In my quest to develop grown-up friendships, I’ve been surprised at how hard it can be to get to know people. My own emotional issues aside, making friends as an adult married woman with children is not like it was when I was younger. In high school and college, I could call someone I wanted to get to know better and say, “Hey do you want go mall or see a movie or something?” and we could make plans for later that day, or at the most, the weekend. Now, if I try to do that, the conversation goes something like this:
Me: ”Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. We should get together. Do you want to do something?”
Friend: “Well, Johnny has soccer tonight and a game on Saturday morning. Jane has ballet tomorrow night and girl scouts on Thursday. Friday is date night with hubby. Saturday night I have a work dinner I have to be at. Hmm. Next week isn’t much better. I, think I can schedule something for next month, if you want, though.”
Me: “Uh…Ok. Let’s do that. Let me know when you can squeeze me in.”
I then hang up feeling dejected, because really, I just wanted to spend some time with a friend chatting and laughing, right now. Not next weekend or next month.
I tried that a few times before I realized that during this season of my life, spontaneous friend dates aren’t going to happen very often. I can’t really get too mad about it, because my schedule is just as busy. The problem is that, generally speaking, when I am free, they are busy and when they are free, I’m busy. Eventually I had to accept the fact that I was going to have schedule time to make friends.
Maybe it’s strange, but this was a really hard thing for me wrap my mind around. I’m not a “schedule” person. I’m not a planner, either, unless I have to be. I have a friend, though, who is a planner, and she was the first one to say, “Let’s put something on the calendar, because otherwise I will never have time for it.”
The first time I heard her say that, it rubbed me the wrong way, because I believed that building a relationship should just happen naturally. Being put into her schedule felt sort of confining to me. Kind of like, “OK, I have a hour block from 2:00 to 3:00 on Sunday, so let’s have a meeting and get to know each other. Bring your bullet point notes of all the important events in your life so we don’t miss anything or get off topic. Be prompt, because I have a 3:15 appointment with my hairstylist and I can’t be late.”
Now, she didn’t say any of this, or imply it even. It’s what I read into her suggestion. What I later came to understand, though, is that in our frantic, 21st century lives, our schedules will fill up whether we want them to or not. Either we have to take control of them and put the things that are important to us on the calendar, or other people and things will find a way to fill all our time slots. When I realized that she was putting time with me on her calendar because she valued it and wanted to make sure it would happen, it changed my entire perspective.
This also made me realize that I had to begin to be deliberate about developing my relationships. I couldn’t just expect them to happen. I had to put effort into them. I had to put some planning into them. I had to make it a priority and maybe sacrifice something for it. I had to give up an occasional evening of my favorite t.v. shows because that is when my friend had some free time. I had to give up my preconceived notions about what my friendships would look like.
So, now I put my friends in my schedule, and they put me in their schedule. It has to be a mutual scheduling effort. Otherwise, it will never happen.
I hope that someday life will slow down in such a way that my friends and I will have the freedom to take a spontaneous trip to the beach just because we feel like drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set over the ocean. For now, though, I’m honored when a lady that I admire values me enough to schedule me into her day.
Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice.
Proverbs 27:9
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Fear of Friendship
“If you don’t have three to five good friends in your life, I mean women you are really talking to, that needs to be your number one priority right now.”
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
Thursday, May 3, 2012
In the Presence of The King
This evening I was thinking about what it will be like when I get to Heaven and walk into the throne room of the King of Creation.
In The Presence of the King
Coming into the presence of the King
Overwhelmed by the light of his grace
I fall to my knees and cry out with the angels
"Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"
Lifted up and drawn closer to him
I find myself before the throne.
Unable to look upon his face,
I fall once again, this time at his feet
Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree
The tears begin to flow as I see there before me
The wounds from the nail
That pinned him to the cross
So very long ago.
Like the woman of old, I wash his feet with my tears
I cry out to him for forgiveness
For the darkness inside me
For my fear and my pride
Because it was for me that he died.
Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree
Strong hands lifting me up
To stand before the Lord
“Beloved, Look at me.”
“Lord, I can’t.”
“Child, I love you.”
“I’m so unworthy.”
“Daughter, you are mine.”
Slowly I lift my eyes,
His fingers stroke my cheek
Wiping away the tears
His face is radiant, His love alive
“Don’t you know how long I’ve waited?”
Wrapped in his arms,
all my pain fades away
My heart is clean,
my mind is whole
Finally, I am in the place
I was always meant to be.
In The Presence of the King
Coming into the presence of the King
Overwhelmed by the light of his grace
I fall to my knees and cry out with the angels
"Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"
Lifted up and drawn closer to him
I find myself before the throne.
Unable to look upon his face,
I fall once again, this time at his feet
Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree
The tears begin to flow as I see there before me
The wounds from the nail
That pinned him to the cross
So very long ago.
Like the woman of old, I wash his feet with my tears
I cry out to him for forgiveness
For the darkness inside me
For my fear and my pride
Because it was for me that he died.
Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree
Strong hands lifting me up
To stand before the Lord
“Beloved, Look at me.”
“Lord, I can’t.”
“Child, I love you.”
“I’m so unworthy.”
“Daughter, you are mine.”
Slowly I lift my eyes,
His fingers stroke my cheek
Wiping away the tears
His face is radiant, His love alive
“Don’t you know how long I’ve waited?”
Wrapped in his arms,
all my pain fades away
My heart is clean,
my mind is whole
Finally, I am in the place
I was always meant to be.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Who I Am Designed To Be
This past weekend I attended the Bethel Church women’s conference, Women of Impact. It was great fun and I loved spending my Friday night and Saturday with some of my most favorite ladies. That kind of thing doesn’t happen nearly enough.
One of the workshops I attended was “Impacting your Future” which was taught by Pastor Shekina Gottlieb, one of the pastors on staff at our church. She spoke about becoming the “Me I’m Meant To Be” rather than the “Me I Want To Be”, or the “Me I Pretend To Be”, or the “Me I Think I Should Be”, or the “Me Other People Want Me To Be”, or especially the “Me That Fails To Be”.
It made me think, how long did I spend being the “me I thought I should be” or the “me I was pretending to be“? I know that the “me I wanted to be” was impossible, so for quite a while, I was just the “me that was failing to be“.
This quote put a whole new perspective on the subject for me.
"When you fail to become the person God designed you to be, all the rest of us miss out of the gift you were made to give." Shekina Gottlieb
Realizing this, that my failure to become who God designed me to be means that everyone else misses out on something that only I can give them, forced me to take another look at myself. If I don’t become the woman that God meant for me to be, my kids miss out on the mom they were meant to have. It means that my husband doesn’t get the wife he was supposed to have. My friends don’t get the relationship with me that they should have had. By neglecting myself, my dreams, talents and gifts, I do my loved ones a disservice.
So, really, it’s not all about me. Crazy thought, huh?
My unwillingness to do what God has put in my heart to do, because I am scared or feel unworthy or whatever, affects more than my life. It affects all the lives I am supposed to touch.
On one hand, that puts a huge sense of responsibility on my shoulders. I know that I am not yet who God meant for me to be, so how many relationships have I already missed the opportunity on because I spent so much time being the “Me that Failed to Be.”
On the other hand, this also frees me from the idea that pursuing my dreams and developing my gifts and talents makes me self centered. It’s not selfish. God made me with a specific purpose in mind, as he did every other person on the planet. I believe that he puts the seeds of that purpose in each individual in the form of our dreams. He means for us to follow them.
Imagine if Shakespeare had decided that writing wasn’t a job that could pay the bills and that he should be a stone mason instead. What if Leonardo DaVinci had given in to feelings of inadequacy and stopped painting and sculpting and imagining and dreaming. Or if Mother Teresa had listened to all those around her who told her that it was crazy to try to go to the other side of the world to work with the poorest of the poor in India.
Now, I know that we aren’t all meant to do things like this that make us famous or successful by the world’s standards, but that doesn’t mean that our impact on the world won’t be great.
There is a woman at our church that recently retired from the position of Nursery Director after more than 30 years of service. For the past 30 years, Miss Jennifer has cared for the babies of all the people that came to the church so that they could sit in the service and listen to the pastor and hear the Word of God. Her presence allowed those pastors with young children to minister to hurting people. She changed diapers, rocked infants to sleep, comforted scared toddlers and encouraged exhausted new mommies for 30 years. Outside of our church, very few people know her name, but I believe that her service has made her famous in heaven.
Billy Graham obviously was very successful in his evangelism ministry and crusades around the world. He’s a very effective speaker and many people have come to know the Lord as a result of his sermons, but he didn’t put on his crusades alone. Thousands of people were involved in putting the crusades together. Before Mr. Graham even came into town, many people had spend hundreds of hours in prayer for the event. People had to invite their friends. So many people worked behind the scenes using their gifts to organize, plan and make the crusades happen. There were hundreds of people who were there to pray for all those who answered the call to follow the Lord. Billy Graham couldn’t pray for each one himself. He needed all those mature believers there, ready to work one on one with people, praying for their needs and ministering in ways that he couldn’t from up on the stage.
I bring up these examples because I think that it is really easy for us to get caught up in the idea that to do something great for God we have to be one of the famous people. We have to be like Michael W. Smith, Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen. We don’t. We have to be what God designed us each individually to be. We just have to be willing to do those things that he tells us to do.
So, what if, in your heart of hearts, you think that maybe you are supposed to be like the famous people? What then? I think you have to evaluate why you believe that. What are your motivations? Do you want that because being famous means you are important; because that’s the ruler you are using to measure your success? Or, do you believe that is God wants that for you, in spite of how you feel about it?
Recently, my husband met with the Senior Pastor at our church and was discussing the call that he feels God has on his life. He had the following conversation with the pastor:
“I just want to make sure that this is from God and is not something that I’m making up myself.”
The pastor looked him in the eye, “Does it scare you?”
“Absolutely,” Robert responded.
“Then it’s from God,” Pastor said.
So, if you believe that God has huge things for you to do, does it scare you? Do you feel inadequate to the task before you? If so, I believe that it is from God. I believe that he calls us to things that are bigger than what we feel we can do on our own because he wants us to rely on him completely. He wants us to know that what we are doing is not in our own power to accomplish. It‘s how he brings the attention and the glory back to himself.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Ephesians 4:16
One of the workshops I attended was “Impacting your Future” which was taught by Pastor Shekina Gottlieb, one of the pastors on staff at our church. She spoke about becoming the “Me I’m Meant To Be” rather than the “Me I Want To Be”, or the “Me I Pretend To Be”, or the “Me I Think I Should Be”, or the “Me Other People Want Me To Be”, or especially the “Me That Fails To Be”.
It made me think, how long did I spend being the “me I thought I should be” or the “me I was pretending to be“? I know that the “me I wanted to be” was impossible, so for quite a while, I was just the “me that was failing to be“.
This quote put a whole new perspective on the subject for me.
"When you fail to become the person God designed you to be, all the rest of us miss out of the gift you were made to give." Shekina Gottlieb
Realizing this, that my failure to become who God designed me to be means that everyone else misses out on something that only I can give them, forced me to take another look at myself. If I don’t become the woman that God meant for me to be, my kids miss out on the mom they were meant to have. It means that my husband doesn’t get the wife he was supposed to have. My friends don’t get the relationship with me that they should have had. By neglecting myself, my dreams, talents and gifts, I do my loved ones a disservice.
So, really, it’s not all about me. Crazy thought, huh?
My unwillingness to do what God has put in my heart to do, because I am scared or feel unworthy or whatever, affects more than my life. It affects all the lives I am supposed to touch.
On one hand, that puts a huge sense of responsibility on my shoulders. I know that I am not yet who God meant for me to be, so how many relationships have I already missed the opportunity on because I spent so much time being the “Me that Failed to Be.”
On the other hand, this also frees me from the idea that pursuing my dreams and developing my gifts and talents makes me self centered. It’s not selfish. God made me with a specific purpose in mind, as he did every other person on the planet. I believe that he puts the seeds of that purpose in each individual in the form of our dreams. He means for us to follow them.
Imagine if Shakespeare had decided that writing wasn’t a job that could pay the bills and that he should be a stone mason instead. What if Leonardo DaVinci had given in to feelings of inadequacy and stopped painting and sculpting and imagining and dreaming. Or if Mother Teresa had listened to all those around her who told her that it was crazy to try to go to the other side of the world to work with the poorest of the poor in India.
Now, I know that we aren’t all meant to do things like this that make us famous or successful by the world’s standards, but that doesn’t mean that our impact on the world won’t be great.
There is a woman at our church that recently retired from the position of Nursery Director after more than 30 years of service. For the past 30 years, Miss Jennifer has cared for the babies of all the people that came to the church so that they could sit in the service and listen to the pastor and hear the Word of God. Her presence allowed those pastors with young children to minister to hurting people. She changed diapers, rocked infants to sleep, comforted scared toddlers and encouraged exhausted new mommies for 30 years. Outside of our church, very few people know her name, but I believe that her service has made her famous in heaven.
Billy Graham obviously was very successful in his evangelism ministry and crusades around the world. He’s a very effective speaker and many people have come to know the Lord as a result of his sermons, but he didn’t put on his crusades alone. Thousands of people were involved in putting the crusades together. Before Mr. Graham even came into town, many people had spend hundreds of hours in prayer for the event. People had to invite their friends. So many people worked behind the scenes using their gifts to organize, plan and make the crusades happen. There were hundreds of people who were there to pray for all those who answered the call to follow the Lord. Billy Graham couldn’t pray for each one himself. He needed all those mature believers there, ready to work one on one with people, praying for their needs and ministering in ways that he couldn’t from up on the stage.
I bring up these examples because I think that it is really easy for us to get caught up in the idea that to do something great for God we have to be one of the famous people. We have to be like Michael W. Smith, Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen. We don’t. We have to be what God designed us each individually to be. We just have to be willing to do those things that he tells us to do.
So, what if, in your heart of hearts, you think that maybe you are supposed to be like the famous people? What then? I think you have to evaluate why you believe that. What are your motivations? Do you want that because being famous means you are important; because that’s the ruler you are using to measure your success? Or, do you believe that is God wants that for you, in spite of how you feel about it?
Recently, my husband met with the Senior Pastor at our church and was discussing the call that he feels God has on his life. He had the following conversation with the pastor:
“I just want to make sure that this is from God and is not something that I’m making up myself.”
The pastor looked him in the eye, “Does it scare you?”
“Absolutely,” Robert responded.
“Then it’s from God,” Pastor said.
So, if you believe that God has huge things for you to do, does it scare you? Do you feel inadequate to the task before you? If so, I believe that it is from God. I believe that he calls us to things that are bigger than what we feel we can do on our own because he wants us to rely on him completely. He wants us to know that what we are doing is not in our own power to accomplish. It‘s how he brings the attention and the glory back to himself.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Ephesians 4:16
Thursday, April 26, 2012
More Dreams
Since I wrote my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dreams we have and the dreams God gives us. As I said before, my dream of singing started when I was a little girl and then over the years it became something that was just a part of who a was. Even during the years of my life when I wasn’t involved in anything that allowed me to perform, I still considered myself a singer. People who met me during that time probably wondered if I really could sing, because as much as I said I was a singer, they never heard me actually do it.
It was in the years that I wasn’t singing that I started writing. Now, looking back, I think that the writing started as a sort of secondary, more attainable dream. I had convinced myself that being successful as singer was impossible, but maybe I could write a book and make something of myself that way.
So, I started writing a novel. It started really well, but after a while, when my ideas slowed down, and I began experiencing some writer’s block, discouragement set in. I started doubting my ability. I started doubting my ideas. I started doubting my worth. The thought process went like this...
“Why do you think you have anything to say that anyone would want to listen to?”
“Who do you think you are to suppose you could be an author? Really? You must be out of your mind?”
(Anyone see a theme here?)
“Look at all those books on the shelves of the bookstores. For every one of those authors, there are hundreds of people who have written books and can’t get them published. What makes you think you’re good enough when so many others aren’t?”
“Other people are content to have their stable office jobs. Why can’t you be happy to be a receptionist?”
For the record, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a receptionist. A good receptionist is a wonderful asset to a company. I, however, was a terrible receptionist. I just don’t have the personality for it. I was too introverted, too serious, and to be honest, I didn’t handle being interrupted very well. Not a good trait for someone who spends their whole day being interrupted by silly things like important phone calls and people coming in the front door needing directions to appointments, interviews or training sessions.
Anyway, there I was, talking myself out of dream number two. My mom was encouraging me to keep writing, because, stupidly, during a time when I was feeling good about the way my story was coming out, I had printed it out and given it to her to read, and she thought it was pretty good. (Well, she said it was “Great”, but she’s my mom, so she has to think it’s great. I think it’s in the contract or something.) Soon my grandmother was bugging me about it too, because my mom had passed it on to her. (Yes, I said “bugging me”, because that’s how I felt about it at the time. I love you, Grandma!) I think Grandma then sent it to every other member of my family because then I had random aunts or uncles asking me when the next chapter was going to be done.
So, the cat was out of the bag, and now I felt pressure to keep going, but I was stuck. I had a serious case of writer’s block and an inferiority complex at the same time. I didn’t know what to do to fix it, so, I gave up, which only added fuel to the inferiority fire.
Not long after that, I got pregnant and, as any new mom knows, becoming a mommy is all consuming, so I had a convenient excuse for several years. I didn’t have time to write, I had the baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and another baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and a baby and a job. So it became easier and easier to rationalize why I wasn’t even trying to write anymore. Really, I was just afraid to try.
God only let me do that for a certain amount of time, though. I’ve noticed that when a person isn’t doing what God designed them to do, there’s a deep discontentment in their soul. For a long time, I didn’t know what was wrong, I just knew I wasn’t happy.
One day, while browsing the Christian section at the bookstore, I came across a little book called “The Dream Giver”, by Bruce Wilkinson. It’s a parable about a man named Ordinary who lives in the land of Familiar with all the other Nobodies, when the Dream Giver gives him a big dream and he then tries to leave Familiar to become a Somebody. Wilkinson then explains the parable and relates it to how it could play out in our lives.
I highly recommend it. God used this book to remind me of my dreams and to tell me that even though I had written myself off, so to speak, he hadn’t.
About a month after I read that book, our pastor did a sermon series titled “Dream Big”. After 3 sermons on why we need to have big, “God-sized” dreams that we are following, I was beginning to get the message. Time to start doing what God wanted me to do, even though I was scared and didn’t think I was good enough.
I wonder how many people have written themselves off and decided that their dreams are unattainable, so they should just be content to get and keep “a good job”.
I wonder how many people are quietly dying inside because they have lowered their expectations of life to where they are because the thought of where they really want to be doing is too painful.
I wonder how many people have forgotten that they ever had dreams in the first place.
Thinking about it makes me sad. But the thing that gives me hope, is that as long as you are still on the earth, God still has dreams for you. He still wants you to follow him to fulfill them. Maybe the dream from your youth really isn’t possible any more, but God has new dreams. He can give you new purpose. He wants his children to live abundant lives, not just a mediocre existence. Can you dare to believe that maybe that thing you have always wanted to do might just be what God has wanted for you all along?
So, now I have announced to the world that, not only do I want to sing, but I also want to be a writer. It’s crazy, I know. Neither one of those is a particularly easy field to break into, but God has put these things in my heart, and not doing them only makes for a miserable me. Therefore, I will write and I will sing, and I will watch to see how God uses them to take me into the future he has planned for me.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How amazing are your thoughts concerning me, God!
How vast is the sum of them! Psalm 139:15-17
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:20 (The Message)
Do you have dreams that are lying dormant in your mind and in your heart? I pray that you can begin to let the God shine some sunlight on those seeds so that they can begin to grow into the abundance and purpose that he has you for.
It was in the years that I wasn’t singing that I started writing. Now, looking back, I think that the writing started as a sort of secondary, more attainable dream. I had convinced myself that being successful as singer was impossible, but maybe I could write a book and make something of myself that way.
So, I started writing a novel. It started really well, but after a while, when my ideas slowed down, and I began experiencing some writer’s block, discouragement set in. I started doubting my ability. I started doubting my ideas. I started doubting my worth. The thought process went like this...
“Why do you think you have anything to say that anyone would want to listen to?”
“Who do you think you are to suppose you could be an author? Really? You must be out of your mind?”
(Anyone see a theme here?)
“Look at all those books on the shelves of the bookstores. For every one of those authors, there are hundreds of people who have written books and can’t get them published. What makes you think you’re good enough when so many others aren’t?”
“Other people are content to have their stable office jobs. Why can’t you be happy to be a receptionist?”
For the record, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a receptionist. A good receptionist is a wonderful asset to a company. I, however, was a terrible receptionist. I just don’t have the personality for it. I was too introverted, too serious, and to be honest, I didn’t handle being interrupted very well. Not a good trait for someone who spends their whole day being interrupted by silly things like important phone calls and people coming in the front door needing directions to appointments, interviews or training sessions.
Anyway, there I was, talking myself out of dream number two. My mom was encouraging me to keep writing, because, stupidly, during a time when I was feeling good about the way my story was coming out, I had printed it out and given it to her to read, and she thought it was pretty good. (Well, she said it was “Great”, but she’s my mom, so she has to think it’s great. I think it’s in the contract or something.) Soon my grandmother was bugging me about it too, because my mom had passed it on to her. (Yes, I said “bugging me”, because that’s how I felt about it at the time. I love you, Grandma!) I think Grandma then sent it to every other member of my family because then I had random aunts or uncles asking me when the next chapter was going to be done.
So, the cat was out of the bag, and now I felt pressure to keep going, but I was stuck. I had a serious case of writer’s block and an inferiority complex at the same time. I didn’t know what to do to fix it, so, I gave up, which only added fuel to the inferiority fire.
Not long after that, I got pregnant and, as any new mom knows, becoming a mommy is all consuming, so I had a convenient excuse for several years. I didn’t have time to write, I had the baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and another baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and a baby and a job. So it became easier and easier to rationalize why I wasn’t even trying to write anymore. Really, I was just afraid to try.
God only let me do that for a certain amount of time, though. I’ve noticed that when a person isn’t doing what God designed them to do, there’s a deep discontentment in their soul. For a long time, I didn’t know what was wrong, I just knew I wasn’t happy.
One day, while browsing the Christian section at the bookstore, I came across a little book called “The Dream Giver”, by Bruce Wilkinson. It’s a parable about a man named Ordinary who lives in the land of Familiar with all the other Nobodies, when the Dream Giver gives him a big dream and he then tries to leave Familiar to become a Somebody. Wilkinson then explains the parable and relates it to how it could play out in our lives.
I highly recommend it. God used this book to remind me of my dreams and to tell me that even though I had written myself off, so to speak, he hadn’t.
About a month after I read that book, our pastor did a sermon series titled “Dream Big”. After 3 sermons on why we need to have big, “God-sized” dreams that we are following, I was beginning to get the message. Time to start doing what God wanted me to do, even though I was scared and didn’t think I was good enough.
I wonder how many people have written themselves off and decided that their dreams are unattainable, so they should just be content to get and keep “a good job”.
I wonder how many people are quietly dying inside because they have lowered their expectations of life to where they are because the thought of where they really want to be doing is too painful.
I wonder how many people have forgotten that they ever had dreams in the first place.
Thinking about it makes me sad. But the thing that gives me hope, is that as long as you are still on the earth, God still has dreams for you. He still wants you to follow him to fulfill them. Maybe the dream from your youth really isn’t possible any more, but God has new dreams. He can give you new purpose. He wants his children to live abundant lives, not just a mediocre existence. Can you dare to believe that maybe that thing you have always wanted to do might just be what God has wanted for you all along?
So, now I have announced to the world that, not only do I want to sing, but I also want to be a writer. It’s crazy, I know. Neither one of those is a particularly easy field to break into, but God has put these things in my heart, and not doing them only makes for a miserable me. Therefore, I will write and I will sing, and I will watch to see how God uses them to take me into the future he has planned for me.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How amazing are your thoughts concerning me, God!
How vast is the sum of them! Psalm 139:15-17
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:20 (The Message)
Do you have dreams that are lying dormant in your mind and in your heart? I pray that you can begin to let the God shine some sunlight on those seeds so that they can begin to grow into the abundance and purpose that he has you for.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
No More Idol
I can’t watch American Idol anymore. Or The Voice. Or the any of the other singing competitions on tv. It’s not that I think there is anything wrong with those shows. I actually like watching them, I just can’t subject myself to them any longer. They are bad for my self esteem.
I don’t have a problem when I watch Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance, but that’s because I’m not a dancer. I would like to learn to dance some day. I hope that one day in the future, I will have the free time to take a ballroom dancing class (preferably with my husband), but that would just be for fun. I don’t have any ambitions about making a career out of dancing.
Singing is another story, though. I have loved to sing since I was a little girl. I remember singing a solo for church when I was about 11, I think it was a Christmas song, and as I stood there in front of the small congregation, this thought came to my mind, “This is what I am meant to do”.
That kind of dream has a way of getting squashed by the world, though.
I did a lot of singing in middle and high school. I was part of a big acapella choir, a 12 member jazz ensemble choir, and when we moved from Oregon to Southern California, a show choir. We did concerts and choir competitions. Performing was what I loved to do.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that in order to “make it” as a singer, you can’t just be good, you have to be extraordinary. Even in the choirs I performed in, I wasn’t good enough to get solos. There were always the “stars”, you know, the ones that had the big solos in the concerts; the kids that had plans to go to Hollywood or Broadway after high school, and everyone believed they would be famous some day. I was never one of them. I was just one of the background voices. I tried to convince myself that I could be content with that, even though I wasn’t. It was ridiculous to think that I could be a singer, anyway. I didn’t have enough talent. I wasn’t pretty enough or skinny enough. It would be better to just let that go and focus on trying to do something with my life that would be attainable. I could be a nurse or a psychologist or something like that and maybe sing at church sometimes, if they would let me.
This wasn’t a conscious thought process. There wasn’t a moment when I decided to give up on the dream. It just slowly got crowded out of my mind. I knew I had to be realistic about myself and my abilities, so it drifted away until I forgot that it had ever been there in the first place.
When we started attending Bethel Church, God reminded me of how much I like to perform. Bethel does wonderful, professional quality Christmas and 4th of July shows. When I saw my first Christmas Spectacular in 2006, I kept saying to myself, “Wow! I have to get in on this!” I had missed it so much, but in the craziness of trying to figure out life as a wife and mother of two young children I had forgotten about my love of music. Shortly after that I joined the choir and got to be a part of the amazing shows the church does every year to reach out to the community. Slowly, over the next few years, God reawakened the dream he put in my heart when I was just a little girl.
So, back to American Idol. I can’t watch it because the singers on the show are so good. They have so much talent, and the world watches them sing and critiques every note, choice of song, outfit and hair style. In the auditions, sometimes a young person will stand in front of the judges and sing, and I think they sound good, but then Randy or Simon or Steven (depending on the season) will say something along the lines of “Sorry, dude. Not good enough.” Then I start to think, ”If that person isn’t good enough, why do I think I can sing?” “If she, who is so beautiful and talented, isn’t talented enough, why do I think that there is any chance for me?” Never mind that I don’t want to be an “American Idol”, per se. I’m too old, to begin with, and I don’t want that kind of lifestyle, anyway. The enemy uses my insecurities about my level of talent, though, to try to beat me into submission. He pounds me with all the reasons that I should just give up and be happy with being one of the “voices in the background” because, if all but one of those amazingly talented young people will end up off the show, why do I think that my mediocre ability can make any difference in the world?
I believe that my mediocre ability can make some kind of difference in the world because God has told me to sing. Because, if he can use a donkey to speak his words to someone who needs to hear it (see Numbers 22:21-31) he can use my voice too.
I don’t know where God is going to take me. Maybe someday I will sing on a stage as big as the American Idol stage. Maybe it will never get bigger than the little worship band I sing in now. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that I can’t let the enemy discourage me into giving up and feeling unworthy. Therefore, I don’t watch American Idol anymore.
See, the LORD your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 1:20-22
The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 31:7-9
Do you have a dream that has been squashed by life? Are you working toward your dream but feel that it is threatened all the time? What do you do to protect it?
I don’t have a problem when I watch Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance, but that’s because I’m not a dancer. I would like to learn to dance some day. I hope that one day in the future, I will have the free time to take a ballroom dancing class (preferably with my husband), but that would just be for fun. I don’t have any ambitions about making a career out of dancing.
Singing is another story, though. I have loved to sing since I was a little girl. I remember singing a solo for church when I was about 11, I think it was a Christmas song, and as I stood there in front of the small congregation, this thought came to my mind, “This is what I am meant to do”.
That kind of dream has a way of getting squashed by the world, though.
I did a lot of singing in middle and high school. I was part of a big acapella choir, a 12 member jazz ensemble choir, and when we moved from Oregon to Southern California, a show choir. We did concerts and choir competitions. Performing was what I loved to do.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that in order to “make it” as a singer, you can’t just be good, you have to be extraordinary. Even in the choirs I performed in, I wasn’t good enough to get solos. There were always the “stars”, you know, the ones that had the big solos in the concerts; the kids that had plans to go to Hollywood or Broadway after high school, and everyone believed they would be famous some day. I was never one of them. I was just one of the background voices. I tried to convince myself that I could be content with that, even though I wasn’t. It was ridiculous to think that I could be a singer, anyway. I didn’t have enough talent. I wasn’t pretty enough or skinny enough. It would be better to just let that go and focus on trying to do something with my life that would be attainable. I could be a nurse or a psychologist or something like that and maybe sing at church sometimes, if they would let me.
This wasn’t a conscious thought process. There wasn’t a moment when I decided to give up on the dream. It just slowly got crowded out of my mind. I knew I had to be realistic about myself and my abilities, so it drifted away until I forgot that it had ever been there in the first place.
When we started attending Bethel Church, God reminded me of how much I like to perform. Bethel does wonderful, professional quality Christmas and 4th of July shows. When I saw my first Christmas Spectacular in 2006, I kept saying to myself, “Wow! I have to get in on this!” I had missed it so much, but in the craziness of trying to figure out life as a wife and mother of two young children I had forgotten about my love of music. Shortly after that I joined the choir and got to be a part of the amazing shows the church does every year to reach out to the community. Slowly, over the next few years, God reawakened the dream he put in my heart when I was just a little girl.
So, back to American Idol. I can’t watch it because the singers on the show are so good. They have so much talent, and the world watches them sing and critiques every note, choice of song, outfit and hair style. In the auditions, sometimes a young person will stand in front of the judges and sing, and I think they sound good, but then Randy or Simon or Steven (depending on the season) will say something along the lines of “Sorry, dude. Not good enough.” Then I start to think, ”If that person isn’t good enough, why do I think I can sing?” “If she, who is so beautiful and talented, isn’t talented enough, why do I think that there is any chance for me?” Never mind that I don’t want to be an “American Idol”, per se. I’m too old, to begin with, and I don’t want that kind of lifestyle, anyway. The enemy uses my insecurities about my level of talent, though, to try to beat me into submission. He pounds me with all the reasons that I should just give up and be happy with being one of the “voices in the background” because, if all but one of those amazingly talented young people will end up off the show, why do I think that my mediocre ability can make any difference in the world?
I believe that my mediocre ability can make some kind of difference in the world because God has told me to sing. Because, if he can use a donkey to speak his words to someone who needs to hear it (see Numbers 22:21-31) he can use my voice too.
I don’t know where God is going to take me. Maybe someday I will sing on a stage as big as the American Idol stage. Maybe it will never get bigger than the little worship band I sing in now. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that I can’t let the enemy discourage me into giving up and feeling unworthy. Therefore, I don’t watch American Idol anymore.
See, the LORD your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 1:20-22
The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 31:7-9
Do you have a dream that has been squashed by life? Are you working toward your dream but feel that it is threatened all the time? What do you do to protect it?
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Being a Superwoman
Before I had my children, I had this idea of what it would be like to send them off to school in the morning. It looked a bit like a scene from Leave it to Beaver. I hand them their lunches, kiss the tops of their heads, tell them I love them and to have a good day, and off they go to their wonderful environments of educational enrichment.
This morning is a pretty standard example of what actually happens. My husband and I dragged ourselves out of bed, woke up the kids and started our weekday morning routine of getting them ready for school. While they ate breakfast, he made their lunches and I got myself ready for work. After about an hour reminding, cajoling, and, I’m ashamed to admit, yelling, I finally herded them toward the car, dropped them off at school and rushed myself to work. I drove to work irritated at myself because the last thing I said to my kids was, “Hurry! Get out of the car! People are waiting behind us! Go!” Granted, there was a long line of parents in cars behind us waiting to drop their kids off in the approved drop-off area, and the kids had been moving slow all morning, which meant that I was in danger of being late to work (which is actually dangerous since my job has a very strict late policy). That said, that’s not how I want them to start their school day.
This is just one of the many reasons that I frequently suffer from what has come to be known as “Mommy Guilt”. If you don’t have children, you might wonder what there is to feel guilty about, as long as you are doing your best and not abusing your kids. If you have young children or children who recently were young, you know exactly what I am talking about.
As a working mom, I feel guilty because I really believe, in my heart of hearts, that I should be home full-time taking care of them. Every mother knows that the best caregiver for her child is herself, so pawning off that responsibility to someone else, be it a daycare, a nanny/babysitter, a grandparent, or even the baby’s father, just feels wrong. At least that’s how it was for me.
I went back to work part-time when my second child, my son, was 4 weeks old. I was only gone for 4 hours a day, but leaving him broke my heart. My husband’s mother was available to care for him, so I knew he was in good hands, but being away from him every day was extremely difficult. Add into that equation that I was trying to keep him on breast milk only and struggling with my milk supply. It didn’t take long for him to decide that he like the bottle better than nursing, so then I was feeling rejected by him, as well. If we hadn’t needed the money so badly, I would have quit. We live in a society, however, which seems designed so that two incomes are needed for a family to make ends meet, so I kept going to work every day even though I felt horribly guilty and believed I was doing my children a terrible disservice.
It got easier after a while, but it still was hard. It was especially difficult on those day when I came home and heard from my mother in law that my son said his first word and I wasn‘t there to hear it. When I heard that my daughter fell and skinned her knee and I wasn’t there to kiss it better, my heart broke a little bit. When she clung to my legs and cried, “Mommy, please don’t go!” and I had to pull her off, put her in the arms of her grandma and walk out the door, my heart broke a little more.
A few years ago, I went to a women’s conference and attended a break-out session on “Strategies for the Working Mom”. The speaker spend most of the session talking about how, after a few years of working, she made the decision to stay home with her children. She discussed what a wonderful decision that was for her family and how God had honored that and provided for them. I left feeling bad that I couldn’t make that same decision and guilty that I was leaving my children in the care of someone else.
Stay-at-home moms aren’t immune to Mommy Guilt, though. Those girls, like me, who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s clearly learned the lesson that we can, and should, have a career just like the boys do. We can do anything. We can be anything. We can be doctors, scientists, engineers, police officers, fire fighters, business owners, artists, anything we want. The world is open to us, thanks to all the women who went before us and carved the paths through the boys’ clubs, broke through the walls and shattered the glass ceilings. We can do it all. We can have a rewarding career and have a family. We should have it all. All this freedom, though, created greater expectation. It’s no longer enough to be a wife and a mother and build your life around caring for your family. You have to do more and be more. Our parents expect us to succeed, our spouses expect us to contribute to the family budget, and we expect ourselves to excel at whatever we do. We get this idea that by “only staying home” we are somehow wasting ourselves and our potential.
I stayed home with my daughter for the first two years of her life. Those were two very lean years for us, financially. I liked being home taking care of my baby, but I felt bad every time I spent any money, because I wasn’t doing anything to “contribute”. I worked really hard to bargain hunt for everything we needed. I think I only got my hair cut once during that whole time, because spending anything on myself was so difficult. I wore maternity clothes a lot longer than I needed to, because my old clothes didn’t fit and I felt so guilty spending money to buy myself anything new. I gained a lot of weight because I ate all the little bits of leftover food my daughter didn’t eat and I didn‘t want the food to go to waste. I became the epitome of the “mom who let herself go”.
Dora the Explorer and Blues Clues were my daily companions. All My Children was the source of most of my grown up conversation during the day. I knew that being home with my daughter was the best thing I could do for her, but I felt isolated and lonely.
In those few times that I did try to meet up with other moms and go to play dates or once, a MOPS group, I compared myself to all the other moms and found myself sorely lacking. They were thinner, prettier, more put together. I heard their conversations about how they make all their own baby food and use only organic ingredients. I had stopped at McDonalds and given my daughter french fries on my way there.
I was struggling to potty train my 2½ year-old daughter, and one mom mentioned that her son had just decided one day that he wanted to “be a big boy” and that was it. He was potty trained before he turned 2.
In a conversation about breast feeding, I mentioned that I had nursed my daughter for 9 months. “Oh, you have to breastfeed for at least one year,” another mom said. “The longer the better.” Breastfeeding had been a long, hard struggle for me, so this comment felt like a knife in my chest. I had failed my daughter.
It doesn’t take long in a conversation with moms of young children to discover that there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. You can get their opinions on how long you should allow your child to use a pacifier (if you should use one at all), when to switch from a bottle to a cup, whether cloth or disposable diapers are best, when to introduce solid foods, what foods to start with, to vaccinate or not, to circumcise or not, public school vs. private school vs. home school, and on and on. This sort of thing was one more reason to isolate myself. I just wanted to avoid feeling the judgment of other moms who preached their way of parenting as the one and only way of doing it right, when I was just trying to get through each day and figuring it out as I went. I was tired of feeling inadequate as it was. I didn’t need all those super-moms as proof that I didn’t know what I was doing.
Now, I can look back at those conversations and see that they probably weren’t judging me. They probably were just working really hard to be the best mom they could be because, if you are going to stay home to raise your kids instead of having a career, you’d better be the best stay-at-home mom there is. I think that some women who choose to stay home make “being a mom” their career in order to validate that decision.
Whichever choice we make, it’s enormously personal and difficult. Because it’s so hard, any suggestion, implied, imagined or explicit, that our decision was selfish or not in the best interest of our child, is hard to handle and we can get defensive easily. Sometimes I think that our defensiveness of our position is so strong because we are so conflicted about it. Whichever life we choose involves great sacrifice and any time our sacrifice is undervalued, we feel it deeply.
I believe that this is an area in our culture that the enemy has built up strongholds. He takes advantage of the fact that we get such mixed messages about womanhood in general, and motherhood specifically, and pounds us with relentless criticisms of every little thing we do. We are bombarded by information so that the most basic of child care tasks have been turned into controversies. How can it be controversial to feed your baby, you ask? Just google it. There are controversies about the correct way to put baby to bed, the best way to help baby sleep, which toys to use, which gadgets to use (or not use), even carseats can be controversial.
Really, it starts before baby is born with everything that is thrown at the pregnant woman. The advise is never-ending. Even perfect strangers will feel free to walk up to a pregnant woman and tell her why whatever she happens to be eating or doing will damage her unborn child.
As women and mothers, we need to recognize that we are not designed to live with the guilt we feel and the ways we beat ourselves up for not being able to be “Superwoman”. We can’t be all the things that the world tries to convince us that we should be. We can only be who God made us each, individually, to be. And that is enough. Any feelings of guilt, being “less-than” or not measuring up to some murky, undefined idea of what we “should be” are not from him. They are lies and when we realize that, we can begin to combat them with the truth.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13-14
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:1
This morning is a pretty standard example of what actually happens. My husband and I dragged ourselves out of bed, woke up the kids and started our weekday morning routine of getting them ready for school. While they ate breakfast, he made their lunches and I got myself ready for work. After about an hour reminding, cajoling, and, I’m ashamed to admit, yelling, I finally herded them toward the car, dropped them off at school and rushed myself to work. I drove to work irritated at myself because the last thing I said to my kids was, “Hurry! Get out of the car! People are waiting behind us! Go!” Granted, there was a long line of parents in cars behind us waiting to drop their kids off in the approved drop-off area, and the kids had been moving slow all morning, which meant that I was in danger of being late to work (which is actually dangerous since my job has a very strict late policy). That said, that’s not how I want them to start their school day.
This is just one of the many reasons that I frequently suffer from what has come to be known as “Mommy Guilt”. If you don’t have children, you might wonder what there is to feel guilty about, as long as you are doing your best and not abusing your kids. If you have young children or children who recently were young, you know exactly what I am talking about.
As a working mom, I feel guilty because I really believe, in my heart of hearts, that I should be home full-time taking care of them. Every mother knows that the best caregiver for her child is herself, so pawning off that responsibility to someone else, be it a daycare, a nanny/babysitter, a grandparent, or even the baby’s father, just feels wrong. At least that’s how it was for me.
I went back to work part-time when my second child, my son, was 4 weeks old. I was only gone for 4 hours a day, but leaving him broke my heart. My husband’s mother was available to care for him, so I knew he was in good hands, but being away from him every day was extremely difficult. Add into that equation that I was trying to keep him on breast milk only and struggling with my milk supply. It didn’t take long for him to decide that he like the bottle better than nursing, so then I was feeling rejected by him, as well. If we hadn’t needed the money so badly, I would have quit. We live in a society, however, which seems designed so that two incomes are needed for a family to make ends meet, so I kept going to work every day even though I felt horribly guilty and believed I was doing my children a terrible disservice.
It got easier after a while, but it still was hard. It was especially difficult on those day when I came home and heard from my mother in law that my son said his first word and I wasn‘t there to hear it. When I heard that my daughter fell and skinned her knee and I wasn’t there to kiss it better, my heart broke a little bit. When she clung to my legs and cried, “Mommy, please don’t go!” and I had to pull her off, put her in the arms of her grandma and walk out the door, my heart broke a little more.
A few years ago, I went to a women’s conference and attended a break-out session on “Strategies for the Working Mom”. The speaker spend most of the session talking about how, after a few years of working, she made the decision to stay home with her children. She discussed what a wonderful decision that was for her family and how God had honored that and provided for them. I left feeling bad that I couldn’t make that same decision and guilty that I was leaving my children in the care of someone else.
Stay-at-home moms aren’t immune to Mommy Guilt, though. Those girls, like me, who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s clearly learned the lesson that we can, and should, have a career just like the boys do. We can do anything. We can be anything. We can be doctors, scientists, engineers, police officers, fire fighters, business owners, artists, anything we want. The world is open to us, thanks to all the women who went before us and carved the paths through the boys’ clubs, broke through the walls and shattered the glass ceilings. We can do it all. We can have a rewarding career and have a family. We should have it all. All this freedom, though, created greater expectation. It’s no longer enough to be a wife and a mother and build your life around caring for your family. You have to do more and be more. Our parents expect us to succeed, our spouses expect us to contribute to the family budget, and we expect ourselves to excel at whatever we do. We get this idea that by “only staying home” we are somehow wasting ourselves and our potential.
I stayed home with my daughter for the first two years of her life. Those were two very lean years for us, financially. I liked being home taking care of my baby, but I felt bad every time I spent any money, because I wasn’t doing anything to “contribute”. I worked really hard to bargain hunt for everything we needed. I think I only got my hair cut once during that whole time, because spending anything on myself was so difficult. I wore maternity clothes a lot longer than I needed to, because my old clothes didn’t fit and I felt so guilty spending money to buy myself anything new. I gained a lot of weight because I ate all the little bits of leftover food my daughter didn’t eat and I didn‘t want the food to go to waste. I became the epitome of the “mom who let herself go”.
Dora the Explorer and Blues Clues were my daily companions. All My Children was the source of most of my grown up conversation during the day. I knew that being home with my daughter was the best thing I could do for her, but I felt isolated and lonely.
In those few times that I did try to meet up with other moms and go to play dates or once, a MOPS group, I compared myself to all the other moms and found myself sorely lacking. They were thinner, prettier, more put together. I heard their conversations about how they make all their own baby food and use only organic ingredients. I had stopped at McDonalds and given my daughter french fries on my way there.
I was struggling to potty train my 2½ year-old daughter, and one mom mentioned that her son had just decided one day that he wanted to “be a big boy” and that was it. He was potty trained before he turned 2.
In a conversation about breast feeding, I mentioned that I had nursed my daughter for 9 months. “Oh, you have to breastfeed for at least one year,” another mom said. “The longer the better.” Breastfeeding had been a long, hard struggle for me, so this comment felt like a knife in my chest. I had failed my daughter.
It doesn’t take long in a conversation with moms of young children to discover that there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. You can get their opinions on how long you should allow your child to use a pacifier (if you should use one at all), when to switch from a bottle to a cup, whether cloth or disposable diapers are best, when to introduce solid foods, what foods to start with, to vaccinate or not, to circumcise or not, public school vs. private school vs. home school, and on and on. This sort of thing was one more reason to isolate myself. I just wanted to avoid feeling the judgment of other moms who preached their way of parenting as the one and only way of doing it right, when I was just trying to get through each day and figuring it out as I went. I was tired of feeling inadequate as it was. I didn’t need all those super-moms as proof that I didn’t know what I was doing.
Now, I can look back at those conversations and see that they probably weren’t judging me. They probably were just working really hard to be the best mom they could be because, if you are going to stay home to raise your kids instead of having a career, you’d better be the best stay-at-home mom there is. I think that some women who choose to stay home make “being a mom” their career in order to validate that decision.
Whichever choice we make, it’s enormously personal and difficult. Because it’s so hard, any suggestion, implied, imagined or explicit, that our decision was selfish or not in the best interest of our child, is hard to handle and we can get defensive easily. Sometimes I think that our defensiveness of our position is so strong because we are so conflicted about it. Whichever life we choose involves great sacrifice and any time our sacrifice is undervalued, we feel it deeply.
I believe that this is an area in our culture that the enemy has built up strongholds. He takes advantage of the fact that we get such mixed messages about womanhood in general, and motherhood specifically, and pounds us with relentless criticisms of every little thing we do. We are bombarded by information so that the most basic of child care tasks have been turned into controversies. How can it be controversial to feed your baby, you ask? Just google it. There are controversies about the correct way to put baby to bed, the best way to help baby sleep, which toys to use, which gadgets to use (or not use), even carseats can be controversial.
Really, it starts before baby is born with everything that is thrown at the pregnant woman. The advise is never-ending. Even perfect strangers will feel free to walk up to a pregnant woman and tell her why whatever she happens to be eating or doing will damage her unborn child.
As women and mothers, we need to recognize that we are not designed to live with the guilt we feel and the ways we beat ourselves up for not being able to be “Superwoman”. We can’t be all the things that the world tries to convince us that we should be. We can only be who God made us each, individually, to be. And that is enough. Any feelings of guilt, being “less-than” or not measuring up to some murky, undefined idea of what we “should be” are not from him. They are lies and when we realize that, we can begin to combat them with the truth.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13-14
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:1
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