On growth, comparison, and learning to trust where God is leading this brand.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about a question:
If I truly want to build Ahavah well, how much more do I need to learn?
Branding. Design. Photography. Writing. Product development. Packaging. Understanding people. Business.
The further I go, the more I realize that building a brand is about so much more than making a good product.
You need to know why you’re making it.
You need to develop an eye for beauty, learn how to express what you believe, understand the people you hope to serve, and have enough discernment to know what belongs within your brand—and what doesn’t.
Recently, I came across a lifestyle brand I’ve admired for a long time.
Its words had comforted me before. Over the years, I watched it slowly grow—developing its own products, its own spaces, even a book, and eventually collaborating with much larger brands.
Something about seeing that moved me deeply.
So a small brand really can grow into something like this.
And almost immediately, I began looking back at myself.
Maybe I need to become better, too.
Maybe I need to read more.
Maybe I need to understand design, photography, and branding more deeply.
Maybe I shouldn’t simply experience the things I encounter, but learn to think deeply about them—to turn what I see and live through into thoughts, and eventually into language of my own.
I even began to think:
Perhaps the distance a brand can travel depends on how far its founder can grow.
It sounded reasonable.
So I started telling myself:
I need to grow.
I need to learn.
I need better taste.
I need to become a better writer.
I need to become a better founder.
And somewhere along the way, I noticed something.
My shoulders suddenly felt heavy.
Because if Ahavah’s limit was me, then somehow its entire future depended on how capable I could become.
What if I’m not good enough?
What if my perspective is too narrow?
What if I grow too slowly?
What if I’m never as articulate, creative, thoughtful, or capable as the people I admire?
Would I become the thing that limits Ahavah?
And then today, I suddenly realized:
I had forgotten something very important.
Ahavah’s Limit Is Not Me
If I truly believe that Ahavah is something God has entrusted to me, then I cannot also believe that its future rests entirely on my own ability.
Ahavah’s limit is not me.
God knows where He wants to take it.
And when that thought finally settled into my heart, something became lighter.
I still want to learn.
I’m still going to read the book I just ordered.
I still want to learn photography, develop my eye for beauty, become a better writer, understand branding more deeply, meet different kinds of people, and see more of the world.
I hope the person I am a year from now is more mature than the person I am today.
I hope that five years from now, I’ll be able to see things I cannot see yet.
But suddenly, none of those things feel like a list of requirements I have to complete before I’m worthy of building Ahavah.
Because I don’t have to turn myself into someone extraordinary and then use my own strength to push Ahavah somewhere extraordinary.
Perhaps what I am called to do is much simpler:
To live deeply rooted in God’s love and become the person He created me to be.
And then to faithfully use what He has already placed in my hands.
To learn what I need to learn.
To do the work in front of me.
To care about one product, one sentence, one person at a time.
To seek Him when I don’t know what to do.
To change direction when I get something wrong.
To give my best when I can.
To admit my limitations when I can’t.
And then to give the outcome back to Him.
I Don’t Have to Become Someone Else
This also changed the way I think about being inspired by other people.
When we encounter a beautiful brand, a gifted person, or someone who has already traveled much farther than we have, it’s easy for admiration to quietly become comparison.
We begin to wonder:
Should I be more like them?
But maybe that isn’t the point.
The beauty in someone else’s life can encourage me without becoming the standard by which I measure my own.
I can love someone else’s writing without needing to write like them.
I can learn from another brand’s aesthetic without needing to recreate its world.
I can look at a road someone else has been walking for ten years and simply be grateful that their journey showed me what is possible.
And then I can continue walking my own.
God did not create two people exactly alike.
So perhaps He never intended me to complete what He has given me by becoming someone else.
Growth Doesn’t Have to Come From Fear
I still want to keep growing.
But I hope my growth no longer comes from fear.
Not:
“If I’m not good enough, I’m going to ruin everything.”
But:
“I am loved, so I am free to grow.”
I can read a book simply because it helps me see something I couldn’t see before.
I can learn photography because I want to better capture the way light falls across a person, a piece of paper, or a quiet table.
I can study design because I want the things I make to carry beauty.
I can learn to write because there are things I have experienced—love, grace, faithfulness—that I want to learn how to put into words.
And I can also allow myself not to know everything.
I can move slowly.
I can let a brand grow little by little.
Because I’m beginning to understand that growth and anxiety are not the same thing.
I can take growth seriously without living in constant fear that I am not enough.
Wherever Ahavah Is Meant to Go
I don’t know what Ahavah will look like five years from now.
Maybe there will be many products.
Maybe there will be a physical space of its own.
Maybe Ahavah will find its way into many homes.
Maybe one day, someone I have never met will pick up a card we made and write down something she never wants to forget.
Or perhaps Ahavah will take a path completely different from anything I can imagine today.
I don’t know.
And today, I realized that perhaps I don’t need to know.
I want to do today’s work well.
Learn what today has to teach me.
Live out a little more of the love I have received.
Write down the grace I don’t want to forget.
And then keep walking.
As for where Ahavah will ultimately go—
I’ll let God lead it there.
And as for me,
I want to remain in His love,
and slowly, faithfully,
become the person He created me to be.