Category: My Life

Say Yes To The Dress

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Have you seen this show on television? I had not ever watched it before until a friend suggested it to me. At first glance this is a crazy mess of mothers who want to relive their wedding fantasies. I sat there stunned as mothers said to their daughters that the dress of their daughter’s dreams were not as important as the dress of the mother’s dream. In other words, I thought, you’ll get to pick the dress you want when your daughter gets married.

Then you see the daughters who have not fallen far from the mother’s tree. The mothers have clearly spelled out the budget. The daughters could clearly care less. “I know what she said”, one daughter exclaimed, “but I know that I’m the only daughter and I usually get my way.”

Thus begins the war. It’s such a complicated relationship with a mother and daughter. You must know when to speak up and when to be quiet. I admit I am not good at this as it was recently pointed out, I’m trying to do better now! Watching just a few episodes of this show made me wonder if I should just begin praying for wisdom when it comes to my daughters getting married. Maybe I should even begin praying for a muzzle?

One thing was for sure, it’s important for a daughter to receive her mother’s approval ultimately. At at the end of each show, whether the right dress was found or not, there was a bond between these two women that goes beyond love. Every time I saw a daughter come out of that dressing room beaming in the, no I mean “the” dress, the mother teared up and their eyes would meet. Suddenly all the squabbling subsided and hugs abounded. I realized even though it’s difficult I prefer my daughter’s happiness over my opinion. Yes, it’s hard to say, but it’s the truth of my heart and I believe it’s the truth of any mother’s heart.

Dating My Man

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Do you want to reap love in your marriage? Then you have to sow time. My husband is my best friend. He’s the one I tell my secrets to. He’s the one whose hand I love to feel in mine. He’s the one who I love to cuddle with at night. He’s the one I love to kiss and he still gives me goosebumps when he calls this California girl, Darlin’ in his Louisiana accent.

One thing I can tell you as a wife of many years is you have to keep dating each other to make sure this love lasts. You’ve got to sow some time into your marriage. You’ve got to date each other. Marriage doesn’t mean we take each other for granted. Marriage doesn’t mean we no longer work to look good for each other.

It doesn’t have to be extravagant dating either. Tonight we sat across the dinner table together. A beautiful table setting, placemats, chargers, and are you ready for it? Taco Bell. Yes, a taco from Taco Bell, just me and my love. We talked about heading out on vacation with the kids this week. We talked about how nice it would be to get away from it all for a few days. Then he looked at me and said, “Thanks for dinner.” His smile was really nice. I answered, “You’re welcome. I slaved for you because I love you and knew you’d be hungry.” We laughed together and went to go pack our suitcases.

Marriage doesn’t mean it’s over, it means it’s just beginning. If you’re in a rut, change it. Put on a pretty smile and remember what you loved about him before the cares of life hit. Then be that woman for him. If you haven’t done this in awhile he may look shocked, but I promise he’ll come around.

I know that women tend to balk at this type of post on the blog. “Why should I have to put on a pretty smile?” “Why should I have to be the one who tries?” “Why should I have to put on makeup for him?” “He’s gotten fat and lazy too.” To all of this my answer is, you didn’t win him by wearing sweats everyday, but you can lose each other with this type of thinking. If you don’t think he’s going anywhere look around at your countless friends whose marriages have broken over their lack of care. I’m tired of defending my position and don’t really feel led to say a whole lot more here today. Suffice it to say that when I take the time to be the wife my husband married, he smiles more, he compliments more, he helps me more, he’s more of a friend to me. He’ll actually stop his video game playing when I come home from bible study night and attentively listen to me. If this isn’t enough, then I don’t know what women want and that’s a whole other post.

Hitting The Wall

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Luke 5:16 As often as possible Jesus withdrew to out-of-the-way places for prayer.

While listening to the radio the other day on my drive to work, a runner was describing his ability to run 30 miles a day without hitting the wall. Hitting the wall is a term runners use to describe what happens when they are running and suddenly they feel extreme fatigue and loss of energy.

He went on to describe that endurance runners, those who run long distances even cross country, know that slow and steady are the keys to avoiding hitting the wall. He said there was a formula to endurance and that was to run and recover, run and recover, run and recover.

I began to think of ministry and how often we run but don’t recover and we end up hitting the wall. Jesus seemed to understand that the demands on his life required him to run and recover often. Over and over again in Scripture, Jesus heals, meets needs, preaches, teaches and then goes off to recover. Sometimes he takes his disciples with him. Other times he goes off alone but always he is running and recovering and endurance doesn’t seem to be a problem.

How often do you get away to pray alone? Do you make time and have a place in your life where the cell phone and the demands of daily life get left behind and the only thing that goes with you is a desire to pray and hear from God? Are you like some who are hitting the wall and wondering why you aren’t fulfilled in your calling and why you can’t seem to push beyond a certain place in your ministry?

Sometimes the most urgent thing you can do is rest. ~ Anonymous

If there is anything I have learned this year it’s to run and recover without regret. I used to feel lazy if I took a day off to sleep and rest. No longer is that a thought in my head. I use to feel bad if someone knocked on my front door on my day off and I didn’t want to answer. Not anymore. You see, I understand that if I am going to run this race to the finish, then endurance is key and recovery is necessary. It’s not an option. We must learn to be strategic. We must learn to not bow to every urgent need but instead focus and not lose sight nor neglect the important things in life.

1 Corinthians 9:24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

How Do We Get Anything Done?

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Recently a religious woman in our town threw an accusation my way. “You know, she admits to listening to secular music.” Wow! I thought. That’s the worse thing I do? Well then, I must be in pretty good shape!

Where do we as Christians get the idea that everything is evil and nothing is good?

“No pants on women, it makes them look like men.” 

“Don’t say Oh My God! It’s taking the Lord’s Name in Vain.”

“No sleeveless blouses on women, armpits are evil.” 

okay I made up the armpits are evil but really what is the reason a woman can’t show her shoulders in public?

“No crosses whatsoever, they are demonic!”  

Okay but in movies they ward off vampires….just saying…..

“HIDE! On Halloween.”

Uh, because this is the only day the LORD didn’t make right? (Insert sarcastic snicker here)

“Dance at the altar before the Lord or you are not really worshiping.” 

“Don’t dance at the altar before the Lord. This is not a disco!”

“Contemporary music is just a fad, hymns will come back.”

“You can’t watch a rated R movie, but look the other way, and pass the cash over to your kids so they can go see it.”  

“No spaghetti straps on dresses.” 

This is especially true if you even remotely attractive.

“NO Jewelry!”

This is critical if you are someone in danger of making a golden calf.

Can you think of more?

Then let’s go to the other spectrum:

“We live together because if we got married, I’d lose my benefits. God sees my heart.”

“I taught Sunday School before. Let someone else have a turn.”

 This is usually followed by a rant about children today.

“I don’t report my tips to the IRS. They don’t need my money.”

“I work part-time because otherwise my ex would get her back child support.” 

Bible study? Girl, I’ve read the bible several times, what can you teach me?” 

It’s not gossip if it’s true. 

I’m just wondering at what point we stop fighting each other, live out what the word says, quit making excuses and speaking in half truths, which are lies we tell ourselves to make us feel good, and get on with the business at hand? What is the business at hand? To reach out to people who are hurting and show them a Jesus who loves them, not because they look right, act right or are right, but because he just does.

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How do we get anything done when we won’t stop living in religious fear and condemnation of one another. As I told the TLC women recently, “What makes you right?”

Something Beautiful

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My good friends and mentors in ministry, Bishop Gregory and Dr. Gayla Holley, recently had a horrible loss in their family. They put their precious little dog Missy, a yorkie terrier, outside in their yard and a turkey vulture took her. They were shocked and devastated at what had happened. When Gayla told me about it, I immediately had tears in my eyes and my hand went to my throat, as I could imagine the pain my friends are going through. Being a dog lover and knowing that dogs aren’t pets for long, they become a part of your family, I understood the grief they must be feeling.

They both felt badly about Missy. They shed some tears, they tried to figure out why this would happen. It was really a sad time. You see, Missy first belonged to a family who just didn’t have time for her. Her family knew they needed to find a good home for her and along came the Holleys. With them, Missy traveled the country in their RV, she slept in pajamas and got special treats. She watched the news on their laps. She got table scraps when her mom wasn’t looking. She even liked cuddling up in bed with them. She lived the life of luxury for a dog.

What happened next didn’t surprise me at all. They rescued another dog within a week. A Maltese who was in desperate need of a groomer. He is now living the life! Too soon you might say? Not when your life is about love.

See, there is an important lesson here about love and loss. In our grief we can decide to put up a wall and say to ourselves that we will never love again. We can decide that the loss is just too great and our hearts are much too broken to ever take another chance. We can live in the good ‘ol days when they were with us. In fact, the natural response to death is to nurse grief. To speak statements that shut love out.

It is a very powerful statement to remain open to love and shut out grief. Yes, grief is necessary and needed but love is even more so. In this case they determined that there were a lot of dogs that needed love more than they needed grief. Missy isn’t an afterthought. She is missed, she is loved still, and she isn’t replaced. This new life with a new dog will be a process just as anything in life is. No two dogs are the same. In fact, her memory is such a good one that they opened their lives up to even more love. That is a testimony to Missy’s life if ever there was one.

Sometimes in ministry you learn deep lessons not in what people say to you but in how their life is lived out before you.

Nightlight

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John 8:12 Jesus once again addressed them: “I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.”

We live in a two-story house. It gets incredibly hot upstairs in the summer. Our bedroom is especially hot, so a few years ago we bought blackout curtains, which help somewhat. I mean it’s cooler definitely but still hot in the room. The thing about blackout curtains is the room stays dark all the time.

Today, I threw open the curtains early in the morning and began to clean our room. Things look much different in the light. In the dark, I didn’t see the spiderweb that had started the week before, I didn’t see the thin layer of dust that was on the furniture, and the ceiling fan? Goodness! It needed a good cleaning!

As I got the cleaning supplies together and began to dust and clean I had a God-thought. I realized that many of us live our lives with blackout curtains. They serve to dim the sin in our lives and they serve to hide those areas we don’t really want to acknowledge. Only, we fool ourselves don’t we? Our room looked decent in the dark. In the light of day there were areas that needed attention. Just because we couldn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there, it was just hidden in the dark.

I began to see the choices we make. See, we don’t hide anything from God. God is light, and when he enters our life it illuminates that life completely. The problem is we want to see him as a nightlight. We want him to shed a little light, but not expose the all that is going on. It’s painful to see. What I thought would be an hour of cleaning was going to be much more intensive because now that I could see the dust, how could I ignore it and leave it? We were breathing it in, living in it and we could not let it continue. After I had dusted the ceiling fan, I had to then break out the vacuum cleaner, in order to vacuum, I had to make sure all the things on the floor were picked up and put in their place. It took work and determination but it is worth it for our well-being in the end.

The end result of my effort is that in light or dark, the room is substantially cleaner. Don’t be afraid to let the light of God illuminate your life. Then stand back and take a good look around. See the places that need attention. Deal with the garbage that maybe was useful in its time but no longer fits the lifestyle you are creating. Do the work it’s going to take to get things back in order. You’ll be better for it!

Cell Phone Etiquette

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Just because a cell phone seems like a tether to 24/7 access doesn’t mean that manners went away. Here are a two very important things to remember when using a cell phone:

  • Use the 9-9 rule. If this is a personal cell phone you are calling, please do not call before 9 am nor after 9 pm unless it’s an emergency. A REAL emergency, like someone has been rushed to the hospital, not like you ran out of milk for your cereal. Instead, if it’s important, send a text, if the person is available they’ll call you. If not, you’ve not disturbed them.
  • Do not hang up and call over and over again. If the person didn’t answer the first time, leave a message. Sometimes, if I’m in a meeting and you call, I can’t answer. If you hang up and call right back, I’m still in a meeting and still can’t answer. If you hang up and call a third time, you’re just being annoying and it gets irritating. LEAVE A MESSAGE.

Do not expect that because it’s a cell phone the person has the phone on all the time. There are times when I’m home and downstairs cooking dinner, doing laundry or whatever and my phone is upstairs. There are times when I’m on a date with my husband and want to focus on him. There are times when I (gasp) take a shower or take the dog for a walk, or am sitting on my front porch reading a book. It’s not personal, we have lives away from our cell phones.

For me, I found that I had become addicted to the phone and others had become addicted to being able to call me all the time. It hit home one day, when at family dinner, we all had our cell phones next to our plate. I determined to simplify my life this year. To get back to basics. To not fall into a trap of having to answer while I’m trying to eat. So my phone gets turned off sometimes on purpose. It gets left behind sometimes on purpose. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means I am not always available.

Life Happenings In Bullets

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  • These days I am reflective.
  • I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve been introspective.
  • Assessing some mistakes made in the past, that affect my today.
  • Don’t you wish you got a do-over on some aspects of your life, all while keeping the things you love?
  • Yeah me too!
  • Then there are the fantastic things that have happened that I am forever grateful for.
  • Love is complicated. Loving everyone is even more complicated, yet we’re commanded to do so. Yikes!
  • Nope this love revelation has nothing to do with my marriage.
  • Car issues are affecting my life these days.
  • I want a Chevy Camaro.
  • My husband thinks this is nothing but a mid-life crisis.
  • He wants a crossover.
  • When did all the people in People Magazine become unknown to me?
  • I am simplifying my life. It’s complicated.
  • My sense of humor is back.
  • I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not but I love the show An Idiot Abroad.
  • ‘Nuff said about that.
  • Or not, maybe I was supposed to be born British?
  • Either my compassion is increasing or my hormones are out of balance.
  • Can’t quite figure it out.
  • I am forevermore more in love with Jesus more than before.
  • I am resolved to take action on issues affecting women.
  • I am in love with the TLC group.
  • I see their progress and I want to scream, “THANK YOU GOD!”
  • I see their sadness and I want to hug them and tell them it will be okay.
  • Somehow though, I’ve realized God’s okay and our okay are not necessarily the same concept.
  • I’m loving the Life Connections class.
  • Leah’s lemon bars, well let’s face it, all of her concoctions are to die for.
  • I wonder if she knows I skip dinner on class night in hopes she brings a dessert?
  • Lauren graduated from high school and signed up for community college.
  • She also hit her first car about two weeks into driving on her own.
  • We celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary last week.
  • Our kids are going to work with us this summer.

The Details

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I’ve become aware of my life. It sounds weird but I’ve began seeing where I spend my time and how I spend it. I’m not so, ‘go with the flow and forget about me’, as I once was. This realization of what adds to and takes away from my life is enlightening me. I knew certain things with head knowledge but really didn’t know them in my heart until I started to examine my time and how I spent it.

I knew that God was interested in all the details of my life. I knew that he was with me always. I knew he was just a conversation away but I don’t think I really realized it as I do now. He really does care about the little things I do all day. Anything from washing dishes to what I buy at the grocery store to what I listen to on the radio.

God is in the simple and the mundane as much as he is in the profound. Have you ever stopped to realize how he is there in every single conversation we have with ourselves AND with others? Would my inner self-talk change if I realized my creator was listening to what I had to say to myself? Would I be so critical of myself, of others, if I understood that simple truth? Would I be so quick to complain about the little irritations of life, if I stopped and considered that the One who ordered my day was standing right there listening? My decisions and my direction change when I am aware that I am being watched over in the details. I am not being stalked or judged, I am be cared over. I am being cried over, I am being laughed over, I am being cheered over and although as believers we know it, I wonder if we understand it?

I am becoming more aware about the details of my life. The fact that I am part of something that is so huge my brain could never wrap itself around it, isn’t overlooked or put to the side to me these days. The details, each little move I make, counts for something. What will I make it count for today? What will you make it count for today?

Time For Beth Moore and Dog Allergies

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Some of TLC goes to see Beth Moore

I’ve missed writing this past week! April 1 saw some of the women of TLC head to Fresno, CA to see Beth Moore at the Save Mart Center. What a blessing for us. We stood in a stadium of 6,500 women and worshiped to the music of Travis Cottrell and then heard a powerful word from Beth Moore. At one point, during the worship, I looked around the stadium and just shut my mouth. I watched in awe as the daughters of the Most High King praised him with song. It was just beautiful. Tears filled my eyes as I stood on holy ground and watched women from all denominations, all colors, all sizes and shapes, all ages including babies come together for one common purpose. To praise and learn about our Father.

The Save Mart Center became holy territory the moment our feet entered that space together in one mind and one accord. With all debate between denominations and all the Christian voices we hear battling one another it was pure honor to be one voice among many that sang in unison, that laughed in unison and that talked non-stop during break! There were so many of us, honestly I saw about four men there, that we not only used all the women’s restrooms but the men’s as well.

Of course the women of TLC who went to the conference, spent the night in a local hotel, and I spare you the details of that, but suffice it to say that we all slept about 3 hours or so and then went back to the conference. I can tell you that our ride home in the church van was MUCH quieter than our ride up!

I wasn’t able to catch up on my sleep that night or for many nights. Lulu, the wonder dog, began to scratch like crazy. I thought she had fleas so I pulled the flea comb out and began to brush her out but there was not a single flea. A trip to the vet told us that she has an environmental allergy. What the heck does that mean? Well, she allergic to either her food, her treats, flowers or grass. So guess what? Lulu and I are on prednisone, my seasonal allergies and her whatever allergy. There’s a problem though. We decided to eliminate one thing at a time to see what she’s allergic to. So we had to eliminate all snacks and put her on a special diet. Lulu, is not used to getting told no she doesn’t get people food, so she’s not happy. Plus swallowing a pill without a treat afterward is not her idea of fair.

So life’s been rolling along and my writing has lapsed but I’ve got so much to share. So many things on my heart, so many things I am learning. I can’t wait to get back to time writing. For now, I have to give my dog her next dose of meds!