Brenda Rodgers

Category: Raising Girls

  • What are your three words?

    

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     Last week I read a blog post by Lysa TerKeurst, and she asked us what three words describe the “script of our lives”.  You know, what three words do you want people to remember about you at the end of your life. 

    Lysa asked her readers not to look at the other responses before posting yours.  I really, really wanted to cheat and look because how can you narrow it down to just three?  Then I started thinking about what I’ve been praying about and asking Jesus to help me with over the past several weeks.

    These are my three words:

    1. Authentic (Matthew 13:24-30)

    Over the past few weeks, while meeting with some friends for a summer Bible study, I have realized how important it is for sisters in Christ to be “real” with each other. 

    It is so tempting to just keep all of our problems  hidden for fear of what others will think or even because of pride.  However, true growth occurs in two ways: 1. seeing how fellow Christians respond to their personal struggles and 2. hearing their wise counsel in response to our personal struggles.

    The prerequisite to this is, of course, a certain level of loving trust and commitment, but I think it is important that we work hard to get to that place.

    I want to be authentic so that others see God’s grace in my life, so that others do not think they are the only ones who struggle, and so that I can build a trusting relationship to open up a level of trust.

    2. Bold (2 Samuel 7:27-28; Philippians 1:20)

    Recently I listened to a sermon by Andy Stanley where he encouraged his listeners to pray bold prayers.  He said that there is nothing wrong with praying for our family to be safe and for people to be healed, but we should also pray to be used for God’s purposes – regardless of what that means for us.

    Many times when I pray for God to use me or change me I do it with this small voice in the back of my mind the doesn’t really want what I’m asking.  These prayers are the ones that cause me discomfort.  They require me to stretch and change and get out of my comfort zone.  These prayers don’t typically switch to “on” overnight, but instead, whatever is causing me to pray increases.  For instance, if I pray for more patience, then everything that requires me to be more patient increases.  I know that this is how God grows us, but in the meantime it makes me squirm.  I don’t like to squirm. 

    I want to be bold in order to be open to all God wants me to become so that He can fulfill His purposes for me.

    3.  Faithful (Matthew 25:23)

    Over the past year God has shown His faithfulness to me over and over again through my husband’s heart transplant and my mom’s sudden death.  During that time I had a choice to either deny God and become resentful and angry because I did not understand how He could allow these things to happen, or to have faith that His ways are always right and perfect.  I chose to stay close to God in faith, and as a result He blessed me with His overwhelming gift of peace.

    After going through all of that you would think that I could easily be faithful to God in the little things of everyday life.  However, for me, this is where I struggle.  I was able to lay down the lives of my husband and mom in faith that God was in control, but I am not able to lay down my everyday circumstances of struggling with finding fulfillment in my job or overcoming feelings of inadequacies or dealing with issues with the people around me. 

    I want to be faithful not just in the big circumstances in life but in the everyday things, too, because this is where my legacy is built.

    What about you?  What three words to you want to be your “life script“?  Share them with me below!

  • The Advice We Give Children: “I Just Want You To Be Happy”

    Your young adult child comes to you with a big decision that she has to make. She is coming to seek your advice, your wisdom, and your counsel. She explains the dilemma in detail and goes back and forth with all the “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” and “but I want to’s”. While talking to her you share some stories from your life and you give her some things to think about, but at the end you slip in this small sentence, “I just want you to be happy.”

    Advice We Give Children- I Just Want You to Be Happy

    (more…)

  • The Advice We Give Children: “I Just Want You To Be Happy”

    Your young adult child comes to you with a big decision that she has to make. She is coming to seek your advice, your wisdom, and your counsel. She explains the dilemma in detail and goes back and forth with all the “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” and “but I want to’s”. While talking to her you share some stories from your life and you give her some things to think about, but at the end you slip in this small sentence, “I just want you to be happy.”

    Advice We Give Children- I Just Want You to Be Happy

    (more…)

  • The Making of a Life Verse

    I opened up the drawer to the small wooden end table that sits next to John’s favorite recliner in the family room.  I took out a whole bunch of past sermon notes, books, and other random papers.  As I flipped through them with the intention of finally getting organized, they stared at me.
    Last summer I printed cards with scripture verses on them to hang in John’s hospital room.

    Now, they no longer hang in a hospital room, but they sit in a drawer, all together, like a deck of cards, forgotten.  I read through them slowly.  Each one evoking a different feeling, a different mental image of those days that still seem like yesterday.

    And then I came to the last card.  It stared at me like the others, but this one caused me to stare back.  I looked at it.  I read it over and over. And I stared some more.

    The Holy Spirit began to tell me why this one is different – why this one is special.  This one tells my story.  This is my life verse.
    Several months ago I heard the idea of a “life verse” for the first time.  It was a new concept to me to distinguish one verse from all of the others that mostly encompasses your life’s journey and purpose, but I was obviously behind the times on this one.  Talking to other people the idea has been around a long time.
    It was a neat idea, but I couldn’t imagine choosing one verse of the Bible to be a life verse.  Except for the law books in the beginning of the Old Testament, I think probably every other verse needs to be my life verse. I never thought about it again.
    That is until I opened the drawer of the small wooden end table next to John’s favorite recliner.
    I flashbacked to the ten years after college that I lived as a single woman desperate for a husband and refusing to trust God. Then I thought about my testimony to all the single women I meet today and the story I have to tell.
    I flashbacked to how I felt when God finally brought my husband to me and only two years later we were told he would have to have a heart transplant.  Then I thought of my words to Satan, “You may take my husband through this process, but God will be glorified, and lives will be changed through our experience.”
    I flashbacked to sitting in the waiting room as John was being hooked up to life support.  Once again I had to lay down my desire for a husband, look God in the face, and say, “Your will be done.”  Then I thought of all the people who talked to God, maybe for the first time or for the first time in a long time, on behalf of John and the countless emails I received about how people were moved to God through John’s story.
    The enemy does intend to harm me.  He intends to kill, steal, and destroy. 
    Sitting in that hospital last summer, I would imagine in hopeful prayer meeting in Heaven the people who my heartache connected to God.
    God uses it all for good.
    Do you have a life verse?  How did you decide upon it?
    

  • My Nose Is Too Big!

    I have been blessed with a husband whose primary love language is “words of affirmation”, and even though he feels most loved when he receives encouraging words, he also does a wonderful job of modeling how to show love through encouraging words.  This is great for me because I cannot tell you how many times a day he says things to me like, “You are so pretty!” or “I just love looking at you!” or “I am so proud of you!”

    Two nights ago I had gotten home later than usual and John says to me, “You are just so cute.  I want to take your picture!”

    I precede to say, as he reaches for his phone, “Well, I don’t have any more makeup on.”  He didn’t care.  I stood in front of the window, and he took a picture of me.

    Immediately I said, “Let me see!”  He showed me the picture, and without another thought I said, “Oh, my nose is too big!”

    In that moment John stopped and looked at me dead in the face. 

    “Don’t say that”, he said with a firm tone without even blinking.

    It was as if I had offended him.  Something that he saw beauty in I was degrading.

    I couldn’t help but feel my spirit being pricked.  That is what God must feel when I say degrading things about His creation.  Every time I say something negative about myself, He must look at me and think, “Don’t say that.”  It’s literally taking a masterpiece that He, God, created and finding fault in it.  How could there be anything faulty about something God created?

    John’s simple comment helped me to remember that even though I see imperfections, God sees a masterpiece, and a nose that is perfectly sized just the way He designed it to be.

  • Souls on Board

    Tonight John and I were watching the national news.  There was a report about a plane who had to make an emergency landing.  As the pilot communicated to the air traffic controller he said, “We are declaring an emergency . . . 106 souls on board.”
     
    As I heard these words I remembered watching another news report fairly recently, and they used the phrase “souls on board”.  
     
    I remember thinking how odd those words sounded coming from a news report and yet so very beautiful.
     
    We don’t usually hear the word soul used unless we are talking about religion or God or death.  But I thought it was beautiful that the pilots recognized what C.S. Lewis famously explained,
     
    “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
     
    I have tried before to go throughout my day viewing every person I come in contact with as a soul.  I walked in the grocery store and instead of seeing a bunch of bodies walking around I saw transparency – souls who were transparent.  They were a lot deeper.  There was a lot more to them.  They had a past and hurts.  They had hope and a future.
     
    Seeing souls showed me their worth.
     
    Times when I have imagined bodies in this way, I feel more patient, more empathatic, more loving.  I’m not in a hurry to get my way or be first in line.  For a second, I have a tiny, very tiny, glimpse of how God sees them and how God sees all of the souls on board that He loves so dearly.