Today at church, I heard some beautiful words of wisdom from a woman named Kat Lee. Kat attends Antioch Community Church in Waco and for the last few years, she has written a blog for women entitled Hello Mornings. I strongly recommend it! While explaining the need for daily quiet time with God, Kat stressed the importance of starting small. "I am a model of low goals," she said, "I have never finished a Beth Moore Bible study, ever." Let me tell you ladies, hearing that from such a successful and kingdom-minded woman gave me some very real hope and encouragement. The main point is, starting small is still a start. She went on to say that talking to God for 30 seconds every morning often does more for our relationship with Him than a 3-hour 'prayer chunk' once a week. "What we do faithfully is a lot more significant than what we do sporadically."
So right there in my chair I made a list. What do I do faithfully? Here's what I came up with:
1. Cry. (Duh, I'm a woman, what did you expect)
2. Realize my mistakes and crawl back to God.
3. Dream of an adventure.
4. Dream of someone to share it with.
5. Realize I'm lonely & obsessed with finding said someone and crawl back to God.
6. Wonder if I'm beautiful.
7. Try to invest in my relationship with God, let it fizzle out and....crawl back to God.
At first, I took a lot of comfort from the fact that Numbers 3, 4 and 6 were straight out of Stasi and John Eldredge's definition of a woman in Captivating. But after I reread them, I laughed out loud. In church.
There's a lot of crawling here. And let's not forget Number 1.
Crawling and crying.
Yikes.
It's a good thing my God self-identifies as a Father.
I'm 110% confident I'm not the only one who is building, rowing and steering the ugly cry face boat. We all know that face, we all know that hurt. We all know what it's like to multi-task cry-face management with holiday shopping, dieting and taxes. And yet, when our aching, exhausted souls cry out to our Father, how often do our prayers begin with shame, with embarrassment, and feeling like we're taking up His time. God, I'm sorry, but I'm really hurting and I need you right now.
Let me go on the record and say that I think God takes personal offense when we pray that way. Honey, do not ever apologize for the way God made you. He made you to feel and love deeply, so don't apologize when you do. And it's not just our prayers, it's our everyday conversations. One of my favorite slam poetry performances includes a young woman who recognizes that all of her questions in math class begin with the words 'I'm sorry'. My friends, this should not be!
I'm on a mission to stop apologizing for who God made me.
I'm not going to apologize for disagreeing with you because God gave me an innovative mind and I intend to use it.
I'm not going to apologize for not understanding something, because He also reveals His wisdom in His perfect time.
I'm not going to apologize for needing to talk things out, because God made women in such a way that this is physiologically impossible.
I'm not going to apologize for asking you for too much information about your life, because women are unique vessels of His ridiculous compassion.
And I'm not going to apologize for realizing that I am worth more than the time someone else will not give me, because God told me so in His word.
Women apologize for these things all the time and yet at the heart of each apology, the God of the Universe is screaming at us No, I made you that way! Apology unaccepted!
So here's a thought. If we're going to be consistent, let's be consistent in our crawling, not our apologizing. I hope you can see the difference. The former moves us ever closer to the heart of our Maker. The later is nothing short of the audacity to criticize His handiwork.
Sunday, 22 November 2015
Sunday, 8 November 2015
The Bar
A college friend and I recently discussed a double-standard we have encountered in our professional and personal lives. For the first twenty-five years of our lives, my generation has been encouraged to think for ourselves, be independent and shoot for the stars, but now that we are beginning to use that freedom and independence, many of those who wished it for us are expressing disappointment with the end result.
The examples are everywhere but I'll give you two. I know several people who have suffered severe breaks with their parents and grandparents because after years of going to youth retreats and Christian schools, their faith does not look exactly the way it did when they were children. What did they expect? I met a man a few months ago whose parents encouraged him to be open-minded and treat women well, but were extremely disappointed when he gave up football to work for a sex-trafficking awareness non-profit. Both of these groups of people are good, kind, compassionate people of integrity and I can't help but wonder, if they are a disappointment, what is the standard?
So I ask you, do we really want our friends, kids and spouses to reach the standard we set? It appears the parents I mentioned above might be second-guessing the prayers they prayed over their children in their cribs.
Let's take that one step further. Do we really want to reach the standard we set for ourselves? The perfect job, perfect relationship, perfect house? Because we all know we're not actually going to get them. Why do we demand so much of ourselves, only to be as unreasonably disappointed as parents who want open-minded children to never change? The Millennial generation is shooting themselves in the foot here and the solution isn't settling for less, it's appreciating what we have.
Growing up, everyone and his brother told us to set the bar high. I'm beginning to think there was an extreme miscommunication here. In this seemingly simple encouragement, my generation did not hear set, we heard high. I think the intended message was you set your own destiny, you create your future and no one else. But what we heard was, always aim high, anything less than the top is failure. This is very important. We learned that fame was more important than how we acquired it. As a result, we created a standard that makes us feel like we failed and leaves us with no understanding of how to properly recover or try again. And now that we're having kids, we give out ribbons for showing up so that they won't feel like failures the way we did.
I think we do the same thing to the Gospel. I once heard a pastor say that Americans are far better at adding to the Gospel, adding rules and standards, than they are at cheapening it. We are a nation built on overworking - for both our jobs and our salvation. To this, God says, "Why do you think I'm disappointed in you? I didn't create that rule for you, YOU did!" When we fail to meet the Gospel standard we created, no only are we convinced that we are bad people, we are convinced we are bad Christians. We are irretrievable and hopeless because, since our standard is so fluid and emotion-based, we have no idea how to recover and get back to a point of grace. But that's the beauty of grace - we don't have to get back to it. Rather than swing the pendulum back to a place where we are still working for it, we simply have to remember our Sonship and be thankful for what we most assuredly have.
Once we know our salvation is secure, maybe then we won't demand perfection in this life because we know it will only be found in the next.
The examples are everywhere but I'll give you two. I know several people who have suffered severe breaks with their parents and grandparents because after years of going to youth retreats and Christian schools, their faith does not look exactly the way it did when they were children. What did they expect? I met a man a few months ago whose parents encouraged him to be open-minded and treat women well, but were extremely disappointed when he gave up football to work for a sex-trafficking awareness non-profit. Both of these groups of people are good, kind, compassionate people of integrity and I can't help but wonder, if they are a disappointment, what is the standard?
So I ask you, do we really want our friends, kids and spouses to reach the standard we set? It appears the parents I mentioned above might be second-guessing the prayers they prayed over their children in their cribs.
Let's take that one step further. Do we really want to reach the standard we set for ourselves? The perfect job, perfect relationship, perfect house? Because we all know we're not actually going to get them. Why do we demand so much of ourselves, only to be as unreasonably disappointed as parents who want open-minded children to never change? The Millennial generation is shooting themselves in the foot here and the solution isn't settling for less, it's appreciating what we have.
Growing up, everyone and his brother told us to set the bar high. I'm beginning to think there was an extreme miscommunication here. In this seemingly simple encouragement, my generation did not hear set, we heard high. I think the intended message was you set your own destiny, you create your future and no one else. But what we heard was, always aim high, anything less than the top is failure. This is very important. We learned that fame was more important than how we acquired it. As a result, we created a standard that makes us feel like we failed and leaves us with no understanding of how to properly recover or try again. And now that we're having kids, we give out ribbons for showing up so that they won't feel like failures the way we did.
I think we do the same thing to the Gospel. I once heard a pastor say that Americans are far better at adding to the Gospel, adding rules and standards, than they are at cheapening it. We are a nation built on overworking - for both our jobs and our salvation. To this, God says, "Why do you think I'm disappointed in you? I didn't create that rule for you, YOU did!" When we fail to meet the Gospel standard we created, no only are we convinced that we are bad people, we are convinced we are bad Christians. We are irretrievable and hopeless because, since our standard is so fluid and emotion-based, we have no idea how to recover and get back to a point of grace. But that's the beauty of grace - we don't have to get back to it. Rather than swing the pendulum back to a place where we are still working for it, we simply have to remember our Sonship and be thankful for what we most assuredly have.
Once we know our salvation is secure, maybe then we won't demand perfection in this life because we know it will only be found in the next.
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Steroids.
Last Tuesday, I discovered a new level of feeling miserable when I got tonsillitis.
On Wednesday morning, the doctor gave me steroids and antibiotics.
By Thursday evening, I wasn't just back to 100%, I was flying at a solid 150%.
It's now Sunday evening and I can't believe that I'm still riding this high.
I haven't felt this good in months. I'm motivated, happy, smiling more and crying oh so much less. I'm feeling amazing physically, in control emotionally and mentally I feel like I'm breathing fresh air. I am at peace with things I used to worry about constantly. It's truly glorious. The doctor wants me to steadily decrease how many pills I take every day, but lucky me, I have to finish the bottle. At this point, it looks like it'll last until about Friday.
It is truly amazing how much your life changes when your body feels good.
I get why people work out regularly, eat healthy and get plenty of sleep.
This. Feels. Good.
But that's just it. This is completely drug-induced.
What I've felt for the past few days has been generated by pills, not by me. For now.
When you make a commitment to understand how your body, your heart and your mind all work together to make the best version of yourself, sometimes the team doesn't communicate so well at first. Your heart goes on a joy ride and stops listening to your mind or your body tells you that you want something when both the heart and mind are screaming to just leave it alone. As miserable as tonsillitis was, it was a real wake up call. The last really bad interception before coach finally calls a time out.
Sometimes, I think God lets us get tonsillitis or dumped or demoted because we need to know what happens when we stop communicating properly. When we get distracted, the team starts to throw some lousy passes and I imagine God just holding the whistle out to me saying, "Whenever you're ready." But the great thing is, once we finally own up and get the team in a huddle, God's got the playbook to turn it around. And sometimes, He gives us a glimpse of what it will look like when we start playing like a team again.
Right now, my million dollar question is What am I going to do to stay feeling this good once the meds are gone? I haven't figured it out yet. But thank God for tonsillitis. I wouldn't have realized how sick I was without it.
On Wednesday morning, the doctor gave me steroids and antibiotics.
By Thursday evening, I wasn't just back to 100%, I was flying at a solid 150%.
It's now Sunday evening and I can't believe that I'm still riding this high.
I haven't felt this good in months. I'm motivated, happy, smiling more and crying oh so much less. I'm feeling amazing physically, in control emotionally and mentally I feel like I'm breathing fresh air. I am at peace with things I used to worry about constantly. It's truly glorious. The doctor wants me to steadily decrease how many pills I take every day, but lucky me, I have to finish the bottle. At this point, it looks like it'll last until about Friday.
It is truly amazing how much your life changes when your body feels good.
I get why people work out regularly, eat healthy and get plenty of sleep.
This. Feels. Good.
But that's just it. This is completely drug-induced.
What I've felt for the past few days has been generated by pills, not by me. For now.
When you make a commitment to understand how your body, your heart and your mind all work together to make the best version of yourself, sometimes the team doesn't communicate so well at first. Your heart goes on a joy ride and stops listening to your mind or your body tells you that you want something when both the heart and mind are screaming to just leave it alone. As miserable as tonsillitis was, it was a real wake up call. The last really bad interception before coach finally calls a time out.
Sometimes, I think God lets us get tonsillitis or dumped or demoted because we need to know what happens when we stop communicating properly. When we get distracted, the team starts to throw some lousy passes and I imagine God just holding the whistle out to me saying, "Whenever you're ready." But the great thing is, once we finally own up and get the team in a huddle, God's got the playbook to turn it around. And sometimes, He gives us a glimpse of what it will look like when we start playing like a team again.
Right now, my million dollar question is What am I going to do to stay feeling this good once the meds are gone? I haven't figured it out yet. But thank God for tonsillitis. I wouldn't have realized how sick I was without it.
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