Learning to Wait...

When God says "Wait" what do you do?

When things that feel so BIG hang in the balance and you don't know what to do, or if there is even anything you could do, and God says "wait", what do you do?

Do you wait in fear? Awake at night anxiously replaying all of the worst possible outcomes and mentally flogging yourself for your mistakes and inequities...

Or do you rest in peace knowing He has a plan for this.

That is my struggle and I believe it is the lesson God is teaching me this year. He simply wants me to...

{ WAIT }

and not in fear, but in peace.

~ Psalm 46:10

"He says, 'Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.'" - NIV

"'Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.'" - NASV

"'Stop your fighting--and know that I am God, exalted among the nations, exalted on the earth.'" - HCSB

These three different translations paint a beautiful picture of God's heart for us. No matter what our circumstances are, we can rest in knowing that He is God, He is sovereign and He is worthy of exaltation.

"How does God being sovereign comfort us?"

He is in control. He knows the challenges and trials we will face even before we do and He has a plan for us.

"How does God being worthy of exaltation comfort us?"

It declares His goodness.

In knowing He is good, worthy of exaltation, we can be still, we can stop striving, fighting and trying to do it all in our own strength and simply rest in His goodness.

My experiences growing up shaped the way I have dealt with life’s struggles in the past. I am a doer. I am a fixer. I am a problem solver. I am independent.

I am learning that I don’t have to be completely independent. In fact, it is God’s plan and design that we not be completely independent either of Him or of each other.

I can ask others for help and not be a burden. I always felt like I would become a burden to others if I had to ask them for help, so I would go to the greatest lengths I could to avoid the need to ask.

I don’t have to fix everything immediately. I don’t know about you, but sometimes constraints, like time, create deadlines that seem to loom menacingly over me. Until the problem is solved, I feel anxious, like I have to have the solution now and I can’t rest until I do. The truth is, I can seek counsel, pray and wait for guidance. I don’t have to have the answer today. God knows the need, He knows the circumstances and His timing is perfect.

I don’t have to have all the answers because… He has them!

Never the less, I struggle. I wrestle with the drive to fix everything. The crazy part is… sometimes it doesn’t need my fixing. Sometimes “it” is exactly what I need.

There is always, always, something to be learned. Whether it is a lesson for myself, for my family, or for the people around me that are watching to see what happens, there is something of value to be gained.

Have you ever watched someone overcome some great challenge and been encouraged in the challenge you face?

Have you ever watched someone achieve something you have been wanting to achieve and felt inspired to go for it?

Seeing others come through a storm, beat the odds, achieve their goals, etc. gives us wisdom, encouragement, inspiration, courage, and most powerfully, it gives us hope.

I have seen God’s grace and blessings in the lives of so many people, and I have seen His grace and blessings in my own life. Both experiences give me great hope, encouragement and peace in the present challenge and for the challenges to come.

An incredibly wise woman said this at church on Mother’s Day…

“It doesn’t always go right, but it ends right.”

We are facing some “mountains” right now. Instead of having my typical “freak out”, I am choosing to wait and to trust in Him.

In every trial, in every need, in every fear, in every doubt, I keep finding myself going back to these two verses…

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jerimiah 29:11

“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” – Matthew 7:11

He knows our circumstances.

He knows our needs.

He has plans for us.

Good plans.

He gives us good gifts.

Better gifts than we could give our own children.

We may be facing some giant needs, things we cannot provide or make a way for on our own, but God is so much BIGGER than all of our needs.

So I will { WAIT } in His peace and TRUST in His goodness, His sovereignty, and His perfect timing.

Bless and be blessed, y’all. 

Aging Gracefully?

A beautiful friend of mine posted a status on Facebook the other day that got me thinking. She was reflecting on something that we all face at some point. 

Aging. 

She began her post with this thought "I just realized that I am wearing a Star Wars T-shirts and ripped jeans, eating Hot Tamales, yet I have lots of gray hair, still get hormonal zits and I'm almost 37 years old.

Growing older is weird." 

Man I could so relate to her words. She might as well have been describing me. I have been sporting "fandom" t-shirts, ripped jeans, converse and hoodies as my fashion mainstays for the majority of my adult life. I never stopped to consider at what age I might have to start dressing like, well, an adult. Which, let's be honest, will probably never happen, except of course for church functions, and even then I usually just wear a t-shirt and jeans. ;) What can I say? It's who I am. 

Moreover, I never really thought about reflecting on my own experience with aging. Her thoughts were so relatable. Her description of what it’s like was so dead on. Her words gave me pause to think about what the ride had been like for me thus far. 

So, naturally, I started typing up a "quick" reply that turned into a big, long blog post. Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me all the time. I start out thinking I'll make a quick post about this or that and it ends up being a novel. o.O 

At any rate, I wanted to share what I wrote with y'all because, honestly, we are going to be there someday if we aren't already. Finding ourselves in that “messy middle”, between youth and old age, where the lines on your face are increasingly less blurry than the beginning and end of the transition from one phase to the next. So, hey, I figure, why not talk about it? Right?

This is what I wrote...

“Oh you can totally pull off middle school fashion for at least another decade or two, or five. ;)

I will probably still be wearing "fandom" shirts and chucks when I'm 80. Hahaha And, seriously, I waited my whole childhood to be able to own a pair of holey jeans, so I'm not giving those up anytime soon. :D

It's funny, when I was a kid all I wanted was to be grown up. Well, that and a fighter pilot, but still... When people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them that more than anything I just wanted to be "grown up".

I was so convinced that once I was a grown up, not only could I do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, but I wouldn't get hurt by people anymore. Hahaha yeah...

I thought at 30 I was finally a "real" adult. I wasn't a young adult anymore! I was so excited and proud. I had finally achieved my ultimate goal! Then I started thinking "Now what?"

I don't know if I thought I would feel suddenly different overnight or what, but at 36 the only times I feel vastly different than I did at 13 are when I look in the mirror, or look at my babies. (That aren't babies anymore.)

The world is still confusing. I still get hurt. The idea of doing what I want when I want makes me laugh a little.

There are days when defying limits is easier than it was at 13, and yet sometimes I still feel trapped by them.

When I was a kid I never factored in wrinkles, how many years and how much work it would take to get back in shape after 3 kids, or that doing the things I love, like going camping or working on cars, would take so much more effort. I was sure acne would be a distant, foggy memory and that I would be confident in everything I did.

Age really is nothing more than a number that marks the anniversary of our first breath. It doesn't change how we feel, determine what we can do, or magically transition us into a more "enlightened" being. With age we gain experience, which gives us some measure of knowledge that will hopefully one day become wisdom that we can pass down.

The passage of time reminds us that our bodies are ever changing, transitioning from one phase to the next, yet we are never fully "there", we are somehow still in between.

Age can point us in the direction we are going but it isn't strictly linear. There are days when I feel like a little kid again, bursting with excitement for the adventures to come, and there are days when mortality looks me in the eye and I realize I am not as young as I once was. Though I know that my time could end at any moment, I still feel a pressing urgency to do the things I regret having not yet done as I watch the sand passing through the hourglass of my life.

There is one thing age certainly doesn't get to change... my remarkable fashion sense. ;) haha

All that to say, I am right there with you, and I am so thankful that God brought me a friend as honest, raw and real as you. It is comforting to know that I am not the only one who loves Star Wars t-shirts and ripped jeans. ^_^

*Now I have the urge to blog about this... you inspire me, friend. <3”

Indeed she does, and indeed I did.

As Tony Horton, one of the people that seriously inspires me, said "Aging is for people that don't know any better." 

We don't have to let the passage of time dictate our reality. We don't have to embrace the notion that "getting older" means we become "tired-less healthy-can't have fun-boring" people.

We may be on this sinking ship together, my friends, but we don’t have to lament the loss of what was, or resign ourselves to an unappealing fate, we can celebrate the remaining moments, rejoice in the time we have, embrace who we are, love one another, encourage the younger generations and show them that growing older doesn’t have to be scary or sad, it can be one heck of a ride!

Be blessed y’all.

God is Funny Like That.

God has a funny way of doing things sometimes. 

His ways are so very different from our own. He takes the unexpected, things that we would never choose on our own, things that are painful, our fears, our weaknesses and uses them bring us exactly what we need. That is exactly what He did when He threw me into a room full of my fear to give me something I didn’t even know I needed.

So, for those of you that don’t know me I am not a "girly" girl. I like “boy” things like cars, guns, fishing, camping, sports… and to top it off I am a total geek. I love sci-fi, comics, video games… you get the picture. Now, when I say “girly” girl or “boy” things, I am not doing so to perpetuate the stereotypes that I wrestled with as a child, rather I am using those “labels” as they were applied to me in my youth to give you a picture of where I’m coming from with this. So to say I didn’t “fit in” well with most girls and that I was “shamed” by some of the boys and girls for being who I was, would be to put it nicely. Then there is the matter of how I think and experience things. I tend to be much more masculine in how I process things. 

So, all in all, I have an incredibly hard time relating to women. I'll be honest, they scare me. I jokingly tell people “I’m like a junior high boy that is scared to talk to girls, just for different reasons.”, and though I laugh, it is a very true statement. 

Now, I have been told a million times that I just need to “change” the things I like and try to “be like” other women, and I’ll finally “belong”. Let me be really real here for a second… Sure I wanted to “belong”, but not if I couldn’t belong as me. For who I am. Not for someone they think I “should” be. So, after more and more rejection had piled up, I quit trying to please people because I knew I couldn’t ever measure up. I found friends that would accept me for me, people I had common interests with, people I felt comfortable around. It just happened that most of them were guys, which in turn brought me more judgement, shame and rejection from people who didn’t understand that I really was “just friends” with them. They couldn’t see how friendship was all I wanted. What I couldn’t see what that some of them were honestly trying to look out for me. I just felt even more rejected. 

So imagine how overwhelmed I was when I decided to finally take the "leap", after being at our church for over 12 years, and start going to our monthly women’s social called “Women Mentoring Women”. Seriously y'all, when I walked into that room I was like "Oh my God, there are so many women... I can't do this."

I know that might sound weird, but that is how it was for me. I was terrified. Chalk it up to bad past experiences and self-esteem issues coupled with just being different than the "norm" and you'll get "why" I totally felt like a fish out of water in a sea of women.

Okay, so that first night was scary. I had to deal with the overwhelming fear of rejection, again. (Which, honestly, I had been avoiding at all costs.) I had NO idea what to say, but I was sure that no matter what I said, it would be the wrong thing. I had no idea if I was dressed "right", which may sound silly, but I had been judged and ridiculed for my “fashion sense”, or lack thereof, many times before. So on and so forth, you get the picture. I know that this might seem like a really small “problem” for many people, but for me it was all I could do to sit through the first night. 

The good news was, I survived! And relatively unscathed at that. 

Believe me, I was shocked. My survival was due mostly to the incredible women that I ended up sitting with. See, on my way in, I had this plan, there was one person I knew that I felt sort-of comfortable with, so I was hoping I could sit at her table. I figured I would need to ask permission to sit there… I had no idea how these things worked. Clearly. ;) 

On my way from the car to the building, while I was trying to work up the courage to even walk in there, let alone ask if I could sit with someone, a divine appointment met me. (Which is just a fancy way of saying God had a plan.) A lady I knew in passing happened to be walking to the building as well. She welcomed me and then I did something completely out of the ordinary for me… I told her this was my “first time”, that I didn’t’ know what to do, and that I was really nervous about this whole “women” thing. I couldn't believe I had just said that! As I began to beat myself up for "talking too much", she responded and her reply surprised me. She told me she could totally relate and invited me to sit at her table. Which as fate, or rather God had planned it, ended up being the table I was originally hoping to sit at! See, God is funny like that. He knows exactly what we need in each circumstance. 

The experience was not nearly as painful as I had anticipated, still, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go again. Eventually the other shoe would drop, right? Rejection was surely waiting for me at one of those meetings. At least, that was what I believed the “safe bet” outcome would be. Over the next couple weeks, I found so many things “coming up” that just made it unlikely that I would be “able” to go. Convenient, right? ;) *Whew* Totally dodged a bullet there! Am I right?! Yeah, not so much.

My oldest son was asked and happily agreed to be in charge of sound for these lovely little gatherings and I was "stuck" going. *sigh* Clearly God was telling me I wasn’t getting out of this one. At least I knew I wasn’t in this alone, He was with me. You know the saying, “If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it”? That is what I relied on. I approached this whole thing as some long-suffering trial that I would have to trudge through, but at least I knew God would be there to catch me when I fell. No doubt, flat on my face. 

You know, it is very true that what we believe is what we receive. What we expect is what we experience. I know that has, rather consistently, been the case in my own life. Yet, God, in all of His crazy-amazing love and kindness, decided to spare me that outcome in this event. He decided to show me something so vastly different than anything I had anticipated, and it all started with two “safe” people that God began my “women’s social” experience with.

After the first couple meetings I was finding that the wisdom shared by the incredible women, who so bravely got up in front of a room full of women to share part of their story (Can you imagine?!), became words I would hold onto in the coming days to build my faith and ultimately the faith of my children. Their words encouraged us in unexpected situations, they gave us hope, and they showed me a better way to walk through uncertainty than I would have chosen myself. God was speaking into my life, into my exact circumstances through these women at these events that I had been unwilling to attend for so long. Instead of expecting the worst, I began wondering what I had missed that would have made a difference in our lives.

{ Fast Forward }

This week was the last “formal” meeting of the year and I was so deeply blessed by it on so many levels. God blessed us greatly both in actual “needs” and “spiritually”. He provided for some needs for our family. He spoke so much of His beautiful truth to my heart. He reached into a place that I have been struggling with and He encouraged me, He gave me hope and He gave me inspiration. He did all of that through these amazing women that I had been so afraid of for far too long. We may have personality differences, different likes, different ways of processing, be different ages, at different stages in life and have different quirks, but we all have something in common. We all struggle. We all have needs. We all have fears. We all face battles. We all have hopes and dreams. We need encouragement. We need each other.

I let fear of judgment and rejection, that had been caused by totally different people, turn into my judgment of how all women would treat me, not based upon their own actions, but completely unjustly based on things done by others. I let the enemy use that fear to keep me from being built up, from forming new relationships, friendships, from wisdom and ultimately from the healing I so desperately needed. 

I hope I will never make that mistake again.

I have learned that, more often than not, the very thing we are most afraid of doing is exactly what will bring us the healing we long for. 

See, fear does not just keep you from bad, it prevents good.

I had to get out of my own head and out of my own way and let God work, in His beautiful way, in my life so that I could be set free from yet another lie and be able to continue to grow. 

Who would have thought that this girl, who was terrified of other women, would be asked, seven months later, and happily volunteer to be a “Mentor Mom”, who leads discussions at her table, for the next year?! 

I share all of that to say, don’t ever do yourself/others the disservice of completely discounting something or someone based upon negative experiences in your past. Each person and even each experience can be completely different than you expect and both have the potential to bless your life more than you could ever have imagined.

God’s ways are so very different from our own, but they are so, so much better. <3

Be blessed, y’all.