I Forgot to Pour My Morning Cup of Perfection

Good Morning, “Yes to God” girlfriends!

Ms. Perfection wanted to have the perfect post for you today. First thing in the morning…cleverly written…all tied up with a neat little literary bow at the end.

Oh, how she wanted to.

But instead, she made breakfast, put together lunches, counseled her daughter to please put on a sweater, drove carpool, counseled her son to go to school despite the fact that his arms hurt (for no apparent reason), made up beds and spent a few minutes with God. Her morning was complete with bed head and uneven skin tone on a make-up less face.

She's feeling far from perfect this morning...but has thoughts of you on her mind.

Because I want to post what is most helpful to you, I think it best I wait to read a few of your posts and/or comments. After doing that last week and praying through them, it helped me see where I should go with my post. I don’t want to simply restate what I have already said in the book but instead, speak to the issues you are dealing with after reading. I truly want to write what will be most helpful and encouraging to you.

So…if you will…either leave a comment here or post on your blog and link to Lelias (or do both). In between preparing for tomorrow night’s Bible Study and working on another writing project, I will be reading your comments. I hope to post something either later today or tomorrow, at latest.

And just so I'll feel better...will you agree to skip your morning cup of perfection with me? :)

Please at least humor the one with bed head.

Nothing Lucky About It

1. 13 years of reality checks.

2. 13 years of decisions to love and choices to forgive.

3. 13 years of “we just think differently.”

4. 13 years of the flu.

5. 13 years of learning how to put someone else first when everything within you says not to.

6. 13 years of tearful moments and sweet reunions.

7. 13 years of pulled covers, dirty dishes and washed socks.

8. 13 years of “Lord, help me.”

9. 13 years of grace and not taking yourself too seriously.

10.13 years of big hopes and even bigger dreams.

11.13 years of “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

12.13 years of checkbooks, check cards, and overdraft protection.

13.13 years of life…love…us.

Today, I share a 13 year celebration of life and love with my husband, Scotty. When we said our "I do's" on a cool fall night in front of my pastor/father, I am sure neither one of us had any clue what that really meant. I was too busy thinking about how pretty everything in the church looked and how well things had gone, and he was thinking about...well...the same thing he's been thinking about for 13 years. :) But after all the years that stretch between 1995 to 2008...the trials, the tears, the passion, the plans...and everything else in between, we celebrate exactly what those "I do's" represent. Neither one of us would say it's been easy. There's been no "luck" to it. It's been all God that two very independent and passionate people could become one, produce three more, and make it to 13.

Happy Anniversary, honey. Let's do 13 more.

P.S. The picture at the top was taken last year, when we renewed our wedding vows with 9 other couple friends. To watch a short video clip of this event, click HERE.

Convincible

For those of you who are not a part of the online study of Behind Those Eyes, thank you for stopping by! I hope you’ll come back for my Monday post, as I always post something to start out the week. But for this post, I simply have to share my heart with my sisters who are taking part in the study and have just finished chapter 1.

“Yes to God” Girlfriends,

I have started this post three different times.

And each time, when I’ve come back to it, I’ve been impressed to start over.

So tonight, I find myself here at the computer, back at it, again, desperately wanting to share my heart with you. I have really prayed over what to write and how to write what I am feeling. Since reading your comments over the past few days, I have more thoughts running through my head and heart than I could write in one blog post. To say I am overwhelmed is an understatement. And by the comments I’ve read, so are you.

My, my.

I have to tell you, after reading some of your comments, something happened to me that I wasn’t expecting. Instead of feeling euphorically happy that women representing 22 states and 2 from a different country are reading my book – my labor of love…I started feeling hugely responsible for the confliction you are clearly feeling in deciding whether or not to choose authenticity or stay in a place where you slip into pretense. I started to take it on and feel urgency like I have never felt before to help convince you that it really is that important to be real and walk in truth and that it really will change your life in ways you can’t even imagine. And in that state, I nearly forgot what this process is really all about.

As my wise and gentle Heavenly Father always does when I decide that what goes on in the world has to be managed by me or it will fall apart :), my sweet Jesus reeled my anxious heart back in and reminded me that my job was not to convince you of anything. I can encourage you. Hopefully, I will inspire you. But convincing you is not my territory. It is His.

And in order for Him to be able to do that, you have to be "convincible." And I have to get out of the way and let you two make that decision together.

Sisters, please know that I know this study pushes you. I know it makes you ask questions. I know it makes you think when staying numb would be so much easier. I know you want to fight against doing it, protesting all the way. But I also know that's not about me, or really, this book. And I pray you receive this in the way I intend and know where my heart is when I say this…that what you are really fighting is your own flesh that has ruled you for so long. I know this, because I have been there.

I know how hard it is to go against everything your mind and heart is telling you to do about running away from being real and honest. Believe me, I know.

I have laid in bed with a full body shake, knowing that good and evil were fighting over me and praying I was strong enough to let good win. I have told God I didn't think I was interested in truth if it was this raw, thank you very much. I have come a millimeter away from shutting this whole writing thing down and choosing to live a good, safe suburban life with no complications and nothing more required of me. If you only knew how close I’ve come.

The nights seem to be the worst. There were times through the process of writing Behind Those Eyes that I could literally feel an evil breath on my neck as I wrote. Like a terrorist in the night, Satan would creep into my house and threaten me with all the things he would do to me if I did this for God and went all the way with it. Sometimes I believed him. Sometimes I wanted to stop. Sometimes I wanted to forget that any of it happened and curl up in my bed and awake to Newberry with my wonderful husband and three precious kids.

And now I know why.

Because now, two years later…after precious women all over the country are reading words God so specifically gave me in those late night meetings at my computer...

…One woman will realize how pretending has ruined nearly every relationship she has had.

…One woman will see how her friendships never grew like she wanted them to because she wouldn’t let anyone in who might hurt her.

…One woman will decide for the first time in her life to walk in truth instead of walking away from it.

…One woman will lay her head on the pillow at night and finally dig deep enough to hit fertile soul.

…One woman will start a long overdue conversation with God about how she’s really doing.

…One woman will trust God enough to hold her heart in the process of getting real, even when she’s so afraid to make that leap she can hardly breathe.

One woman…
you.

And I understand.

I believe that after all this talk about getting real, after all the conversations, after all the prayerful promises, God is testing our hearts to see if we will honor Him with our lips or with our life. To see if we are going to succumb to our fears from the pit of a defeated master of manipulation or surrender to a presence far more powerful, bidding us to jump in with both feet.

My heart leaps when I hear that many of you are choosing to jump in.

And when you do, you become convincible. And you choose to walk in truth instead of walking away from it. And Satan’s operation gets shut down once and for all.

No wonder he’s fighting so hard to get you to bail.

As I close this very long blog, I want to leave you with one more thing I recently shared with Lelia. It is my strongest belief that though all of us are drawn to a place of comfort and safety, there is also something inside of us that craves much more. There is something in us that desires to be challenged. And we are willing to go there as long as we know two very important things…

~There will be a desired result at the end that is better than what we are currently experiencing in our life…

and

~Someone will be there for us through the process of truth, no matter how painful it gets.

Can I tell you tonight, girlfriends, that He promises both?

So, let it go. Let yourself go there. Jump in with both feet. Be convincible.

A Little Truth Telling, anyone?

Ok, can I first just say...how weird is it to review your own book? :)

Actually, you may be glad to know that it is not what I am going to do, on this Tuesday or any Tuesday for the next 10 weeks of Lelia’s online Bible Study of Behind Those Eyes. To be completely honest, it’s hard to be objective when you know the hours you stayed up guzzling coffee to string a sentence together and birth a writing project such as this. Obviously, it’s a passion of mine and something I am deeply attached to or I wouldn't have written it. It's also something I firmly believe God placed on my heart that He wanted me to share with women -- in fact, with you.

But to say that I am excited about joining you for this study is an understatement. I am so honored and humbled that women from all over the country and even, abroad (!), would be so eager to read this book and share what it meant to you. I gave it to God when I wrote it, and I give it to Him, again, and whatever comes out of it that touches your heart.

Having said that, I want to start out today’s post by saying that if there was one thing I would want you to take away from reading chapter one of Behind Those Eyes, (The Truth Hurts) it would be for you to realize just how important truth is to your life.

We say it…we know it…but do we live it?

Sometimes. When it feels good or gets us what we need or think we want.

When faced with moments like the one I experienced in the hair salon I write about in chapter one (which was the catalyst for this book, by the way), we make a choice. We decide to be real or seem perfect. We determine to let down or act completely confident. We give ourselves permission to be sad or pretend to be gloriously happy. Or best of all, we hide our true feelings and instead, appear super spiritual. Which is where the characters we will meet over the next 4 weeks come in.

At the point at which we choose pretense over authenticity, we make a decision to walk away from truth instead of walking in it. It’s where I believe many of us currently reside.

David in the Bible was certainly someone who could identify with walking away from truth instead of walking in it. After all, when you scope someone out you want to sleep with, commit the act, get her pregnant and arrange to have her husband killed so you can cover up for it, you could easily consider your self having walked away from the truth.

But fortunately for David, that was not the end of his story. Because the man who grew from a shepherd boy to the ruler of the nation of Israel…the same one who famously killed the giant Goliath with a rigged up weapon and saved his people from the mean and nasty Philistines remembered what life was life when he once lived in truth. Before the days he walked away from it. And I believe he knew the difference and probably longed for his old way of life. B.T.L.-- Before The Lies.

Like every chapter that follows it, chapter one of Behind Those Eyes has a verse attached to it. If you read the chapter you likely already know what Psalm 51:6 in the Message translation says… “What you’re looking for is truth from the inside out.” The interesting thing to note about that verse is that when it was written was right after the time David was confronted by the prophet Nathan over his sin with Bathsheba. So I suspect that at that point, telling the truth was on the forefront of David’s mind.

But there is another interesting thing to notice about this whole message of truth as it applies to David. Just 4 verses later, in the same chapter in Psalm, David wrote one of the most famous verses in all of the Bible, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.” It’s as if in verse 6 he tells us what we want and in verse 10 he tells us how to go about getting it! In order to live and walk in truth we have to first clean out the corners of our heart and be of right spirit with God. It simply won’t work any other way.

Though we may wish for them, there are really no shortcuts to living and walking in truth. It is a daily, hourly, and...if you’re like me...minute by minute process of purposeful commitment to being real and honest about who I am…who He is…and yes, even where I’ve been to bring me to this point in my life.

So as you do the Bible study questions in the back of the book and as you face the challenge question head on and do your “getting real” call to action, please remember that this study will not have the same meaning for you if you try to do it before you ask God to do some good heart cleaning. You can’t be like the one who plays softball and waits to receive the ball but stands there without their glove on. Otherwise, you will be ill equipped to receive the nuggets of truth in your own life God wants to present to you through the chapters.

I have learned a lot since writing Behind Those Eyes, nearly 2 years ago. I have seen God change my own heart about the level at which my life is committed to being real and genuine. And yes, I have also had times I wanted to revert back to my old ways of walking away from truth or cleaning out only parts of my heart, but leaving the really deep and painful things in there.

But the one thing that hasn’t changed since I started this journey to be real is the fact that sometimes the truth just plain hurts. Sometimes it is inconvenient. Sometimes it pushes me to do some open heart surgery and face what’s inside that is not healthy. Sometimes it is ugly and sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. But it has always, always been (and I suspect always will be) the determining factor in what I do for God.

He is truth, and His truth alone is what sets us free. And if you’ve looked in the back of the book, you know that’s where we are eventually headed.

May God convince you today that telling the TRUTH is worth the risk of giving up the act.

See you and Ms. Perfection next Tuesday!

The Club

The longer I am a woman, the more I realize that we are all very much the same.

No matter what our ethnicity, our age, our social status, marital status or our hair color, we are a part of a unique club of chromosome sharing humans. Though we are each on individual journeys, we all share many of the same desires, the same disappointments, and the same dreams. All of us, in the club.

We all want to be liked and we all need to feel needed.

We all juggle life’s responsibilities and long to make a difference.

We all wish we could change things about our life and wonder if we are to blame.

We all struggle to get real…struggle to be honest…struggle to walk in truth.

We all want more than we have, have more than we deserve, and wish we knew in the deepest places of our heart that it was enough.

And somewhere, dwelling inside all of us, is that little girl who longs to be noticed and screams inside to be heard and wants to feel significant.

We aren’t even that good at hiding it.

When our girlfriends choose to go to lunch without us, we go back to being that little girl who didn’t get chosen for kickball or the cheerleading squad. Hurt.

When we watch our child walking away from truth instead of walking in it, we think about the compromises we made along the way and how they changed our life in ways we didn’t want them to. Regret.

When someone we love tells us they don’t love us anymore, we silently wonder if anyone ever really did or anyone ever really will. Rejection.

Even though we know better. We still think these things.

In our defense, we didn’t gain entrance into this club without some emotional coaching along the way. The truth is, these feelings have been with us for quite awhile.

We learned early on that it is important to be strong and hold it together. That’s what our momma did and that’s just what members of the club do.

We realized right from the start that what we looked like would matter more to people than it should and we might as well do something about that. The club does discriminate against it’s own, and we know it all too well.

We sensed that guilt would be apart of our daily life and so would fear. Those are two things we knew club members would have in common, if nothing else. So we practiced them, continually.

And although the club’s membership is full of women of all different shapes and sizes, there are many common emotional threads that bind us. We may wear the look of an athletic woman. Or the soccer mom who just burnt the dinner. Or the executive in red stilettos with Wall Street on her mind. Or the retired woman who paces herself for the first time in her life. Or the girl next door who likes to curl up with a good book and a hot cup of coffee, especially when it’s raining. Or the artsy eclectic who likes to express herself in ways most people don’t understand and really just likes to be left alone.

But inside, we are all a part of the club. We all know that shopping is a great way to medicate ourselves when we feel really bad about something, and food never talks back or loves us any less. We all know that we will never accomplish enough to make ourselves feel accomplished, but we still have to try. We all know that chick flicks don’t tell us about real life, but we secretly wish they did.

But there are some other things we DON’T fully know that we need to.

We need to know in the deepest places of our heart that we are completely accepted and loved completely by God. That we aren’t perfect, but we don’t have to be because being flawed is part of what makes forgiveness possible. That who we are has nothing to do with the labels people attach to us, even when those labels feel good. That we don’t have to hold it all together and in fact, we are not supposed to.

That being a part of the club doesn’t automatically mean that we will always do things the way we’ve done them or think the way we have thought or function the way we have functioned.

But rather, it is, being a part of a group of chromosome sharing humans who are meant to walk this life together with fingers entwined and hearts knitted who aren’t afraid to admit they sometimes feel like that little girl who didn’t get chosen for kickball.

Because, well...we club members just understand.

P.S. For those of you who are going to be participating in Lelia’s online study of Behind Those Eyes starting tomorrow, I am so excited to share this journey with you! I will be blogging every Tuesday about each of the chapters, and I hope you will come back and visit me to read more about my thoughts on each one and maybe get some insight into what God put on my heart to write about. And...if you want to participate, there is still time for you! Even if you aren’t, I hope you will visit anyway, as I think you will find something here that you can relate to during these 10 weeks. I will likely be blogging more than once a week during that time, so check back often!

Baptists Gone Wild!

I interrupt my regularly scheduled deep and (hopefully!)meaningful post to bring you something that will not help you on your journey. That is, unless you happen to find yourself in a dark alley with this motley crew. Word to the wise. If misfits looking like these approach you on the street, run. Fast. In the other direction.

Then again, they might be true innocents just on their way home from one of our class socials at church. In which case, they are likely nursing a karaoke hangover and forgot to take off their costumes.



Of course, if you wanna get all spiritual about it, you could call what we did Friday night “karaoke evangelism.” My very wise and witty friend, Caroline(www.crosseyedcafe.com) coined the phrase, and frankly, I like it. In her words, “I think we would have more converts to Christianity if people just realized that God is all for some good, sober silliness.” I couldn’t have said it better, myself, and couldn’t agree more! :) We did have some fun Friday night at our 2nd Annual Whittle Class American Idol Karaoke Night!

But lest you begin putting Caroline up on a spiritual pedestal for her very insightful comment, please refer to her next musing in an email that circulated the morning after…“Take note Wikipedia: two manmade wonders of the world can be seen from space—the Great Wall of China and Garrett’s white belly.” Now, does that woman have a way with words, or what?

And just because I know you’re a curious group of readers…I present to you the infamous belly of which Caroline was referring to...

Garrett, Pre-Britney and white belly…

Garrett, Post-Britney and white belly…




















That Garrett is one very tall and secure man, even in his Britney wig and silk knee highs. (Umm...does Britney wear camo?) Though, after “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” and “Genie in a Bottle,” I began seeing the trend in preference of musical selections. Clearly, Garrett is taken with pop princesses of the 90’s. (Sara, start worrying.)


Speaking of synthetics, I do have to say, I think the men (not mentioning any names, Van) liked the wigs a wee bit too much. Case and point…my friends, “L"-axyl and “T"-ash, aka, Axyl and Slash. Wait – is that Axyl on a cell phone? In the middle of "Sweet Child O'Mine?" Who’s he calling? Rehab? Or his tattoo artist, to get his money back?


And if these two try to convince you that they can dance, please tell them that your momma didn’t raise a fool and you aren’t buying what they’re selling. Unless, of course, it comes with a heating pad and some Advil and Icy Hot. Which will be, by the way, what they will be using to ease the strains they got somewhere between Walking Like an Egyptian, Getting Knocked Out and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. (watch this Utube clip for some insight --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg)

Of course, with sweet performances like this one from our Greasers, the night did have its tamer moments.
















Michael Jackson graced us with his presence, glove and all...
















As did some Jackson wannabes... (Thriller, anyone?)
















And yes, even my wise and witty friend, Caroline, made an appearance. At the Love Shack, of course. Though I personally feel her hair could have been bigger.
















So another Whittle class function has gone off without a "hitch" or a "glitch." Neither of which was something I had to perform.

Thankfully. :)

The One

Someone posted this picture of me on Facebook yesterday.

My first thought in seeing it was, “Oh my! Who is that girl and where was her mother when she walked out the door of her house?” Yes, it’s a scary sight, friends. But give grace, ok? It was the early 90’s!

And that was BEFORE hair extensions. :)

But after adjusting to the sight of my former self (I don’t ever remember being that skinny, by the way!), I thought about something I asked my Bible Study girlfriends to do not long ago that turned out to be a powerful exercise.

We were going through my first book (co-authored with my mother, Kathie Reimer), The 7 Hardest Things God Asks a Woman to Do, and we were at chapter five: God Asks a Woman to Hold On/Let Go. It’s a chapter my mother wrote, and for me, it is one of the most powerful chapters in the entire book, as it talks about some very specific things we need to hold on to in our walk and those things we need to let go of in order to live out in freedom! In a study setting, it always brings out lots of great discussion and provokes many personal feelings and thoughts.

This night was no exception. Women were open and sharing from their heart about how God spoke to them in what they had read. We were just about to pray and close when I asked them to do something that brought on a whole new wave of emotions in all of us.

Prior to arriving, I had asked the women to bring a picture with them from the year they graduated from high school. I asked them to bring it out, hold it in their hands, and look at it -- to look at that young woman in the photo and in the quietness of her heart, silently tell her some things. I asked them to tell her, based on what the woman sitting there today knew and the experiences she’d gone through since that picture was taken, what that young woman in the picture would need to let go of in those 10 or 15 or 20 years between. And then I asked her to tell that young woman in the picture what she would need to hold onto in those years in between, as well.

The exercise made quite an impact. It brought many tears to many eyes. It brought back strong feelings and deep emotions. Including some of my own.

As a tear rolled down my cheek, I looked at that young smiling woman in the picture with her royal blue cap and gown on, and gave her some advice she probably never would have wanted to hear and hoped to never need to know. That young woman, so full of life, probably never knew how much she would need to let go of or hold onto. After all, she was much too busy dreaming big dreams and planning big things. She never knew what the next nearly 20 years would mean for her. She wasn’t supposed to know.

She didn’t know how important it would be for her to let go of…
…those bad decisions she made on graduation night, just 24 hours later.
…those ideals of perfection she was sure she could achieve if she tried hard enough.
…those feelings of inadequacy that made her look for love in all the wrong places.
…those misconceptions in her head that caused her to confuse the truth with a lie.
…those college days, laced with temporary fun, loaded with tons of regret.
…those past mistakes…so they wouldn’t rule or ruin her life or relationships and eat away at her soul.

She also didn’t know about some of the things she would need to hold onto in those nearly 20 years...like...
…her strong upbringing in the church.
...her childlike faith.
…a healthy sense of self and healthy fear of God.
…the importance of respect and character, for herself and toward others.
…the priority of marriage, even when it wasn't the fantasty life she expected it to be.
…the gifts from God, in whatever form they came, and not take them for granted.
…an awareness of what this life -- her life -- is really all about and for what purpose she was made.

And yesterday, when I saw that picture on Facebook, of the same girl I talked to in my graduation picture, I thought about this holding on and letting go thing all over, again. I looked at her with love, and I looked at her with care.

And I gave her grace. She couldn’t have known those things at the time. Life had not afforded her that wisdom or experience at that point. But she now knows. And how her life looks the next 10-15-20 years largely depends on what she does with what she now knows.

...what she now holds onto and what she now lets go of.

And whether she has big hair, short hair, post-baby hips or really young girl thin ones, she is still that same girl in the picture. She is still born to do the same things she was born to do in a Houston hospital in the early 70’s. She is still created with the same DNA make-up she had at birth. Her physical make-up may have changed from 1990 to 2008, but that is only a matter of preference and the natural aging process. It has nothing to do with who she really is.

And so…though I may cringe over the styles in this picture of me from 1990, I also have to see it with the eyes of my Creator and know that the girl in that picture was and is now on a journey that will have many ups and downs. Many twists and turns. Many high moments and many really, really low ones.

But in every up and down…twist and turn…high and low moment…one thing remains the same.

My beautiful Jesus.

The One to hold onto.

And it gives me a new thing to tell that young woman in the picture.

P.S. After posting this today, I realized that this is my 100th post. I never realized it when I wrote it, and I always thought about trying to post something clever for my 100th to mark that milestone. Funny...I think this turned out to be the best way I never thought of. :)