What Grows When We Stop Trying to Produce

A reflection on fruitfulness, formation, and the quiet work of God beneath the surface.

I’ve been thinking about the things that weigh on the soul. Perfectionism and productivity get blurred together a lot, but if I’m honest, perfection isn’t what drives me—unless the lack of it creates conflict (or even just the perception of it) with someone else.

Productivity, though?

That can drive me pretty hard.

Lately, I’ve been noticing it more. I think for a long time, I’ve just equated productivity with fruitfulness—like the pull to produce is simply part of how God made us. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s not quite right.

Because when you look at Genesis, the language isn’t about being productive. It’s about being fruitful and multiplying. And that feels different.

Fruitfulness has more to do with stewardship—with tending, with caring, with paying attention to what’s been entrusted to you in a way that allows it to grow. Productivity, at least how I tend to live it, is more about output. Measurable progress. Something to point to.

And I think that’s where things start to get off.

We are designed to create—that’s part of the gift of being human. But that gift doesn’t stay untouched. It gets shaped (and sometimes warped) by what we believe about ourselves—our identity, our responsibility, our worth. And somewhere in there, this pressure creeps in to produce visible growth…for all kinds of reasons.

But God never asks us to manufacture results.

That doesn’t mean results don’t matter. Fruit matters. It’s a sign of health. But we’ve learned to use fruitfulness as a measuring stick—something that tells us who we are instead of revealing how we are.

And that does something to a person.

Our whole lives—body, mind, and spirit—can get tied up in outcomes and results. It doesn’t just stay in the practical parts of life. It shows up in our spiritual lives, too, where even our relationship with God can start to feel like it’s supposed to produce something.

But what if fruit isn’t something we achieve?
What if it’s something that grows?

And fruit doesn’t come from nowhere. It grows from something deeper we can’t always see.

I’ve seen this play out in my own life, and I’ve witnessed it in others, too. I think about seasons where my husband and I both experienced real healing—clarity, freedom, a deeper kind of growth—but the way we got there didn’t look the same.

And I don’t mean because of different backgrounds or stories.

From the outside, parts of our lives looked similar. But what was happening underneath—the way God was shaping us from the inside out—took a different path for each of us.

That’s the part we don’t always see.

Formation begins beneath the surface. And it’s worth saying—this kind of becoming is always happening, whether we’re paying attention to it or not.

I think sometimes we reduce transformation to something passive: God will do it, and I just receive. And there is truth there—God is the one who forms and shapes. But there’s also a way we participate in that process…just not in the way we tend to default to.

Effort isn’t the problem. It’s what’s underneath it.

Because effort can so easily slip into striving, earning, proving. You can feel it when it happens. I know I can.

What I’ve been noticing lately is how much things begin to shift when my attention, my affection, my orientation turn toward Jesus.

Not in a dramatic way. Just a steady returning.

Letting go of the need to prove something through productivity doesn’t mean I stop showing up to what’s been entrusted to me. It doesn’t mean I stop tending to what’s in front of me. It just means I loosen my grip on outcomes—on timelines, on results, on the need to make something happen.

There’s a quiet alignment that begins to take place there. A posture of trust. Of remembering who God is, and trusting Him to be faithful to what He’s promised.

And that doesn’t happen automatically.

It takes intention to surrender. To resist the pull to take control again—sometimes moment by moment.

But I’m learning that what I return to, over and over again, is what shapes what grows.

It’s striking to me how something small—a slight distortion—can quietly shift the trajectory of a good and honest desire.

In our personal lives, in our work, even in the church, ideas that begin with clarity around mission and vision can slowly become something else when the drive to produce takes over. It almost feels instinctual—to push an idea into reality, to make it happen.

And somewhere in there, effort starts to change.

It becomes less about faithfulness in the process and more about getting the thing done—more focused on the outcome than what’s being formed along the way. The desire for control, clarity, and defined process starts to take over, leaving little room for the slower work of time.

Efficiency becomes the measure.

But I’ve been noticing how often it measures the wrong thing.

I keep coming back to this picture of water moving over rock. The way a river, over time, carves out pathways—not through force, but through consistency. It doesn’t have to be loud or obvious. Most of the time, the change is quiet. Gradual. Easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.

And if I’m honest, there’s a discomfort in that kind of growth.

It’s a little like when I forget to record a workout on my watch—it somehow feels like it didn’t count if it isn’t tracked. If there’s no visible record, it’s easy to question whether anything is happening at all.

But that’s where we’re most tempted to strive.

And striving, for all its intensity, is often just a shortcut we’re trying to take to the end result. We move too quickly to understanding, before something has had time to take root in us. And when that happens, our ideas stay unanchored.

And unanchored things don’t last.

Striving forms something in us too—but it doesn’t bear the kind of fruit we’re hoping for.

We end up bypassing the deeper work of formation—the kind that brings real healing—and settle for something surface-level instead…until we find ourselves coming back around again.

Instead of striving, I’ve been learning to notice.

Over the last few years, I’ve been pressing into that practice. And there’s something about the invitation to notice that has quietly reduced the internal pressure I tend to carry—the need to have it all figured out. I’ve realized how easily I slip into an all-or-nothing way of being, and how much that shapes the way I relate to God and to others.

The promise of shalom—that vision of wholeness, of nothing missing or out of place—can feel elusive in a world that is anything but whole.

But noticing has begun to shift that for me.

It helps me see beyond the high contrast of black and white. There are more layers than I realized—subtle ones. And sometimes it’s not that anything has changed…just the way I’m seeing it.

Noticing makes space for a deeper kind of understanding. Not just figuring things out, but paying attention in a way that forms something in me—shaping my values, my responses, the posture of my heart.

And it becomes even more clear in hindsight.

When I look back—marking those quiet “before and after” moments—I can see it. The small, almost unnoticeable shifts that, over time, become real transformation.

Growth rarely announces itself in the moment.

Most of the time, we only recognize it once we’ve moved past it.

And maybe that’s what makes this kind of growth hard to trust. When we can’t see it, we’re tempted to force it. To measure it. To prove that something is happening.

But fruit doesn’t come that way.

Fruit will come. It always does.

But it doesn’t come from pressure or performance.
It grows from a life that stays rooted—
attentive, present, turned toward God in the middle of ordinary days.

And maybe that’s enough for now.
Not to produce more—
but to keep returning.

Until next time,

Maureen