Month: May 2013

Resolution #3: Authentically Me

How well do you receive compliments that others give you? For example, when someone compliments your dress, do you say “Thank you” or just smile and walk away? Taking compliments on our material things like clothing and shoes can be easy. But what about when someone compliments you on something physical, like your eyes, your smile, or your beauty…how well do you receive those compliments?

For me, when others compliment my new dress or shoes or a scarf, I’m very quick to say “Thank you.” But when it comes to the other stuff, the compliments are harder to take. Not because I don’t believe they’re authentic or genuine in their compliment, because I know they are. It has more to do with me not feeling confident enough in myself to think someone would notice or even compliment me on a physical attribute of myself.

That’s exactly what this resolution is about…celebrating your uniqueness and esteeming and encouraging the distinctions you admire in others.

While it may be a lot easier to encourage and lift up those around us with words, we have to start with ourselves first for it all to have meaning. In Galatians 5:14 it’s a command by God that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If we look in the mirror every morning in disgust at ourselves, how can we tell others how beautiful they are?

One reason we can and do it consistently is we put more value in others and the beauty and the gifts they have than on our own. While it’s easier to do, it’s also wrong. God created each one of us in His image and with gifts and talents that no one else has. We may have traits and personalities that mirror our parents, but God made each of us unique.

There is no one in the entire world that is exactly like me. I’m one-of-a-kind. I’m unique. And it makes me feel special to know that when God thought of me, He gave me the gifts I have, the talents I have and qualities that make me unique; He also hand-crafted me in His image.

In this chapter of the book, the author says to “take time to uncover and reconnect with these things that truly describe you: your gifts, talents, passions, eccentricities, dislikes, weaknesses, interests and uniqueness—in their rawest, most unspoiled form.”

In order to do that—to find our passions and talents and weaknesses in “their rawest and most unspoiled form”—we have to take a good, hard look at the real us. Not the version of ourselves that attends church each week with a fake smile and happiness so that no one can see we’re hurting deeply inside or we’re wounded from a comment said recently or even years before. We have to take that hurting person deep inside of us and remind her of the authentic and true person she is…the one God created her to be.

When I think about what makes me unique, I have to sit and really think about it. Not because I don’t see myself as unique, but because it takes time to strip away the different layers I’ve put on to hide the real me. We sometimes think that if others see the real us, they won’t really like what they see and they’ll go find other friends. So we put on a different characteristic layer that we see someone else has and make it our own. Then, we find another characteristic layer from another person and add it on. Before we know it, we don’t even recognize our own true self because we’ve hidden her away in a deep, dark closet.

The first step in this journey to finding the authentic you, according to the book, is to enlist the help of a few close friends. I took this first step challenge and enlisted some of my friends. I was very particular in who I asked for this part because I wanted to ask those that had not only known me for a long time, but have seen in me in the rawest of forms. Sometimes friends that have known us for short amounts of time haven’t been around to truly see us through ugly situations. Everyone sees you when we’re happy, but how many of your friends have seen you through a tragedy, a loss, a break-up, or a really messy situation? How many of your friends have seen you when you’re in a bad mood, when you’re having a bad day or when you’ve lost your temper right in front of them? Those are the friends I wanted to ask…the ones that have seen me and been around me on my good days, my bad days and my really ugly and messy days…the days I hope they’ve forgotten about!!

This first step of enlisting friends meant asking them a question: “From your perspective, can you tell me what makes me unique?” I told them they could be brutally honest with me and to not hold anything back. In order to travel this journey, we have to ask the hard questions and be prepared for the answers we receive. I was really kind of surprised by some of the answers I received back. Here are some of the responses I received:

1. Considerate and mindful of everyone I’m around
2. Compassionate; has a good heart and genuine concern for people
3. Friendly to everyone; takes others under my wing for guidance; helping them along their journey to draw closer to God; loyal and trustworthy; mentor
4. Completely loyal and faithful to my church; fully supportive of my husband in his service to the church
5. Crafty, organized, good friend, smart

The responses that really surprised me and caught me a little off guard:

1. I live my faith
2. Gentle optimism, meaning a gentle strength that shows I have total faith in my Heavenly Father to work all things out for my benefit; that I may not always see the glass as half full, but that I see the glass in my Father’s hand
3. Genuine, which by definition means sincere, authentic, free from hypocrisy and true

And the one constructive response I received back:

1. Because of my personality and being a rule follower, sometimes I put the rules above people, but when given more information about the situation, I always come around

We never really know the person that others see in us until we ask. Sometimes we’re afraid to ask because we don’t want to hear the bad stuff; my constructive response from above…hard to read, but definitely true. But, the good thing about it is it doesn’t have to stay that way. While it may be hard to ask questions to find out how others truly see you, it’s what you do with the new information that will matter the most.

The second step in the journey is to take these responses that I received and pinpoint ways that I have either neglected these traits or celebrate them by becoming intentional in honoring my uniqueness going forward. I don’t have to be haughty or arrogant about it. I just need to continue to be myself. I can take the time to really focus and harness these unique qualities and use them for reaching others and telling them about my Heavenly Father. You know…the one that created me in His image!!!

I resolve to accept and celebrate my uniqueness and will esteem and encourage the distinctions I admire in others.

Mother’s Day

Seeing that the day has already passed, it seems a little late to be writing a blog on Mother’s Day. However, not knowing exactly how I was going to get through this day this year, I thought it best to wait and write about it afterwards, which brings me to right now.

In the last few years, I never ever looked forward to Mother’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother and to have a special day to honor her is always nice. But for me, personally, it wasn’t a day I ever looked forward to.

As I’ve gotten older and my desire to have children and be a mom has increased, seeing a day that is designated to celebrate Mom’s just made me sad for something I didn’t already have.

This year was going to be different. When I found out in late February that I was pregnant, I was so excited that I was finally going to get to celebrate Mother’s Day. I would be about 15-16 weeks when the date rolled around. But as I soon learned, it wasn’t going to happen quite as I had originally envisioned. As many of you know, we had a miscarriage in April and lost our baby at 7 weeks and 1 day.

Up until the actual holiday day, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to handle it. I found myself to be quite emotional in the days leading up to Mother’s Day. Just the thought of the day or the mention of the day would send me into uncontrollable tears. But, as I am still in mourning over our loss, it’s okay that I cry.

Every Mother’s Day in church, they always have all the moms stand to be recognized, to be prayed over or to be given flowers. When I arrived, I still hadn’t decided how I was going to react and if I was going to stand with the rest of the moms.

But then I realized something, that although my child isn’t physically present with me, it doesn’t diminish the truth that God did bless me and my husband with a child earlier this year. It doesn’t diminish the truth that we are still parents, even though our child is already in heaven. I have nothing to be ashamed of to stand proudly with the other moms and celebrate this day.

So I stood with the rest of them and accepted the prayer that was spoken over all the moms. Then our Pastor’s wife spoke about our sphere of influence. She told us that whether we have children or not, we are all aunts, sisters, leaders and friends. She said we need to look around us to those that we’re around at work, at home, at school, at church or wherever we may be and be a strong influence for those we encounter; to guide those around us, to show them God’s way and to be a light to the dark places around us.

I know that God is going to bless us with children again, when His timing is right. Until then, I’m going to take this lesson and do my best to influence those around me in a positive way. As a wise friend recently told me, I’m also going to let God be in the driver’s seat and give Him complete control over my life. By doing that, I can sit back and enjoy the ride!

Resolution #2: Biblical Femininity

Well, if you read the last resolution that I wrote, you’ll notice the vast difference in dates.  I wrote my thoughts on Resolution #1 back in November 2012 and here we are at the beginning of May 2013.

 

Part of the reason for my delay is the topic of Resolution #2: Biblical Femininity.  WOW!  This was a hard section to get through.  Not necessarily in reading it, but understanding it enough to cultivate my thoughts on how to write about it.  I have now read this section three times!

 

I read it the other day, the third time, and it finally felt like I had some clarity on the subject.  In the world we live in today, it’s hard to balance out the culture of women to keep true to biblical aspects, while living in today’s world of post-feminist ways.

 

Women have not only come a long way from the destructive views that men have placed on us and our place in society, but we’ve also come a long way away from the role God placed on women when He created us.

 

Genesis 1:27 says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female He created them.”

 

Being a woman is not a curse.  God didn’t create man to be above or over women.  Yet over time, women have been pushed aside and treated as lesser people.  This was not God’s design.  God’s design for women and the purpose He had when we were created was to come alongside man and be his equal, his partner and his helper.

 

In the book, the author writes, “A Christian woman must resolve to go against the tide.  She must stand for what she believes based on her confidence in the One who has delivered eternal truth to her in writing.  She must return to God’s design and definition for women and then joyfully embrace, accept and experience its blessings.”

 

This is how I want to live my life…by God’s design; the design that He created just for me.  One of those designs is the husband that God brought into my life.  Now we both have the opportunity to live our lives as God designed, as equals.

 

But, God also had another design or plan to help us live our lives the way He intended and it’s called submission.  Submission doesn’t mean that we are giving up ourselves, the freedom to think for ourselves or devaluing any part of ourselves.  Most people hear the word submission and cringe because it’s been taken out of the context in which it was created.  It’s been taken as a way for men to have authority over women, for employees to cower to their employers or for leaders to wield certain expectations from their followers.

 

Submission was never created or meant to be harmful to women or anyone else.  Submission is defined as a decision to yield to people, precepts and principles that have been placed in our lives as authorities.   Yes, submission does give someone authority over us, but not power. 

 

Let’s take my marriage as an example.  My husband has authority over me as God has authority over him.  My husband could look to the world for how he should exert his authority over me, but he doesn’t.  He looks to God for how submission in our marriage should look.  And it looks the way God created it be…for me to be his equal, his partner and his helper.  When big decisions have to be made in our family, my husband doesn’t just make the decision and move on.   He asks for my input because we are partners.  Do we always have the same opinion on issues and situations?  No.  Sometimes we agree on issues and sometimes we don’t.  But since God has given him the authority in our marriage, it’s my husband’s job to make the final call on the decision to be made.  I may not always like the decision that’s been made, but I respect my husband and the position that God has placed him in so I support it regardless of my feelings.

 

When we all live and work under submission as it was created, it “provides a framework in which our potential can truly flourish.”  Submission is a choice.  We can choose to live true to it and the role it should have in our lives or to rebel against it and live with the consequences that brings.  

 

In resolving to champion the biblical model for womanhood, we must recognize that we are God’s creation, created in His image and powered by His love and grace.  It doesn’t matter how the world views women and their place in society.  It matters how our Creator sees us and that we choose to live our life for Him.

 

Freedom and peace await “every woman who aligns herself with God’s design.”  What kind of woman are you going to be?