When You Think You Aren’t Enough

June 11, 2013 by 54 Comments

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“Jen Hatmaker’s going to be on the Today Show this morning, do you know her,” H asked me through the suds of toothpaste and the purr of his electric toothbrush. I was standing at the sink, pulling my headphones out of my ears, sweat dripping down my back after an early morning walk.

“Oh, she is,” I said excitedly, “I love her and no, I don’t know her the way you are asking. I’m sure it’s about her blog post that went viral.”

H knows my writing friends by name now, though he’s never met any of them in person.  It isn’t uncommon for him to read something on-line or in this case on television and recognize a writer’s name, then ask me if I know them. I take the liberty of showing him photos when the opportunity arises. It helps lessen the confusion when I talk about more than one person who shares the same name.

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That’s what happened over the weekend, when we meandered through Barnes and Noble after eating salads on tall chairs and people watching behind our sunglasses. We were on a rare date night when I spotted Heather Kopp’s new book, Sober Mercies, stacked on a table among others. “Here’s Heather,” I said pointing to her picture on the inside jacket, “this is her new book, I can’t wait to read it.”

Then I pulled my phone from my purse, took an Instagram, shared it on Facebook and Twitter and tagged Heather in it. You knew that was coming, right?

As I scan the shelves of two small rows holding stacks of Christian titles, I realize that I know many of the authors personally since I started blogging just under two years ago. I’ve shared my writing on their websites, conversed through email, Skyped and texted with a few, even hugged the necks of some.

So why do I feel disconnected? Or is it that I fear disconnection?

“Oh look, there is Holley’s book,” I say pointing to You’re Made for a God Sized Dream on the top row. I turn the cover facing it outward on the shelf. “Ya know, the Christian writing world is actually quite small isn’t it?”

H nods; arches his eyebrows and smiles. Not front page news to him.

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Sometimes I get caught up squinting through a porthole and miss standing in front of the picture window.

The same way I lose perspective when I falsely imagine the lives of other people and decide that I’m not enough in comparison.

Because when we compare ourselves, we are rarely enough.

Good enough.

Smart enough.

Spiritual enough.

Skinny enough.

Worthy enough.

Sexy enough.

Strong enough.

You fill in the blank. I’m not _________ enough. Because we all have the blanks you know? That’s one of the fallacies of not enough-ville. We think everyone else is enough and we got the leftovers. Or we just got left, period. Or passed over.

There is a tendency for me to build an entire landscape from a patch of my own near-sighted perspective. And miss the truth.

In God’s economy, we are enough.  Because He is enough.

Forget that? Yeah, me too.

So how do we reclaim what we know to be true? That we are enough, just the way we are today, sitting bare faced with two day old hair in pajamas at noon.

We don’t allow circumstances to bully us.

We tell ourselves the truth by steeping in The Truth.

And we talk to someone that we trust who will empathize with us. Not someone who will tell us what we want to hear or rush to fix. Just empathize and pray.

It’s in the place of community that our slanted perceptions right themselves and become clear pathways of perspective. And we become who God created us to be. Enough.

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Sometimes empathy comes in a nod or the vulnerable Facebook status update of a blogger after an interview on the Today Show who says, “You guys! I did it! And I didn’t die! I was wearing dirty clothes, but whatever. Russell Brand and I chatted in between his trips to the bathroom to throw up. The hosts were AWESOME. I was a giant she-man among them. They are tiny people. Yay, Today Show!!”

And empathy can show up in your inbox too. Words of a friend who just happens to be the author of the book you held in your hands at a bookstore. The one who believes in you and your writing and tells you the truth:

I think as writers we make the mistake to think that if God is asking us to do something that he will then prove it by making it easy. He will prove it by making it successful. He will prove it by letting it happen quickly and feel like a miracle–TaDa! We think our sweet spot is the same thing as our comfort zone and the two have nothing to do with each other, you know?

Yes, I know. I’m grateful for the reminder.

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This post is inspired by the first four chapters of Daring Greatly by Brene Brown and is linked with SheLoves Magazine for their Reclaim series, Laura, Jen, Jennifer, and Emily.

 

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When You Get Lost Following the Crowd

March 20, 2013 by 9 Comments

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Awakened before my family, I lean on the kitchen counter, sip tea and wipe slumber on my pajama sleeves. Push the butcher knife through peeled potatoes, slice skinny carrots into barbarian wheels, and chop onions until fumes keep my eyes sealed shut. It’s after I pull the leg of lamb from the brown paper wrapper and lay it on the cutting board that tears begin to form. And I lay the knife down.

I cook every day, but today as I prepare Sabbath dinner in my crockpot, I see an innocent lamb raised somewhere by an unknown farmer, giving its life for my stew. I thank God for the sacrifice. And the dominoes of what I know about Jesus stacked neatly on the floor of my faith; they collide into a sighing heap.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. Isaiah 53:7 ESV

In a world of chatter and endless news updates I’m thinking about His silence. How Jesus didn’t defend himself, have a platform or place to lay His head at night. Leaning on the shoulder of the well-meaning should, I’m weary; enslaved by the ten points of other’s, simulating their success.

I want to hide in the corner, curl up in His lap. And learn from what He tells me not to say.

I’m honored to be the featured write for Imperfect Prose at Emily Wierenga’s place. Won’t you click over and finish the story there? I’d love to meet you in the comments.

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On Being Known

March 11, 2013 by 34 Comments

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My family had just settled into our menus around a square table when I spotted friends out of the corner of my eye, coming through the front door of the restaurant. A family I hadn’t seen since the church split three months ago. Our eyes met. I stood up in response to the smile that spread across her face. And swallowed the lump in my throat.

She reached her arms around me and said, “I just caught up on your blog posts today so I feel like I’m all caught up on Shelly.” I shook my head and smiled through her chuckles.

It’s becoming more common for me now and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it; the gift of someone reading my words and then letting me know about it. It’s humbling. And in cases like this: healing.

A few weeks after that brief encounter, I sat behind the wheel of my van on the way to pick up my son from school, feeling the ambient light warm up my face as I slowed toward the stop light. I thought about what she said to me, how she felt caught up on my life and we hadn’t seen one another in three months. Our sons had each grown a foot taller.

I scrolled through similar conversations in my mind. Some while leaning on the handles of shopping carts among the produce or standing behind the trunk of my car. Over lattes at Starbucks and seated next to strangers in pews, I thought about how often I’d heard the echo, sometimes from people I’d just met.

And I told God, as tall palms blurred past, how ironic that is for me. How quiet my life is now, how little I feel known by anyone in my community. “Why is that,” I asked Him.

“They read my words too and they feel like they know me,” He said. “I am a man of sorrows.”

I bent over the rail of my loneliness, the altar strewn with questions beginning “why”.  And He answers each one the same way. “I know you.”

Sometimes community fits perfectly in the empty room of our wondering and we learn from the fullness of its silence. That we’re only truly known by an audience of One.

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But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. Isaiah 53:3, MSG

Linking with Ann and counting thanks over the way God speaks when I least expect it. That He is often silent but never still in His love for us. Also in community with Laura, Michelle, Jen and Heather.

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Welcome to My {Not So Random} New Home

February 12, 2013 by 43 Comments

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Welcome to my new blog home! I’m ready to take you on the tour of each room, hoping you will feel comfortable enough to help yourself to what you find in the refrigerator afterward. You know, every piece of furniture, paint color, and in this case, every tab, holds a story. If I could, I would stand in the center of each room and share them all with you. All my stories of the way God led me to each decision.

An armoire stands next to the wall in the entryway of my house, a towering piece of inlaid, meticulous beauty like a question hidden underneath your dinner plate waiting to be answered. “How did you get that piece of furniture through the door,” they ask wide eyed, every time, on the first visit through the door.

My answer is always the same, “It breaks down into several pieces. Yes, even the eight foot mirror that weighs several hundred pounds is a separate piece.” It is a beloved wedding gift from my in-laws, one we’ve taken apart and put back together like a jigsaw puzzle in eight household moves.

And just like that armoire, all the pieces in the architecture of this new space come together to create a piece of art; the scaffolding of story holding it up to welcome you into this community.

I called Michelle to ask about designing a new header knowing her skills were way out of my league. Though we share a mutual pastor friend, we’ve never met. She lives in Chattanooga but we felt like next door neighbors after the first five minutes of conversation.

When I told her how much I love this particular design, especially the script used in Redemptions Beauty, she replied with a story that still gives me chills when I share it:

“Since you’ve chosen that particular design, I’d love to share the story of the script that I used for Redemptions Beauty… My dad is a font designer and he based “Petronella” on his mother’s handwriting. I have never used it for any project before, but felt that it was perfect for your blog.
My grandmother lived two doors down from the Frank family in Holland and during WW2 she travelled to South Africa to serve as a nurse. She missed home desperately, so she filled whole journals with daily letters to her sister. Meanwhile, her sister back home was also writing journals. Whenever possible, they convinced various soldiers, doctors, etc. to deliver the books to each other. Petronella stayed in South Africa after the war and, after many years of waiting and much prayer, met my grandfather. She became a mid-wife and delivered all the babies in a small, poor, mountain town for years. After she died, my Dad’s aunt sent him her journals. They are absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful to read. I thought you might appreciate that there’s true heart and much redemption tied into the typography.”

God embodies every intricate detail of our lives, even in the design of a new blog site. He loves in the way that makes our heart sing, our tears pool, and cheeks hot with the revelation of being truly known.

The more I learn of Christ, the more I know that nothing in life is random. The font called Petronella that carries the handwriting of redemption for decades and rests here on my blog, that isn’t random. And your visit here today, that’s not random either. Go ahead, look around and then come back with a friend. We have a lot of food in the refrigerator.

I’m so grateful to Arthur at Outstanding SetUp for his tireless and quick response to all my emails that took my blog from a .com to .org. For Jeff Goins being kind enough to have a conversation with me about next steps for my writing life and Dan King for the way he so generously gave up his time to teach me the technical foreign language of setting up Mail Chimp. I’m thankful for Michelle Newton at Tiny Bungalow Design for making it all look so pretty and for Kandi Pfieffer’s photography skills and her enthusiasm about shooting on a freezing day in the middle of an empty field with a zebra chair!

Linking with Jennifer, Jen, Heather, Laura, and Ann.

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What is Saving Your Life?

December 20, 2012 by 42 Comments

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“Sometimes [salvation] comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works.” Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church

I stood in the middle of my narrow walk-in closet, like a child in the forest under rows of sweaters bowing their branches to inspect the crown of my head. My skirt crumpled to the floor around my ankles, I grabbed an empty hanger and I heard these words, “Blogging is saving your life right now.” And the folding chair of my frame collapsed on the floor with my skirt. While my family made sandwiches for lunch after church, I sobbed under the fluorescent cadence of my salvation.

Six months earlier, I lamented over leaving a writing job I loved. And started blogging.

That day in my closet, I realized my reasons for walking away from writing relationships with leaders and their stories wasn’t just about stepping out in faith to fulfill calling. God was providing a way of rescue.

My life built around the pew snagged on deep disappointment, unraveling my Pollyanna point of view. And the new friendships I made on-line with you here, in this space of my blog, they saved this season of my life.

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Beginning this series six weeks ago, I was pregnant with expectancy. I asked the question, “How do we walk out our faith in the midst of pain, suffering, disappointment and loneliness,” and just like that unexpected experience in the middle of my closet, I was blindsided by the answer.

He revealed salvation anew, in the protection of my daughter in an early morning collision with a semi; that true Thanksgiving celebrates the gift of breath around the table of plenty.

Grief in leaving the only church I’d known in my seaside town found redemption among hundreds setting sail for new land, leaving wishful thinking strewn on shore.

And I’m echoing Peter, “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)

I stood among strangers on a Sunday, raising my hands in Alleluia. With tears streaming down my face I realized that just like my relationship with God, I need church more than it needs me. Because death is cheap and life is costly. And in the communion of the saints, I stand eyewitness to His majesty.   

In the last chapter of Leaving Church, Taylor responds to this question posed at a speaking engagement, “What is saving your life now.” For her, the answer was teaching school, living in relationship with creation, observing the Sabbath, encountering God in other people, committing herself to the task of becoming fully human.

My answer?  Jesus’ loving me when I don’t deserve it. Redemption, it’s what is saving my life. That revelation found me crumpled in a heap in the bottom of my closet.

What about you, what is saving your life?

Thank you for joining this six-week journey of walking out our faith in the midst of hardship and difficulty. I have seen the face of God in your comments and emails; they give me strength for the journey. 

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Finally Letting Go, In Your Words {Giveaway}

October 31, 2012 by 45 Comments

We started this journey on a limestone ledge overlooking the Frio, bags packed for an October of Letting Go. Thirty-one days later, I stand among overstuffed couches and chairs looking at a framed photo collage on the wall of generations. A WWII pilot standing scarved next to a Corsair, smiling about the mark he left on the world.

Next to me, one Archbishop from Africa and two from Asia look at the black and whites. I think about how generations will look at pictures of them on walls someday and tell the tale of unfailing faith that changes the spiritual landscape of nations.

Mingling with friends around the room, I find myself talking about you, the way you’re leaving your mark on the world too. About how you embrace letting go with courage and abandon. The way a blog can be an altar of sweet communion, lives transformed in swallowing the message.

And while I try to recount the ways in which God reveals himself to you from the cafeteria of comments, I think I’ll step aside, because you say it best:

I have to tell you that more than once in this series God has met me at my point of need with your topic for the day. I was wrestling with the fact that my decision to leave an abusive husband was being misunderstood by someone “important”… until I read your wise words about letting go of the need to be understood. ~Mama Sheep

Oh my this resonates with where I am right now. I wonder what it would be like if we were measured by our fruitfulness instead of productivity? Or not measured at all! Thank you for your encouragement in this Letting Go series. ~Kristin

This website is a recent discovery for me . . . it has inspired me in such a way that makes me realize we all have the same struggles, and remember that I am not alone. Sometimes that in itself is a great feat! ~Sherri

I have so enjoyed your 31 days of ‘Letting Go’! I’ve taken notes every day. I’ve learned about the many ways I hold on, trying in my own strength . . .  ~Jillie

Once again, I find God offering me a spark of hope through the journey of another.  ~Claygirlsings

(This) makes me look differently at my own life and the letting go of one phase of life while I am walking into the next. ~Evie

Though our circumstances vary, we’ve discovered that we aren’t alone in what we suffer. Because pain is common and redemption looks beautiful on everyone. Letting go, it isn’t a magic pill for happiness, it’s a process that brings us to closer to seeing our true reflection in the eyes of our Father. The revelation of the way He’s been there all along.

Can I tell you something? I didn’t have a plan beyond this theme God gave me one day in the shower. I let go of needing to have it figured out every day. And He is faithful.

I hope you’ll join me on the next leg of the adventure. We’re throwing confetti over here and blowing up balloons to celebrate.

And because Jesus Calling by Sarah Young was the muse on many days of my 31 day journey, I’m giving one away with a journal to one lucky person.  Just leave a comment to add your name to the drawing.

Nikki@Simply Striving won the Jesus Calling giveaway. Congrats Nikki!

Linking with Jennifer, Duane,WLWW , Emily and Ann.

This completes the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. I’m so glad you’ve joined the journey, it’s been a great ride.

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Let Go of the Measuring Stick, You Are Enough

October 24, 2012 by 45 Comments

I’ve been all twisted up inside, like the lure cast wrong on a fly fisherman’s pole. I’m trying to untangle the line inside my head hooked on self-worth. It needs to be cut off.

H and I sit in armchairs facing each other, pondering a contract to cure the terminal disease on my front lawn. I’ve always done the gardening but sometimes you have to let go of what you don’t know, as much as cultivating what you do.

While we talk about the cost, guilt rises to the middle of my throat. I tell him I think I should get a job, contribute something to the family.  Because someone already helps me clean and now we’re thinking about someone to help me do the yard work and I’m capable, feeling like an invalid when I can walk.

“No,” he shakes his head, arches his eyebrows. “I want you to do what God has called you to do. You haven’t spent a year on this for nothing.”

I’m writing. Towards a dream not yet fully formed while hanging on to God’s coat tails over craggy courage and dark days of waiting. I have no idea where He’s taking me but He stops long enough to let me linger in the landscape. Capture slanted light illuminating the beauty of his sheep for brief moments.

H reminds me what the sheep look like, the ones that come to the altar of this blog. They carry loneliness, discouragement, sickness and loss. Struggle with miscarriage, separation, adoption and divorce. Wear scars from the church, their parents, adult children and strangers.

And while I’m preoccupied with value, there just isn’t a measuring stick for serving words, offering the cup of prayer, yielding to the voice of consolation?

Perhaps I’ve stood in the same spot too long, distracted by the crowds grazing on the hillsides of plenty, while Jesus searches for one.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. (Psalm 16:6 ESV)

Do you measure your self-worth by what you do, instead of who you are? Let’s hurl that measuring stick together, shall we?

Linking with Jennifer, Ann, Duane, Emily, Life Unmasked.

This is #24 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

 

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