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  • How to Scroll Through Instagram Without Hating Yourself

     

    Goodness, I wanted to be like her.

    I somehow started following her through Instagram, that wonderful and terrible social media app that lets us peer into the lives of people we don’t even know. She is a lifestyle and fitness guru, one of those people who is gorgeous and seems to turn everything she touches to gold.

    She has a pretty large following on social media, and it’s easy to see why. Her tiny body is perfectly toned, and her posts about the workouts she does show why that’s the case. She exercises all the time, even going to the gym after her kids are in bed. In her world, it seems, there’s no such thing as being too tired to work out.

    She only eats healthy foods, or that’s all she shows, and her meal-prepped lunches look like a personal chef prepared them.

    Her hair is long and blonde, perfectly wavy and always done just so.

    She has a radiant white smile, her perfectly straight teeth glowing in every photo she posts.

    And I wanted to be like her. That’s such a 7th grade thing of me to say, I know. But in her pictures she looks like everything I’m not, and I found myself privately thinking I really wanted to be like her. I wanted to look like her, with muscles in all the right places and a physique that looked great even after kids. I wanted her perfect hair and her perfect teeth. I wanted to run a successful business like she does, and I wanted to have it all together like I thought she did.

    But the longer I followed her, the more I began to realize that she was not exactly what she was posting.

    First, she admitted the plastic surgery she’s had done. Her top features really aren’t hers, and neither is the wrinkle-free face that looks so beautiful. She’s had her stomach worked on, so the flat belly I’ve envied isn’t really hers, either.

    Her teeth? They’re capped.

    And she has extensions in her beautiful hair.

    Those long eyelashes? They’re fake, too.

    I’m not telling you this to shame her or to say she’s wrong for any of it.

    I’m telling you this to let you know I found myself wanting to be like someone who isn’t real. I wanted to be like someone who didn’t really exist.

    You would think that by now, a woman in her mid-thirties like me would know better than to wish for what someone else has. You would think I’d know that the grass isn’t always greener and that pictures on Instagram don’t tell the whole story.

    But you would be wrong.

    Nearly every day, I fall into the trap of believing I need what someone else has or that I should be what someone else is. But I forget that I don’t really know who they are or what they have. All I know is what I see, and what I see has very often been doctored.

    We all doctor what we show the world, don’t we? We smile when we’re sad. We pretend to have money when we don’t. We say we’re fine when we’re not. We want the picture the world sees of us to be flawless and beautiful, so we go to great lengths to hide and change who we really are.

    Because at our core, we don’t like who we really are. We are insecure in our true selves. And we believe the real us just isn’t enough.

    So we make it up and fake it up and pretend to be someone we’re not. And we’re all going around wanting to be the fake versions of real people who think they have to hide their flaws to be loved.

    We all have flaws. But we don’t have to fake it to be loved.

    Wear the makeup if it makes you feel better. Extend your eyelashes and whiten your teeth. But don’t do it because you hate the real you that you are. Don’t feel that you have to be anyone other than yourself.

    And when you find yourself envying someone like I did, look beyond their beautiful smile. Look further than the picture-perfect posts. Remind yourself that what you see is not all there is.

    It’s not with you, and it’s not with them, either.

     

  • Encouragement for the Person Who Just Feels Different

     

    My life looks nothing like the one I planned.

    My life doesn’t look like most of my friends’ lives.

    I am different from most of the other moms in my circle.

    And different is hard.

    In fact, I’ve come to realize this about myself and my pattern of thinking: I often don’t just think of myself as different. I think of myself as abnormal. I think of my reality as a Plan B.

    I was married once before, and that marriage ended in divorce. So for a while, I was a divorced, single mom of two. Then I met the man who changed my world, and I remarried. So now I am a formerly divorced, single mom who is remarried. My children live with me, but they still see their dad often and spend a good bit of time with him.

    I am so grateful this is true.

    But my situation is a rarity in my circle. Even though the divorce rate in our country is at 50%, it is not directly around me. So I am different.

    Don’t misunderstand, though. I am ridiculously happy in my life now. My husband is the best man I know, and he showers us with affection. He goes out of his way to take care of us and make sure we feel secure. I never dreamed my life would be this full.

    But my life is different. I am not like the people I love most. My differences are not always visible, but I always feel them. Holidays in my house look very different from those of most people I know, and even everyday situations are tainted with the fallout of the past.

    For a long time, I wasn’t aware of how I was thinking. I wasn’t conscious of the thought process that said different is wrong. I wouldn’t have verbalized that I felt abnormal or that I no longer thought of myself as a real mom.

    But here is what I’m learning. The thoughts we keep inside become poison that slowly kills us. Lies we never expose to the truth become the dominant voices in our lives. And struggles we never admit become strongholds we can’t escape.

    Yes, life for me is different than it is for you. But your life is different in its own way, too, and you might think of yourself as abnormal for entirely different reasons.

    Your child has a learning disability.

    Your children were adopted.

    You have a disease that limits your parenting.

    Your child has a physical deformity or an emotional disorder.

    Can we all just admit this truth? Everybody has their something.

    Something about you makes you feel different, abnormal, wrong, or living a Plan B. I have a friend in surgery right this minute, undergoing a hysterectomy that will prevent her from ever having biological children. The enemy will try to convince her that a secondary plan, a Plan B, is all that remains for her. He will want her to believe she is different and therefore wrong.

    I have lived under the burden of such thoughts. And when not confronted, they are debilitating.

    It is uncomfortable to face the depths of our darkest thoughts. It is painful to confront the underlying emotions that affect our everyday lives. But when we don’t, we begin to feel ashamed, alone, defective, and hopeless. Our thought lives contaminate every part of who we are.

    What are you believing about yourself today?

    Allow yourself to answer that question.

    And as you do, will you remember this?

    Nothing about your life catches your Creator off-guard. Nothing is an “oops,” an “uh-oh,” or a “What are we going to do with this?”. Nothing. He has seen the entirety of your life, and He is weaving it all together into an unbelievably beautiful picture of grace and redemption. Every situation and every circumstance is an opportunity to grow closer to Him and to become more like Him.

    He will do more in the differences of your life than the parts that fit the mold.

    He will. He has for me.

    But we have to allow Him to, and that begins with admitting how we feel.

  • My Baseboards Make Me Feel Like a Terrible Person

     

    When I magically and mysteriously become inexplicably rich, the first thing I will do is hire someone to clean my bathrooms. The two children I gave birth to have been granted that great privilege now, and their skills are still somewhat, shall I say, lacking. Their top priority is to finish, not necessarily finish well.

    And bathrooms need to be cleaned well.

    That brings me to the task I just completed today – the deep cleaning of a bathroom my dear offspring only surface cleaned.

    Sigh.

    It made me feel like a pig.

    I’m one of those people who hates visual clutter and who actually enjoys organizing. But apparently when it comes to deep cleaning, I turn a blinder eye than I realize. I got on my hands and knees, a la Cinderella, wiping down cabinet fronts and scrubbing baseboards.

    Can we talk about what disgusting dust collectors they are? And the unbelievable amount of hair I apparently lose each day? Bleh. It’s easy to ignore it when it’s not right in your face. But when you’re crawling around at ground level, it’s right there in your face.

    And it’s gross.

    So like any woman worth her salt, I began the negative self-talk. I fussed at myself for not deep-cleaning more often, and I based my worth on the condition of my baseboards.

    Being me sometimes is stupid.

    So here’s what I learned as I dusted and scrubbed today:

    Houses get dirty. Bathrooms get disgusting. Dust builds. Hair collects in corners. And none of that means anything about me, except that I need to clean.

    Let it go, ladies. Your dirty baseboards don’t mean you’re a terrible person.

     

     

     

  • Moving Forward When You Don’t Know What’s Next

     

    Humans are, by nature, goal-oriented. We are a people who plan for the future and work in the present for that unseen yet approaching reality.

    This is, perhaps, why we love our weekends so much.

    In our relationships, we know what we want and what we want to improve.

    I want to communicate my emotions better, and I want my marriage to be a model for my children.

    In our work, we set goals to motivate us when the day-to-day gets hard.

    I want to make more sales this quarter than last.

    In fitness, in faith, in housekeeping and health, we decide what’s next and what we want to achieve.

    We’re goal-setters. That’s who we are.

    What do we do, then, when we meet a goal and are unsure of what’s next?

    This is where I am. This is the space I’m living in right now. A place of uncertainty.

    In the last few weeks, I met every major goal I had planned.

    I released a book. I ran a marathon. I spoke at women’s events.

    All of the things I had been planning for, thinking about, training for, and preparing for are over. They are done. The goals were set and achieved, and there’s nothing huge on the horizon.

    Everyone keeps asking me, “What’s next?” and my answer is always this: “I don’t know.”

    I don’t know what’s next, and I’m learning to be OK with that. It doesn’t mean nothing is, and it doesn’t mean I won’t set new goals. But for right now, I don’t know.

    For right now, I will rest.

    I will reflect on what I learned as I worked in this season, and I will wait for the Spirit to guide me to my next right step. But I refuse to rush it. I will wait in patience and peace.

    We humans are, by nature, goal-oriented. But we are not, by nature, good at rest. We must learn the art of being still, the value in not over-planning and forcing. We must train ourselves to wait for Spirit guidance and not strive for human achievement.

    I will rest. I will read. I will study, and I will sit with God.

    At some point, I will set another goal, and I will work like mad to achieve it.

    But for now? I don’t know what’s next.

    And I’ve learned I don’t need to know.

  • The Big Problem with Ignoring Small Problems

     

    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.

  • You’re Doing So Much Better Than You Think You Are

     

    If one of the spiritual gifts is having a pity party, then the Holy Spirit blessed me immensely.

    But for real.

    Last night, I was feeling sorry for myself, wishing something had gone differently and beating myself up for not knowing ahead of time exactly what I should have done. Then the feeling sorry for myself morphed into being envious of someone else, and before I knew it, I was just the most pitiful little whiney-baby you’ve ever seen.

    Over nothing important.

    I felt like a failure, but the truth is that I didn’t really fail.

    I felt less capable than someone else, but the truth is that I’m not.

    I felt I should be doing more and doing it better, but those are just words I told myself.

    In actuality, I’m doing OK. I’m doing better than I thought I was in the midst of that pity party.

     

    Jon Acuff writes in his new book, Finish, “That’s the thing about failure. It’s loud. Progress, on the other hand, is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism screams failure and hides progress.”

    I have always lived with the tantalizing illusion of perfection mocking me. The perfect body, the perfect home, the perfect kids and perfect marriage. The perfect answers, the perfect friendships, the perfect job and perfect ministry. And when perfection stayed out of reach, the mocking cry of “failure” rang loudly in my ear.

    Who am I kidding? It still does.

    The thought of failure is loudest, and the reality of progress just whispers.

    But you know what? I’m doing better at most things than I think I am. And so are you. Let’s cut ourselves some slack. Let’s push back the pursuit of perfection and welcome the promise of progress.

  • Why Mending What’s Broken Always Means Moving

     

    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.

    Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

     

    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.”

    Photo by Jeffrey Wegrzyn on Unsplash

     

    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.

  • When Someone Else Gets the Answer to Your Prayer

     

    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.

     

     

  • To the Parent Without the Right Answers

     

    Tears streamed down my child’s face, the frustration apparent.

    The frustration was clear, but the real issue wasn’t. I couldn’t get to the root of the matter. Was it exhaustion? A misunderstanding? Did something happen at school? What was really going on?

    I never figured it out. My questioning and probing did no good with the child sprawled across my bed, so I couldn’t make sense of it.

    Which basically summarizes being a parent.

    I’ll never forget bringing home a 5 pound newborn and listening to her cries in the night, wondering what they meant. Hunger? No, she just ate. Wet diaper? No, she was just changed. What was going on? Sometimes I never figured it out.

    I’m a person who likes to have answers. I sat in the front row in school, taking copious notes and comparing my answers to those in the back of the book. If I missed a question on a test, I couldn’t let it go until given a thorough explanation. So even now, as an adult, I can’t sleep until I feel like I’ve made sense of things in my mind.

    I don’t do well with not knowing. But being a parent means often not having the right answer. 

    Where should he go for preschool? Should I enroll her in dance classes? Which brand of formula will agree with her tummy? Is he old enough to leave in the nursery? Should I take 6 or 12 weeks for maternity leave? Will I scar her for life if I go away for the weekend? Is he getting enough sleep? Should I allow that friend to come over? Is he old enough to read Harry Potter?

    I don’t know.

    So many times over my 12 years of parenting, the conclusion I’ve reached is “I just don’t know.” Because sometimes I just don’t.

    And when we just don’t know, there’s only one thing to do.

    The best we know how.

    When we don’t have the right answers, the best thing we can do is the best we know how. And after that, we trust.

    We trust that being a good parent doesn’t mean being a perfect parent, and we trust that the One who created our children will keep them in His care. We trust that one decision won’t ruin their lives, especially if it’s only a matter of preference. We trust that our prayers and parental instincts will mostly lead us the right way, and we trust that most decisions aren’t really that important.

    We trust that our kids are more resilient than we know, and we trust that unbridled love is the most important decision, anyway. We trust that our thousands of good decisions will overshadow any less-than-good ones we might make, and we trust that love covers a multitude of sins.

    No, I don’t always have the right answers. But I’m learning that sometimes it’s OK not to.

     

  • How I’ve Been Tempted to Hate Myself in Just the Past Week

     

    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.”