Posts tagged women of faith
Make Room and Pull Up a Chair

If my brain was a room, I’d be nominated for one of those hoarding shows where there are 50 years worth of newspapers stacked high and 600 ceramic cats scattered everywhere. There is so much going on all the time, except for the moments when it’s so overwhelming that I just don’t do anything at all. Adulthood can be intimidating and every woman I know has a tendency to feel like there is too much on their plate. Still, many of us are pros at carrying five plates on each arm and managing a smile while it’s all falling apart. But it most definitely sucks some days, right?

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Think Big Picture

The art of living is the messy and painful moments dancing with the glorious and exhilarating moments. It’s the mundane and the meaningful. What makes life so artful is how beautifully each piece of our day to day lives fit together to form a picture of who each of us are. Sometimes, when I look at my life up close, it seems so ugly that it cannot be adding up to the something spectacular I used to dream up for myself. For instance, when I decide to wear all white to work just to splatter several shots of espresso across the ensemble. Or, when I think I’ve got my temper figured out, I blow up at my husband for not telling me to have sweet dreams before we fall asleep…true story, YIKES.

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They're Just Temporary Weights

Our picture perfect 1930’s charmer of a home decided to leave us a gift Monday morning—a stinky, wet gift. Our sewer line was leaking from our upstairs bathroom into our basement. For the first time in my life, I was starting to believe that Mondays really are bad days…I was getting fed up. Reflecting on other recent mishaps and getting stuck in the murkiness of our current stressors was doing me no good. I kept thinking of how well I’d been composing myself, how proud I was of myself for not blowing up in any of these unfortunate moments like I may have in the past.

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How to Find Worth in Ourselves and Others

Many of us struggle to find our worth. We look at our lives and we see all the areas we fall short in, and we wonder how we could ever be of value. Maybe we have days where we accomplish something great or see a quality in ourselves that we like and we think, “Now that is what makes me worthy.” So, we try to do that thing again. We chase that feeling by trying to do more, be more, accomplish more, but in the end, we are left broken and alone. Feeling worthless once again. The problem is not that we aren’t trying hard enough. The problem is that we are looking for our worth in all the wrong places.

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Love Doesn't Keep Score

After 11 years together, my husband and I have realized that meeting in the middle isn't real life. The reality is in picking up the slack—even if you take on the whole thing. If we count and measure, or we divide it all evens stevens, we are going to hit a wall real quick. One of us is going to fail in a 50/50 lifestyle, so we do it differently. We let go of the record book. We love and respect each other in equal measure. That is the balance. Because we care, we watch for burnout and the telltale signs of being overwhelmed. We watch out for each other, but we don't tally the day. When one of us falls, the other carries the weight.

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3 Questions to Help You Thrive in Every Season 

Life is filled with seasons. Good seasons, difficult seasons, busy seasons, restful seasons, seasons of gain, and seasons of loss. There is beauty in every season. Unfortunately, we often miss the beauty in our current season because we are too busy either dreaming of the next season or reminiscing and remembering the last season. If we are living in a difficult season, our last season often becomes abnormally good in our minds. We only remember the good parts and often wish we could return, but the reality is, every season has good and bad. We can choose to focus on the good or we can choose to focus on the bad.

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How to Joyfully Keep Busy

We always want what we don’t have—and that makes me laugh. But, it also begs the question, why? Why is it we are wired this way? My guess is that it truly is mind over matter. Knowing we are all in this together actually keeps my anxiety in check. After all, we are always stronger together. I take comfort in knowing the best scientists, doctors and disease specialists in the world are working around the clock to combat this pandemic—and we will win. My part is to simply stay at home. I can do it. Of course, we all know we can do it. The trick is knowing how to do it joyfully.

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Sister, Now is the Time to Go Deep

GO DEEP and you will find you are not a victim to your circumstances. You do not have to respond in fear and anxiety. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. This season of life has not surprised Him. He is walking with you. He is grieving with you. He is rejoicing with you. GO DEEP and you will find you can choose to set your mind on things above. You can think about things that are lovely and pure. You can choose to walk in Faith. You can have Peace that passes all understanding. GO DEEP and you will find Joy. True joy that is your strength. GO DEEP and you will find that even when the world around you shakes, you will not be shaken.

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Reveal Yourself

This is the mindset getting me through this season. Not the news headlines. Not the change of pace in my day-to-day life, or the fact that I will most certainly go stir crazy considering I won’t be working for the next few weeks. I am not defined by staying home or "not helping to provide” when circumstances are outside of my control. I am defined by what is constant in my life. The unchanging. Since I fully believe accepting Christ as my savior means He lives within my heart and has made me new, I carry Him with me always. So, if the never-changing Father that is God lives within me, He is the consistency that runs through me always.

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Your Power Lies Within

My strength is woven into the threads which have held my 61-year-old life together. I certainly did not feel strong at the time. It is only when I reflect on what I have survived I realize it took strength. We all face adversities. For some, it may be family dysfunction, financial insecurity, employment barriers, illness in your family, or other real life roadblocks that stand in our way. The situations are all different—and so is the strength we need to persevere. Consider this. Your journey is as unique as you and it is your story to tell. Find the strength to give it a happy ending.

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Finding Strength for the Battle

We are in a battle. A war has been waged against us. Our enemy is real, and he doesn’t fight fair. Often, when we are at our lowest, he intensifies the battle. The truth is, our flesh is fragile. Even the strongest person, crumbles quickly. Many times we act tough. We pretend we have it all together. But the truth is, most of us are one phone call, one cruel word, one bad day away from tumbling into the pit of despair. When our lives shatter, we collapse and wonder if we will ever be able to repair the broken pieces. Our human strength, if we even pretend to have any, is a façade. Often, it is built on good days and desirable circumstances, but throw in a bad day, and our strength is nowhere to be found.

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Three Habits that Heal a Broken Heart

In this life, it is inevitable that we will experience heartbreak. Rejection. Abandonment. Loss. Death. Offense. It doesn’t matter how many walls we put up around our hearts or how hard we try to keep ourselves from being hurt, the reality is that someday, someone will sneak past those barriers and break our hearts. The question is not if we will be hurt, but how will we handle it when our hearts are broken. Learning to heal from heartbreak is an important part of life. If we don’t learn how to heal, we will walk through life oozing brokenness and hurt on those in our lives who did nothing to deserve it.

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Three Ways to Restore Your Wonder

When was the last time you were overcome by the WONDER of God? What was that moment like? Did tears well up in your eyes? Did you cry, laugh or maybe even dance? Did you break out in praise or did you silently thank God for who He is? Was that moment recent or a distant memory? It can be tempting to become wrapped up in our daily lives and miss the wonder of God. We get anxious and stressed, overwhelmed and overscheduled. We barely have time to think, let alone notice God in our midst.

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From My Heart to My Head

Comparison, feeling anything but content, longing. All of these are pieces of what it means to be envious. This one word scared me so much when I saw it, I didn’t want to write about it. I didn’t want to dig deeper beneath my surface, and I definitely didn’t feel the desire to be transparent on a social platform about it. But there is a deeper need to talk about the many layers behind this word than there is for me to keep to myself. Putting my feelings onto a page used to be a way to release my fears and insecurities—and I lost sight of that.

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Courage in the Face of Grief

I quickly fell face down on the floor weeping, and my sister was on the couch, crying the words, “I’m only 14.” My cousin, with her hand on my back, whispered, “I’m so sorry.” As a 16-year-old, the first words out of my mouth after just being told my dad had died were, “We can’t be sorry for what was a part of God’s plan.” Looking back, I am still shocked I said that, as a young girl, in the midst of the greatest grief I had encountered yet. This brings me to think courage can be hard for us to comprehend sometimes. We’re often told to have courage without truly understanding its meaning.

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What if One Smile Could Change the World?

Life is hard. We are all fighting some kind of battle. A hard battle. It is easy to feel overwhelmed with the weight of responsibilities and expectations. We have families to care for, bills to pay, and deadlines to meet. We walk around with broken relationships and broken hearts. We experience loss, rejection, disappointment, and abandonment. We have been victimized and offended. We feel alone and forgotten. We can feel like we are drowning in the worries and cares of this world. But there is hope! Jesus came to rescue us from the weight of this world. He wants to carry our burdens for us. He wants to give us the courage to keep pressing on. 

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