Category: surrender

Going to that big box-store we all know about and some of us love is hard for me.

You know the one I’m talking about, right? The one with aisles and aisles of everything you could ever need in your life all in one place? The one in nearly every town all across the United States? Yeah, that one.

Well, personally I hate going there.

No, it’s not because of the narrow aisles, everyone bumping into everyone else, or only four open checkout lines out of fifteen, even though all of this is quite annoying.

It’s because this store makes me sad. It burdens me. When I drive into the parking lot I immediately see all that’s wrong with our country, our world, and my heart hurts.

Welcome to the life of the melancholy.

For hours I will sit and take those tests that explain me to myself. Personality tests, spiritual gifts tests, temperament tests. They give me proof for what I already know. It’s like they give me permission to be me.

Melancholic. That’s what they say I am.

This website describes melancholy like this:

“The melancholy tends to be an introvert in socialization, who looks at their home as a ‘sanctuary’ away from the world, who is task oriented, very creative, a perfectionist, and plagued with low self-esteem. Melancholy’s need ‘alone quiet time every day to think, dream, and regenerate.’ They also give the world its beauty, its great art and music, and literature. They tend to think deep and feel things intensely.”

Frankly, I cannot describe myself any more perfectly. That is me.

Since I can remember, my vision has been shaped by a broken mirror, not rose-colored glasses. I don’t see sunshine and rainbows, happiness and smiles. The water in my glass is not half full. I don’t think everything is going to work out in this life.

For me, death is easy to understand and heaven is more real than earth. So I don’t expect much from this place. I expect it to be what it is – fallen.

But deep down I know there is more. I know there is joy.

Truth tells me that God created me “fearfully and wonderfully”, and He knew what He was doing “full well” (Psalm 139:14).

So there has to some good that comes from having a melancholic mind, right?

After all, we are the realists who make sure that life is not just a party. We know the bottom line and communicate it. We keep the purpose of life legit.

The struggle for the melancholic Christian is seeing joy while looking through broken glass. 

In Luke 10 Jesus sent His disciples out ahead of Him to spread His message. When they returned they were joyful because “even the demons obeyed them when they used Jesus’s name” (Luke 10:17).

As a melancholy I have a tendency to want to take out my swords and defeat the enemy.

When I feel like I’ve succeeded, then I, too, feel joyful.

Until I look through the broken glass again and see more armies to defeat. Then my melancholic mind sits back in its place.

And my joy is lost again.

Jesus responded to His disciples, “But don’t rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

Like I find myself, the disciples were joyful in their own accomplishment. But Jesus redirects them to the place where authentic joy is produced – hidden with the Holy Spirit. 

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives” (Galatians 5:22-25 NLT).

When I walk into that big box-store, look around and see all that burdens me, I need to remember that my joy does not come from my ability to change this world.

My joy comes from my relationship with Jesus. 

Have you taken a temperament quiz? Do you struggle with parts of your temperament?

 

I remember the day God told me to write my story down for others to read.

I was on the seventh floor of Duke University Medical Center. My husband laid beside me, sleeping, the television was on some daytime show, and I sat right there, in the chair that I had pulled up next to his bed so that I could touch him, with my laptop on my legs.

I started blogging when we got married, mainly for fun, but in May, on that day when things began to change, writing suddenly became what sustained my breath. Every day I would come home from teaching and write about what life was like with a husband who needed a heart transplant. He sat beside me as a I wrote.

God would bring into my mind memories of me writing as a child – like a gift I had suppressed for some reason. I remember writing a fiction story about a unicorn, but I did so in secret. I didn’t want anyone to read if for fear they might think it was dumb. I also wrote some poetry.

Briefly in college I contemplated majoring in English. Those were my favorite classes. Writing a twenty page paper was nothing – just don’t make me memorize a bunch of facts or do something crazy like math. But what would I do with an English degree, right? That’s what the voice in my head told me, so instead it became my minor. I majored in education.

The call to write wasn’t shocking to me – just to everyone else. For me it was coming home to a place inside myself where I was always supposed to be. Everyone else thought it was impractical and a big waste of time. Blogging was for people with too much time on their hands – people without “real jobs”.

I kept thinking about what if I never shared what God had done in my life over the past twenty years especially. What if  no one ever heard the story He set into motion to show His provision, love, and redemption?

Suddenly keeping my story in seemed selfish. It would be like hoarding a scarce gift that everyone is ravenously searching for themselves.

So I kept writing.

This coming weekend I have the opportunity to attend the She Speaks conference for writers and speakers. The opportunity is a blessing that I feel humbled in receiving.

At this conference I will learn how to share my story better.

I will also have the opportunity to meet with three publishers and pitch a book that I have started writing about finding peace in the middle of faith and surrender – the story given to me in my days and nights in Duke University Hospital.

It is embarrassing for me to write that I’m pitching a book proposal to publishers.  The voice in my head almost talked me out of the whole thing all together.

I keep reminding myself of the gift I’ve been given, His gift to me in the form of a story, that is not meant to be hoarded but meant to be shared.

Not all of us are called to write. Some of us hate to write, and that’s o.k.

But I want to argue that all of us are called to speak. I speak best when my words spills onto paper. You may speak best when your words spills out your tongue. Others may speak best when their words spill through their hands and into a masterpiece of creation.

Regardless, we are all called to speak our stories. Our stories are God’s gift to us to be shared, so that others may recognize their stories too.

Today I want to challenge you to speak your story. It doesn’t have to be in some fancy formal way, like in a book proposal. Speak it to your children, speak it to your parents, speak it to the cashier at the grocery store. Just speak it.

Your story might be just want saves someone else from never knowing theirs.(<-Tweet This)

 How do you “speak your story” to others? If you don’t feel like you do this, how can you this week?

On this day we celebrate a gift that each of us who were born in the United States received at birth – without any strings attached, without any effort on our own, without our choosing. We received the gift of living in a country where freedom is the foundation in which all other policies and laws stand.

Sometimes we try to take credit for inventing a country based on liberty and justice. We think our forefathers were the ingenious ones. When in fact, they were just modeling after the first Creator of freedom. The One who gave the first choice.

“But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Genesis 2:16-17

Here freedom was set into motion.

I often wonder why God gave Adam a choice. He was God. He could have easily not put him in the Garden with that tree. Or He could have just yanked that tree right up by its roots. But He didn’t.

Freedom was God’s gift of love.

He could have made Adam and Eve like puppets. Puppets that He controls and manipulates and makes love Him. But God knew that with true love there had to be freedom. Freedom to choose the one you’re loving.

God wanted to be chosen just like He chose us. 

We all know that with freedom comes a price tag. There was a price tag in the garden – one with a heavy debt. And there is still a price tag for freedom.

Today we will hear about and watch – and maybe even experience through our own family members – men and women who are all over this world paying the price tag for our freedom. The price tag for me to sit here on this sofa and write about anything I want to write about and publish it to the world. 

We will celebrate our forefathers who understood God’s love enough to know that building a country based on life and liberty was the only way to pursue happiness.

But we should also remember the first taste of freedom, there in the garden. And the price tag that it cost to live in that freedom.  

Then we should remember the Man who had the freedom to say no, but instead paid the debt, there on the Cross. The debt for our freedom, so that we not only could continue to experience it here, on this earth, but so we can know freedom forever. 

 

What are you and your family doing today to celebrate the Fourth of July? 

Wishing you and your family a blessed day to celebrate all of the freedoms He gave us!

Happy 4th of July! 

A few nights ago my husband and I were watching the evening, national news as we do most nights, and the age-old question of whether women truly can “have it all” came up once again in a feature story.

It is interesting to me how often this question continues to come up and how researchers continue to look for an answer.

In this particular news story the dilemma was the extend to which women are trying to have it all by taking prescription drugs to keep their bodies energetic and able to accomplish more tasks within in a day. And then of course how damaging the effects are to their bodies.

We will do anything to prove of self-worth, won’t we?

I am no different from these women who fall into the trap of trying to prove their self-worth by attempting to do it all.

Now as I embark on motherhood for the first time, I feel this tension even more than I ever have before.

I remember the best advice my mom ever gave me: “You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at the same time”. Sometimes, however, having it all at the same time seems nonnegotiable.  Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a choice. The demands around me make me have to have it all even if I don’t want it all.

Then I begin envying women who do have it all. They accomplish their daily responsibilities and still have time for the fun stuff. What about them?

The closer I really examine lives of women around me who seem to have it all, and whom I envy, I realize that in fact, they don’t have it all.

They had to pick and choose, and their all is different from my all. 

If your “having it all” is:

• volunteering at your child’s school
• leading a small group at church
• baking homemade goodies
• working full-time
• working out every day
• spending time with God in Bible study and prayer every day
• having coffee dates with your girlfriends
• cooking homemade meals every night
• keeping your home organized and clean
• running a business
• homeschooling
• blogging
• coaching your child’s soccer team
• doing homework with your child each night
• spending quality time with your husband

then no, you cannot have it all.

But women can have it all if they determine what their “all” is truly supposed to be. 

Maybe my all isn’t volunteering at school or cooking homemade meals. Maybe I’m not supposed to lead a Bible study right now or maybe I have to limit my coffee dates with girlfriends.

My all is going to look different from your all, and your all is going to look different from my all. And we have to be o.k. with that.

And we have to support the differences in each other’s all.

One way to accomplish this is to ask God to show us what He desires our individual all to be. What has He gifted us to do? What is He wanting us to accomplish? Then, we have to stay so focused on those tasks, knowing that they came from God, that we do not feel guilty or envious or exhausted because our all doesn’t look like the girl next door’s all.

We have to determine our own all.

What is your “all” at this season of your life? How do you not feel guilty or envious when your all isn’t your friends’ all?

 

 

This week I am linked up with:

Last week several bloggers wrote about the book Fifty Shades of Grey and the popularity it has gained with women – particularly mommies – which has given it the nickname “mommy porn”. Some of these blog posts created quite a heated discussion among all women including Christian women.

A few mindsets that resonated with me the most as I read the posts about Fifty Shades of Grey and comments from the readers are “If you read it, it’s not as bad as it seems”,  “There’s an element of redemption in the story”, “They get married at the end”, and “It’s fiction. Me reading that book will not make be become that character or do those things.”

This post is a follow-up response to that last statement in order to share with you a real-life story of a woman who was caught up in a similar lifestyle and who is now on the other side, redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

After my post, “Fifty Shades of Grey: A Game Plan“, she wrote the comment below. She signed her name “Redeemed”.

Before you read the comment, I just want to express my sincere appreciation to her for having the courage to share her story with us. This is a Jesus miracle, the kind that changes lives and shows His almighty glory. It is very scary to be vulnerable, step out in faith, and not be held under the bondage of the enemy’s lies about the past any longer. When I asked her if I could feature her comment in this post, she admitted to me how much courage it took to write it. But she also said, “Neither my silence or fear can bring Him glory – my testimony can”. She asked me to publish her comment with her real name, which I will do below.

Your points are well made and well received. I’m honestly as worried about the publicity this book gets in the Christian community as it does in the secular. As a woman who did fall prey to this type of lifestyle and subverting belief system enough to welcome two tattoos that marked me as a slave girl and as a possession, it burdens my heart for the women who are presently lost in or susceptible to believing lies that make appealing the idea of subjugation equating to love/acceptance/affection. It isn’t that these lies are more destructive than any of the other lies that we’re apt to believe about ourselves above the truth that God reveals to us about who we truly are – but this issue pulls upon scarred over wounds of a 30 year lifespan of seeking love, acceptance and affection from source after failing source until I believed that submitting myself in this manner would be Utopia – and I’m not exaggerating this point.

Once upon a time, I served in leadership positions within the alternative lifestyle community, and was the facilitator of a special interest group designed specifically for women who went far deeper than to classify themselves as “merely” submissive – we were slaves by choice, we were considered the elite in feminine subservience. And we believed it and wore that moniker with pride. So much pride that I personally spent a great deal of time reasoning and contending the sacredness of that position and that type of relationship in many different media sources – and if someone still in that lifestyle were to ever read your post they would do the same. And they would as well likely tell you that I simply must have had a bad experience, or the wrong relationship/partner, or become disgruntled or disillusioned somehow – that I can’t speak for those who truly know and live what they believe to be the truth. I remember believing it that deeply and devotedly.

I say all of this to say that I know that this book is dangerous. It is a toxic product disguised in a tempting package – as is all sin.  It’s just another source to delude, and to lull. Satan knows that if sin came to us in the form of a bucket of puss we wouldn’t be tempted to partake – and for many this book wouldn’t begin to be tempting because it can clearly be seen for what it is, but for others it is craftily disguised. To see women who claim to be Christian at the same time claim that this book isn’t harmful or sinful has brought home to me once again how evil our enemy is, how conniving and constant his pursuit is, and how perceptive his accuracy is at finding the slightest openings in us to create strongholds for us in hopes to separate us from God.

Terri Lynn

Friends, this is real life.

The most dangerous belief a person can have about herself is the belief that she is not capable of any, every, and all sin. 

But let’s just say that you can read this book and not fall into this lifestyle. I know that I am capable of falling into a lifestyle such as this, but I don’t know that I would immediately adopt it after reading this book. I think the consequences would be much more subtle, probably so subtle that I wouldn’t even recognize them for a while.

Even if you feel completely unaffected and still believe that you can read this book and be o.k., I ask you to consider this:

There are more slaves, sexual and otherwise, in the world today than there were during the African slave trade. 

Books such as this do not help that problem.

No, this book is not about human trafficking, and I am not trying to insinuate that it is, but my point is that this book glamorizes a form of abuse which then minimizes similar abuse that women experience in real life all over the world. 

If for no other reason, don’t read this book in honor of the women who are being shipped in crates across government borders through human trafficking. Women who are beat and raped and don’t have a choice.

How would they feel about a book that glamorizes their nightmare? How does the reader who shared her story above feel? 

Sometimes our decisions aren’t about us. They’re about what we’re supporting – who we’re supporting.

For further reference I encourage you to read about sexual slavery and human trafficking at The A21 Campaign, a campaign led by Christine Caine.

** 5/19/14 This is a follow-up to the post above. I just finished the book Pulling Back the Shades by Dannah Gresh and Dr. Juli Slattery. I will be writing a review this week, but in the meantime, if you are struggling with erotica in any way, I highly recommend this book. If you think reading erotica is “okay” or “not going to hurt you”, please read this book. And if you are a Christian woman who is struggling, most definitely, please read this book. Pulling Back the Shades will explain to you God’s amazing plan for your sexuality, and that erotica will hurt you. 

What are your thoughts about this testimony, this issue, and the controversy over this book?