Month: April 2018

helping our daughters survive the culture of likes, snaps and views.

Facebook…. Instagram….blogging…. YouTube….there are so many ways to be “seen” in our world today.

There are so many ways to be rejected by our world…

so many ways to feel less than in our world…..

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 NIV

HE knew who HE wanted us to be before we were born. we are uniquely gifted to do the job HE has for us to do….It may be smiling at someone, changing 20 diapers, driving jr. high kids to youth group, loving your husband well,  helping with homework, giving your neighbor a ride, leading a Bible study or writing a book. ALL ARE ETERNALLY IMPORTANT. The most important thing you will do today will not be “post-able”… I promise.

I am a married mom of 5 and I STILL feel the pressure to show the world “post-able” moments to make me feel VISIBLE, IMPORTANT, REAL…My heart breaks for all of us who feel that when we don’t get enough “likes”  we are not

LIKED!

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR KIDS?!?!?!

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES?!?!?!?!

Here’s the deal, we were never meant to compete with the entire world for attention and approval. we are not all supposed to be famous, talented, funny, beautiful, rich or briliant…..we just aren’t!

I know that everywhere we turn we are told that we are to reach for the stars, be all that we can be, if you work hard enough you can do ANYTHING, be ANYTHING. It is just not true. I am a 47-year-old woman, I will never be a pro football player, I will never have a 21-year-old body again and I will most likely never be in a Hallmark movie or write a best seller….. (although I have not given that one up completely :-))

BUT SERIOUSLY

I want to be

CONTENT

I love this story of a king who went into his garden one morning and found everything withered and dying. He asked the oak that stood near the gate what the trouble was. He found it was sick of life and determined to die because it was not tall and beautiful like the pine. The pine was all out of heart because it could not bear grapes like the vine. The vine was going to throw its life away because it did not have as fine fruit as the peach tree; and so on all through the garden. Coming to a heart’s-ease, he found its bright face lifted, as cheery, as ever.  “Well, heart’s-ease, I’m glad, amidst all this discouragement, to find one brave little flower. You do not seem to be the least disheartened.” “No I am not of much of account, but I thought that if you wanted an oak, or a pine, or a peach tree, or a lilac, you would have planted one; I knew you wanted a heart’s-ease, I am determined to be the best little heart’s-ease that I can.”

So….I am going to look to the CREATOR for my identity rather than the created. Believing that HE knows what HE is doing.

I am going to be the very best Cyndi I can be…

SPACE FOR TRUST

    You keep him in perfect peace
    whose mind is stayed on you,
    because he trusts in you.

Isaiah 26:3

Can I just tell you how sick I am of falling for the enemy’s tricks over and over again! It makes me so angry when I think of all the times I have spoiled a perfectly good day by letting fear of what may happen tomorrow creep in.

And I am not talking generic thoughts here…I have literally been in tears while in my imagination I am standing next to a coffin of a person who is alive and well…probably sleeping next to me! How I grieve the moments that I have wasted worrying about things I can not change.

Here’s the thing, some very sick, unrealistic, crazy part of me thinks that if I can dream up every bad thing that could possible happen then somehow I can keep it from happening….crazy right!?!?

I have shed REAL TEARS over IMAGINARY circumstances!

There is nothing wrong with preparing for the future. In fact God tells us to count the costs before we do anything but there IS something VERY wrong with living in fear of a future that is in HIS hands….do I trust HIM??

Do I live like I  believe Philippians 4:4-7

 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

Let your reasonableness[d] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;

 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I WANT TO BE A PHILIPPIANS 4 WOMAN!!!

The problem is that I know that loving JESUS does not spare me from all the scary things that happen here on earth. People who love and serve GOD get cancer, spouses die, children die, jobs are lost, bad things happen everyday and I KNOW that I am not exempt, NO ONE IS.

So what do we do with that?????

Today as I prayed…as I kicked and screamed and cried in my FATHERS lap, I heard HIM say once again, “my grace is sufficient for you”. I wanted to argue, I wanted to say “yes but what if ‘this or that’ happens”?!?!

Here’s the thing. He does not give us the grace and strength to deal with tomorrows sorrows today. HE says “do not worry about tomorrow for today has enough trials of its own”.  He did not give the Israelites enough manna for tomorrow but only provided enough for each day. HE will give us the grace and strength that we need for our tomorrows when we need it but not before.

Please hear me……

WORRYING ABOUT EVERY POSSIBLE HORRIBLE THING THAT MIGHT HAPPEN DOES NOT GIVE YOU CONTROL OF ANYTHING!!!!!

too may times I have used up all of today’s strength and grace with tomorrows worries. leaving me ill equipped for the tasks set before me.

NOT TODAY SATAN!!!

NOT TODAY!

today I will  have hope because

MY FUTURE IS IN HIS HANDS

today I will choose peace because

HE HAS PROVEN HIMSELF ENOUGH FOR ME

 today I will put ALL my trust in HIM

I WILL REFUSE TO LIVE IN FEAR

I WILL REFUSE TO GRAB FOR PRETEND CONTROL

I WILL REFUSE TO LET AN UNKNOWN FUTURE ROB ME OF TODAY’S JOY

I will live as if I really really really believe HIS promises and I will stop falling for the enemy’s same old tricks.

today I will choose to be a proverbs 3:5 woman

(i will) Trust in the Lord with all MY heart,
    and (will not) lean on MY own understanding.

care to join me???

 

Embrace your ONE

 

It is so easy to miss our ONE when all we can see is the EVERYONE.

This has been such a hard week. Too many friends are hurting and there is absolutely nothing i can do to stop it.  I have friends to sick to leave their home, .friends who have lost children,  are getting divorced, are running from God,  have financial pressures, have husbands with cancer…the list goes on.  My temptation is to hide. to give up,  to convince myself that nothing I do can make a difference.

Add on a mom who need surgery, a child with chronic headaches and not sleeping myself thanks to the fact that I am “middle aged” (really????!?!?!!?!?!) and the discouragement this week has been real my friends.

so, as I do not feel I have any wise words to pass on this week, I will leave you with this assurance….

Psalm 34:18

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

AND

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid

 

I have been reading this week in Ephesians 6 that we are to wear the shoes of peace. That peace is what will get us to where HE wants us to go. We are not ready for the battle if we have not put our footwear on. I had never thought of that before. We can not be ready for what GOD has asked us to do if you stay in anxiety and fear.

We will miss our ONE if we get to overwhelmed by the EVERYONE.

I confess to you that my ONE has felt more like 10 this week and it has robbed me of HIS peace. So excuse me while I put my shoes on…..

see you next week! in the meantime I re-visited this great message today, thought you might like it too!

Embrace transformation

Your were taught with regard to your former way of life, to PUT OFF YOUR OLD SELF,  which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to PUT ON the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.  Eph.4:22-23

Have you ever met someone for the first time and come away feeling like you met an actress playing a part and not a real person? Have you ever gone to work or church or a party and came away exhausted because you had just given an award winning performance?

It takes a lot of courage to let people see who we really are. It takes a lot of humility and vulnerability to become the person we were meant to be.

I learned something fascinating about the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly. A caterpillar does not create a chrysalis, it exposes it. You have to watch this! its amazing! The caterpillar even starts out in a J shape!

The caterpillar has to do all the hard work of getting the old skin off, it has to surrender ALL of its old self COMPLETLY in order for the metamorphosis to begin! likewise, For our transformation to begin, we must be vulnerable and humble enough to shed our protective skin.

This makes me think of the scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace is a dragon and trying desperately to rid himself of the dragon skin. He  painfully gets the top few layers off but he is not able to get all the layers off, only  Aslan (Jesus) can remove the deepest ones.

some layers are harder to get off than others, Jesus is there to help us in that walk. HE knows how hard it is to give up all you are in order to become all you are created to be. HE was GOD and became human, HE was a healthy 33-year-old and surrendered HIS earthy role in order to fulfil HIS heavenly one. He knows what it means to humble himself…HE suffered the cross!

It is PAINFUL to do this work! It does not feel natural to “Put off our old self” I think that is why churches are filled with caterpillars trying desperately to make their own wings. filled with advice on how to make the best wings, What colors to avoid, how to fashion them just right in order to fit in with the rest of the butterflies….

The problem is caterpillars can not fly, no matter how beautiful the wings. It breaks my heart to watch people strap these “wings” onto their backs, and then spend years feeling guilty because they can’t figure out how to fly.

I spent WAY to many years creating my own wings, and telling others how to make theirs better! Complete surrender for a control freak does not come easy. Here’s the thing, we  can never fly with wings we have created… no matter how good they look. In fact I have found that the better they look the harder they are to surrender.

There are still days when I walk around on my tiny butterfly feet because I forget that HE has given me wings. OH, but HE has! I am so thankful for the days when I feast on HIS nectar and enjoy a treetop view.

Some of us have to have our created wings torn off in order to begin the process of complete surrender, I did, I hope you do not. My prayer for you this week is that you will have the courage to lay down your own wings, have the courage to shed your caterpillar skin,  surrendering every cell of your being to the only one who can create a butterfly out of a caterpillar.