. When I went to the High School tryouts, the competition was steep and everyone was nervous. 

I gave it all I had and let go of my shyness so that I could show them everything that I had to offer. I ended up getting the highest scores my last year at tryouts, and it felt like I won an Olympic medal.  

I was so thankful to my mom for pushing me out of my comfort zone and driving me to the tryouts, even against objections and insecurities. Her decision of pulling me out of my comfort zone helped me to see the hidden treasures that I had sitting on the inside. 

Now I am in a similar place and this time instead of my mom pulling me out of my comfort zone, it is God. God has been telling me that He is taking me out of the cave of isolation and exposing me openly in order to bring out the hidden wealth that He has placed inside. 

In 2018, I had an unforgettable, powerful encounter with God. The door was closing to where we stayed, and it looked like me and my kids were about to be homeless and on the streets. 

We had nowhere to go and no one to call for help. Thankfully, God was already making  a plan to carry me into a much better life. 

I followed God to where He guided, and I spent the money He sent on a hotel room for me and my kids. I had no idea where the money to keep from being homeless would come from, but I had a promise from God to be our comfortable home and endless support. 

The only catch to this plan was that I had to share my documented journey openly on my blog. From out of my exposure, God caused money to come from donations and other mysterious ways as well. 

During those years, I was tremendously blessed by the ever-present rescues of God, and the continuous fulfillment of His promise. God showed me how to grow my faith in ways that also caused us to increase in comforts financially. 

He took us from hotels, to apartments, and even beautiful homes. There was a downside to that experience though. I found out that many who claim to love God were very unloving and nothing like Jesus at all. 

Their love, friendship, and loyalty were conditional and based on their narrow minded-religious doctrines. So many who claimed to be loving friends turned away, and they mistreated me horribly. 

They were like cannibals who would try to devour and murder each other with thoughts and words. I wanted nothing to do with it any longer. 

It was incredibly painful to go through, and it often stung when their stones of accusation lashed against my cheeks. Eventually I realized that they just didn’t understand and were not healed enough by God’s love to show the love that I expected from them. 

It took a long time to forgive them for the abuse and attacks. Once I did forgive them, I just wanted to have a life without them around. I wanted to be around those who kind and loving. 

During that time, I isolated myself and removed my attachments from them all. I unfollowed everyone that I had followed before and created my perfect little world where there were no more ruthless ones. It was easier to love from a distance than to love in the midst of their harsh and unmerciful words. 

When God started to tell me that He wanted to expose me and bring me back out into the public eye again, I was like…no, thank you. That was a hard pass for me lol! I preferred to stay in my safe little bubble and I wanted no part of those kinds of people ever again. 

I thought about how hard it must have been for Moses, when He finally started a new life of isolation in the desert with his wife—far away from the abusive people of the past. 

I know from my experience that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was go back to knowing them. I can imagine that Moses may have had similar thoughts too. He had finally had a new life, and he had the safe comforts of his new found freedom. 

Yet then God told him to go back and the first concerns that Moses had were his weaknesses and insecurities. I really feel that, because I have weaknesses that I secretly battle as well that make me reluctant to do what I have been called to do. 

When I read the love letters or faith stories on audio recordings, it is a huge struggle for me because I have battled dyslexia for all of my life. 

It takes me ten times the concentration to read than most average people. I usually have to edit the writings multiple times because of that weakness. The other debilitating thing that I have battled for my whole life, has been the fear of man. 

I don’t like to be around people, and yet I do! I love those in my inner circle and my tribe. I love to share kindness and encouragement too. Because there is trust there, and I can let my guard down. Yet exposing myself to the rest of the world is extremely difficult for me to do. 

However, as God was for Moses, He will be for us too. Notice how God typically picks the imperfect ones as leaders? That is because God isn’t looking for perfection (that is Satan’s thing lol). 

God looks for the yielded and obedient, so that He can reveal His glory and power through our flaws. 

So I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness and endure mistreatment—when I’m surrounded with troubles on every side and face persecution because of my love for Christ—I am made yet stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power.

2 Corinthians 12:10 TPT

The secret to seeing God’s power materialize in our lives depends on us to trust Him, obey Him, and be willing to be exposed. It is a matter of the heart.

There is hidden wealth in exposure. It is like rich cinnamon spice. In order for cinnamon to be useful to others, the bark of the tree must be exposed. Cinnamon is made when the bark of a cinnamon tree is peeled off and exposed. 

Being exposed is to be out of our comfort zones, but it is out of our comfort zones that the hidden wealth from God is found. Like cinnamon, there is so much richness hidden in the place that is new and uncomfortable at first. 

In Ancient Egypt, cinnamon was revered as more valuable than gold. Similarly, when you surrender your self comforts to follow God to where He leads you, there is gold there for you to collect–and it will be far more than you can dream of. 

God uses the exposure to draw out the hidden talents and gives that He has placed within us, so that we can be blessings to someone else—and so that we can become the person that He has destined us to be. 

It’s funny because despite my own weaknesses, God has shown me that I will become a very influential speaker. In order to see God fulfill that vision, I have to get out of my own way and let Him expose me in the place beyond my comforts. 

God uses the fires of faith testing to draw out the water that is abounding within us. He uses the winds of worries and fears to pull out the hidden wealth of sweet spices that we have secretly stored inside. 

If I had not followed God’s leading to share my documented stores of faith living on this blog, I don’t really know how we couldn’t have survived. God hid the provisions that we needed to thrive in the place of being exposed openly. It was very uncomfortable but so worth the rewards! 

There are hidden places of wealth that most people don’t even know about. They are hidden beyond those things that we fear to do. They are hidden in our flaws and weaknesses too. 

It is only through peeling back the walls of self protection that we have built, that we are able to access the sweetest spices of God’s rich cinnamon, and shine with true beauty. 

Becoming our dreams comes with a cost–but it is worth the temporary discomforts in order to become all that God promised that we could be. ♡

I have been sharing many new exposed writings like this on my new “Flowers of Fulfillment” group, and I am going to flooding that group with so many more as God takes me to the next destination. 

It’s going to be the biggest leap of faith that He has ever asked me to do, and I am going to go much further in sharing all the beautiful details of it all. I hope you can come join me there soon! 

https://www.patreon.com/flowersoffulfillment

I love you, and thank you so much for spending this time with me today. 

♡ Dannette

Flowers of Fulfillment