Category: Encouragement

 

In South Carolina, you’re never really sure when the hot weather is gone. A couple of weeks ago, we had a few glorious days when a cold front moved through, and I got so excited at the thought of crisp mornings and fall days. I envisioned sweater weather and boots, scarves and cozy sweatpants.

But then the hot weather came back. With a vengeance.

Ninety degree days at the end of September are torture. At that point you’re just OVER it. Over the sweating, over the summer clothes that you’ve worn until you’re tired of seeing them, and over sliding around on sweat-covered car seats.

So when the air conditioning in your house begins making weird sounds three days before October begins, you know you have a problem. You can’t count on cool days to keep the house pleasant, because October can feel like August. You have no choice. You have to call the air guy.

Which we did.

He left my house just a few minutes ago, and I can’t stop thinking about the problem he said we have.

The unit isn’t broken, and it can still work. But there’s a slow leak in the evaporator coil, which apparently is pretty important. He added some Freon to get us through this last bout with warm weather, saying that he can continue to add more until we decide to replace the unit. But there will continue to be a leak, and we’ll continue to have problems.

Do you ever feel like your life has a Freon leak, that your evaporator coil needs to be replaced?

Air conditioning is a modern luxury we take for granted — until it stops working. It works quietly in the background of our lives, providing comfort without recognition. It does its job without demanding our notice. Until it goes wrong.

And I think that’s how life sometimes goes. Sometimes we have a slow leak that we don’t recognize until there’s a major malfunction. We have a defective part that we can ignore because it hasn’t completely shut down. But at some point, we notice there’s a problem. At some point, the slow leak in the background makes its presence known.

What’s the slow leak in your life?

Maybe it’s an emotion from childhood you’ve tried to ignore since you’re now an adult.

Maybe it’s a sin you keep going back to even though you hate yourself for it.

Or maybe it’s a struggle you’ve tried to battle on your own since shame and embarrassment prevent you from telling anyone else.

A slow leak eventually demands notice. A part that needs to be replaced can only be repaired for so long.

It’s going to cost a lot to replace our air conditioner. Writing that check will hurt, and we’ll hate to fork over that money. But it will be worth it. The slow leak will be gone, and the new unit will work as intended. We won’t have to worry about the hot days to come, and the machinery that’s supposed to work unnoticed in the background will quietly do its job.

Looking at my life right now, I can identify some slow leaks. I can see some thought patterns that could lead to malfunction. And replacing those parts will be expensive. Changing out the old for the new will be costly. It always is.

But replacing what’s old and broken is necessary for living in the present. Stopping the slow leaks is the only way to function fully. The cost will be high. But the return on investment will always be worth it.

 

Only hours before, I lay immobile on the operating table. Numb from the chest down, I could only watch as nurses draped the sterile field of my abdomen with blue cloth. They counted gauze strips and scalpels, forceps and scissors. They prepared my body for the birth of my child, a birth in which I would be a passive observer.

Things were not going as I planned.

Thankfully, I couldn’t feel the incision dissecting my abdomen, the scalpel cutting through muscle to reach to my baby. Major surgery was done on the body I couldn’t feel, bringing a healthy, crying boy into a world he didn’t know.

Now, they were asking me to stand and to walk.

I had just been sliced open and sewn back up, and the medical team thought it best that I move. I couldn’t stand up straight for fear of ripping the incision back open, and the epidural had barely worn off to give me feeling in my legs. But they were asking me to move.

Medically, I knew their request was right. Moving after surgery prevents blood clots and pneumonia. Medically, it makes sense. But personally? I wanted to throttle someone. I wanted to stay in my bed and not move one inch. I wanted to snuggle my baby and let someone else take care of me.

But not moving means not healing, and being still means staying sick. So move I did, and the healing came.

*****

I’m currently training for a marathon, and I’m in the thick of it. Every weekend brings a long run to build up endurance, since running 26.2 miles isn’t something you can do without slowly preparing your body.

Last Saturday, the training plan called for a run of 19 miles. After it was over, all I wanted was to be still. My legs and feet ached, and I was worn slap out. My body told me to just keep lying around, and though the plan called for a 5 miler just two days later, my body asked me to stay on the couch.

 

The plan called for me to move, because moving loosens back up the muscles that are tight. Moving enables the body to recover and to come back stronger. Moving is the best thing to do when you just want to be still.

*****

It’s funny how physical life so often teaches us about the spiritual. Just as we have to move our physical bodies in order to mend, we have to move in our spirits to heal the wounds we carry there. Moving means mending.

Spiritual wounds are every bit as real as flesh wounds, but because they’re invisible, they’re easier to deny. I’ve found, too, that I often wrongly identify these wounds. I minimize them, telling myself things like, “Your feelings are just hurt,” or “You need to learn to remember without reliving.”

 

I see my wounds as character flaws and poor decisions, not festering sores infecting my entire being. And far too often, I just want to wallow in their pain. I find it easier to stay in the familiar hurt than to move into a place of healing.

But we have to heal if we want to be whole. And healing requires movement.

We have to move towards our Father, lifting our arms to him in praise and kneeling our wills to submit to his plan. We have to move our mouths to offer up prayers, and we have to move our eyes to read his word. We have to move towards friends who can speak life into our dead places, and we have to just keep on moving when all we want to do is stop.

We have to make an effort to move away from where we are so we can get to where we need to be.

Mending what’s broken always means moving.

 

I’ve been praying a specific prayer for several years now. Years.

But the answer still remains “no” — or at least, “not yet.”

What do you do when you’re confident the Holy Spirit has confirmed something in your life, but the time has not yet come? What do you do when you know what God has told you, but His timing is different than yours?

And, even more, what do you do when you see someone else receiving the answer to the very prayer you’ve been praying?

Can I be honest?

Sometimes you cry and pitch a holy hissy fit.

Sometimes you question God and beg to know what He’s thinking.

Sometimes you remind Him of what He said to you in the past, and sometimes you feel completely lost.

I’m finding that trusting God is the hardest part of my faith journey.

I believe in God — I do. I believe He is good, I believe He hears me, and I believe He has a plan.

But trust? I think trust is hard. Here’s why: I can believe He is good, but I can struggle to trust He’s being good to me in what He allows, answers, or denies.

I can believe He hears me, but I can struggle to trust that His hearing my prayers will ever lead to Him answering.

I can believe He has a plan, but in the waiting for the plan to materialize, I can struggle to trust that He hasn’t forgotten me.

And my trust is always tested when I see someone else getting what I’ve asked for from Him.

That specific prayer I’ve been praying for years? God answered it — but for someone else. That thing I believe He’s confirmed for my life? It’s now a reality for someone else.

That’s tough.

It’s not that I don’t think this person deserves it, and it’s not that I just want it all for myself.

It’s that I know God could answer it for more than one person, but so far, He’s chosen not to answer it for me.

When you have to face the reality that God can but He won’t, you also have to face the reality that trusting Him is a choice when the easier option is to assume He doesn’t care. The enemy wants you to think God has rejected you and is withholding his best. He wants you to be jealous and bitter and to see God as stingy. He will continue to tempt you with the thought that you must not be good enough.

But that is not true.

In my new book, Disqualified: Confronting the Lies That Whisper Rejection, I explore what it’s like to feel rejected and disqualified from God using you greatly, and I remind you of what the truth really is.

 

 

 

We can always find a reason to feel badly about ourselves, can’t we? No matter what we do, we can convince ourselves it should have been better, and no matter how well the day begins, we can always see a failure or a flaw in what has happened.

I find myself falling into this trap so easily, the trap of believing I need to despise something about myself or my life. The trap of believing I am only and always falling short. The trap of discontentment.

In just the past week, these are reasons I’ve been tempted to despise something about myself:

• Another mother’s first day of school picture captured her beautiful flowers in the background, and my own flowers are all dead. I felt like I should hate myself because I don’t have a green thumb.
• I looked down during my 19-mile run and noticed the cellulite on my upper thighs. Even though my legs can run 19 miles, I felt like I should hate them because they have cellulite.
• I couldn’t tame the frizz in my hair Sunday morning before church and I felt like the insecure 12-year-old I used to be. I felt like I should hate myself because of my hair.
• I began cleaning the bathroom and noticed the dust covering my baseboards. I felt like I should hate myself because of dust.
• The clothes my child shoved under the bed caught my attention, and I believed I must be a terrible mother. I felt like I should hate myself because of my child’s choices.
• My husband invited friends over when I was out of town and the laundry was piled up on the couch. I felt like I should hate myself because his friends knew I didn’t put the laundry away immediately.

 

Not one of these reasons is legitimate for despising myself. Not one of these is representative of my character or true value.

And yet.

I let myself believe otherwise.

When I’m not aware of how I’m actually thinking, these kinds of thoughts become normal to me, and when I’m not consciously aware of my destructive thoughts, I slowly become numb to how dangerous they are.

Here’s what I have to remind myself:

• I am a child of God. (John 1:12)
• I am accepted. (Romans 15:7)
• I don’t have to do anything to earn love. (Romans 3:20)

 

I don’t believe there will ever be a time these kinds of thoughts don’t tempt me. I will likely always feel such things and be prompted to believe they are truth. My enemy is constantly seeking someone to devour, and he does so most often through my thoughts about myself. But he is a liar, and I have unlimited access to the truth.

I’ve learned some things about my vulnerability to the enemy’s attacks. This is what I know:

• When I am physically tired, my spirit succumbs more easily to attacks.
• When I don’t begin my day by reading Scripture, my mind fills more easily with the ways of the world.
• When I spend too much time looking at the lives of others on social media, I am much more tempted to resent my own.
• When I let myself believe there is only one right way, I convince myself my own way is always wrong.
• When I compare myself in any way to other human beings, I measure myself against them instead of against what really matters.

 

So despising myself (or parts of my life) doesn’t have to be my way of life. It doesn’t have to be yours, either. We have offensive weapons to fight the lies. We have a working knowledge of what leaves us most susceptible to attack. We can choose whether to believe the lies or call them what they are.

Our enemy wants us to believe we are helpless.

But friends, we are not.

If you struggle like I do to remember how loved and accepted you really are, I’ve created something for you. Click here to receive “A 60 Second Reminder of Who You Are in Christ.”

 

 

Her beautiful face smiled at me through the computer screen, the perfectly-lit picture just underneath the words describing her success. From my couch in my den, her life seemed perfect. Clear skin, white teeth, and a business making her family extra cash. I was still in my pajamas, looking at the mountain of unfolded laundry spilling out of the clothes basket. I was trying to muster the energy to begin my day’s work, trying to convince myself that what I was doing even mattered at all.

And before my morning coffee was even cool enough to drink, I branded myself a failure.

I didn’t know her, and I certainly didn’t understand the details of her life, but through a post shared by a mutual friend, I saw a piece of her world. And the piece looked amazing.

In that moment, I let myself believe that she and her perfect-looking life were my competition.

That other woman? She felt like my enemy.

*****

I walked down the aisles of the grocery store, hurriedly throwing items into the shopping cart, desperate to get home and cook dinner as quickly as possible.

I had failed to plan ahead yet again, so rather than dinner waiting on my family, my family would have to wait on dinner. Yet again.

As I rounded the corner to grab what was next on my list, I nearly ran into a woman wearing her tiny baby across her chest. It took a moment to register, but then I realized I recognized her face. She hadn’t changed much since high school, still smooth-faced and smiling, slim and stylish.

Her perfectly styled hair mocked my own messy bun, and her muscular arms made me wish I were wearing sleeves.

Her infant was no more than three months old, but this new mom’s body belied the fact she had just become a mother. She had no belly pudge, no dimpled thighs in her athletic shorts, and no extra flesh or matronly arms.

Her body looked amazing, and her maternity leave was barely over.

My own kids could read and ride bikes, and I was still fighting my baby fat.

That other woman? She felt like my enemy.

*****

I curled up with my new book, anxious to read the words so many others had recommended. “You’ve got to read this,” they said, and they went on and on about how good it was.

As I did, I understood why their reviews were so great.

This author got it. She wrote with just the right mix of humor and grace, with perfect one-liners stopping you in your tracks. I wanted to highlight nearly everything she wrote, and I knew I’d be recommending it to my friends, too.

But as I read more, turning page after page, her perfectly-written words began to taunt me. The voice in my head whispered, “You’ll never write like she does. There’s a reason people read what she writes, and there’s a reason they’ll never read you.”

Her mastery of our craft made my fumblings feel like failures. Her thousands of followers and multiple best-sellers felt like goals that would always remain out of my reach. Her successes felt like omens predicting my demise.

That other woman? She, too, felt like my enemy.

*****

To be a woman is to live at war. I suppose that’s true for men, too, isn’t it? It’s true for every human.

To be a human is to live at war, constantly fighting battles big and small.

A battle over your emotions. A battle against weight gain. A battle for the promotion. A battle against time.

But a battle against someone else? That’s not a battle we’re supposed to be fighting. The other person? The other woman? She is not your enemy.

It’s so easy to get caught up in Satan’s tricks, looking at other people with suspicion and contempt. It’s tempting to think it’s us against them, their way against ours. It’s so natural to believe only one of us can succeed, and if someone else is, then we aren’t.

But the reality is not the thing we’re tempted to believe, and it’s not what comes so naturally and easily. The reality is that the other woman is not your enemy.

The reality is that she should be an ally.

Because here’s the truth God commands us to remember but Satan begs us to forget: we are not fighting against flesh and blood. We are all fighting against powers we can’t see, powers in this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12). We have an enemy, and it’s not each other.  Right after this verse, we are told to put on the full armor of God. But I love what it says right before – “draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power” (10).

Too many of us are trying to draw strength from being better than our imagined enemy. We’re trying to draw strength from being the best, the prettiest, the most successful, the skinniest. We’re trying to draw strength away from another person, stealing her strength to make up for our own lack.

A person’s strength will never be enough.

Being better than someone else will never truly satisfy.

Playing comparison games will never bring peace to our souls.

We have a real enemy – but it’s not the woman whose beauty mocks you on Facebook. It’s not the woman who received the promotion you thought you earned. And it’s not the woman who seems to do everything better than you.

The real enemy is the one who whispers every lie. It’s the one who deflects the attention from himself onto someone else. It’s the one who wants you to forget about him so you’ll continue to live in defeat.

The real enemy is the liar, the thief, and the destroyer.

It’s not the other woman.

 

Do you live with the mindset of abundance or deprivation?

Do you rest in the fact that you have all you need, or do you wonder if there’s something more that should be coming your way?

These are questions I’ve been pondering a lot lately, and I’ve learned there are no simple answers.

My conscious mind knows that every need I have is met, and I’m striving to be like Paul, who “learned the secret of being content in any and every situation” (4:12). But the truth is that I find myself drifting into discontentment when I live without intention. The truth is that I often overlook my met needs while desiring to have others’ abundance. The truth is that my mindset is often one of deprivation. And it’s not necessarily about stuff – it’s about relationships, opportunities, and even God’s love.

Here’s the tension: I am not deprived. But I let Satan tell me that I am.

I do not go without. But I focus on what others seem to have.

God has richly blessed me. But I still believe He’s closed his hand.

This is the way of the earth-bound believer, is it not? From the first people created came the question of what God was keeping from them. From the very first woman came a judgment that the tree from which she could eat was insufficient and that God was keeping the fruit of the best tree away from her lips. The assumption she made, and the one I make too, is that God is keeping something from us. That there’s something better to which He is saying, “No.”

Read – and believe – these words from Mark Batterson: “God is not holding out on you.”

He’s not, friend. He won’t.

While it is true that God does withhold some things from your life, it’s never because He’s holding out. It’s always because He’s helping. Whatever He prevents from coming your way; whoever He removes from your life… It’s always for your protection. Whenever He blocks your path or however you hear him say no… It’s always for your greater good.

His “no” is always from his great love, and his “no” is always for a much greater “yes.”

My journey with Christ has taught me I can’t trust what I feel. My feelings lie. And when they lie, I have to remember God’s word. His truth says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). No good thing. He only withholds what is not good.

That’s a hard truth – to trust that we feel is missing is missing for a reason. That what we feel we’re lacking is lacking because it would harm us. That what we wish we had is the very last thing that we need.

Ours is a benevolent Father. Not a stingy one, and certainly not a cold or indifferent one. But a God who sees what we cannot and plans for the future we don’t know is coming. A God who accounts for the details we don’t understand, and a God who desires our sanctification more than our temporary satisfaction.

We don’t know it all, do we? When we really stop to think about where we’re headed and what it is we need, we’re at a loss. We are powerless to plan for the life God is creating. We’re clueless when it comes to what we really need in our lives.

So it’s always to our benefit to stop and remember who we are. We are created beings with a limited understanding. We are subordinates to an Almighty God. We are followers of a Lord who knows the future. We are not God, and when we begin assuming we know what He should allow, we follow Lucifer’s lead and desire the standing only God can have. Only He is good, and only He knows what his children need.

Father, forgive us for attempting to be you. Forgive us for ever questioning your love and provision, and forgive us for ascribing to ourselves any kind of knowledge of the steps you should take. We are wrong – so wrong – when we think of you with anything other than adoration and praise. We choose today to stand on the truth of your word and to ignore the sinful thoughts that are creeping in. We choose to believe today that you are the everlasting God who does not faint or grow weary, whose understanding is unsearchable (Isaiah 40:28). We remember today that your ways and thoughts are not ours, that they are higher than our own (Isaiah 55:8-9). We submit today to your plans for us, because we know they are to prosper and not to harm (Jeremiah 29:11). We give ourselves fully to what you bring and what you withhold, knowing that your every thought toward us is of love and great mercy. We praise you for who you are, and we remember who we are not.

Amen.

 

If you’re new here, welcome! I write about enjoying the journey of your everyday life, even if it isn’t what you planned. I have a FREE gift for you, a printable called “A Soul That Thirsts for the Lord.” Just click here to get your copy!