Self-Esteem

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I was teaching a parenting class once when one mother was appalled at another mother’s decision to not allow her daughter make-up. She said shocked and loud, “But what about her self esteem!!!???” The class all looked to me, waiting for me to agree with one or the other of these two beautiful women. I let them know that I was not concerned with self-esteem. Shocking!! Needless to say, I lost all credibility with the self-esteem mom and at that point, she quit the class. 

Self-esteem is defined in Merriam Webster as a confidence and satisfaction in oneself. So right off the bat it tells me that self esteem is within me. So my self-esteem is not about your telling me how great I am it’s about ME telling ME realistically how great I am. My self-esteem is not measured by my outside, although it may show up there, it’s measured by my internal self.

That being established, it won’t matter how great I look with make-up and hair and nails and the right ipod and phone and car, if my personality and depth can’t be measured worthily it’s in vain. Beauty fades, you need to have something substantial at that point, something internal.

I don’t believe in telling my children everyday they are great and powerful. Those are empty words that are like helium in a balloon. It lifts the balloon but as the helium leaks out, that balloon eventually falls to the earth. Instead, I believe in saying things like;

“You know that test you scored 100% on? That was really cool and showed hard work.”

“I was really proud of you for cleaning your room without being asked. It really showed initiative.”

“I know you said you mowed the lawn but you didn’t do a good job. Go back and do it again like you were taught because I know that you can.”

I believe in substance, building blocks in which you can solidly build a foundation of inner confidence and satisfaction. Building blocks in which the whole of your being is not externally motivated but internally driven. I see the young Hollywood stars of today and all of their lives they’ve been told how magnificent they are but they were never given the substance that will sustain them. They are, for the most part, helium filled balloons.

I want my children to know that they are capable of greatness and failure. I want them to know that their worth is measured not in their materialism but in their integrity and character. I want them to have substance within them. I want them to work to the best of their ability and to “be” to the best of their ability not because they have to but because they want to. Because to do so, brings them internal satisfaction that no one else on the planet can give them.

I find my self-esteem in a job well done, in a clean house, in a dinner that was properly cooked, in helping others, in being a person who can be counted on to keep their word, in being a good friend. Yes, I like to look nice and I like pretty clothes and shoes and all things girly but that is not my measure. My measure and the only thing that matters is my heart. When all is said and done and I look back on my life, I’ll be measured by my heart.

Accountability

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My husband walks in the other night after a counseling session and says, “I pulled a Susan Young tonight.” Okay, that got my attention so I said, “What does that mean?” He goes with a big sarcastic grin, “You know, one of those ‘quit whining and feeling sorry for yourself take responsibility for your part in this and get up and get moving’ speeches you give.” Really I had to admit he was right.

Do you have someone in your life that tells you the truth? Have you surrounded yourself with people who agree with every thought or action you have? You can really get messed up with the scenario of everyone around you thinking how wonderful you are. I believe we have to have people in our life who speak the truth CONstructively not DEstructively. There is no point in having someone in your life who only wants to put you down to build themselves up falsely. You want someone who will tell you the truth because they love you and want to see you grow and not get stuck in the muck you’ve helped create or are about to create. My grandma used to say, “If I don’t tell you the truth no one else will.” I am praying that you have more than just your grandma telling you the truth!

I have people in my life who tell me the truth and even though sometimes it stings and I don’t always agree at that moment, it makes me think. Once I examine what they say though, I find that usually they are right. In the end, I believe that they have my best interest at heart. These people keep me accountable to my true self. They help me stay focused on who I am trying to become and keep me from making dumb mistakes that will hurt me.

The bible says there is wisdom in a multitude of counsel (Proverbs 15:22) and that is true IF you have surrounded yourself with smart people. My husband says all the time that you should not be the smartest person you know. One thing I know for sure, I am not the smartest person I know.

I would caution you to know your friends and their motives. Don’t be paranoid just wise. In relationships with other women we tend to be jealous and catty sometimes so we throw the digs around. Most women tend to have that friend who wants to be your friend even at the cost of their own personal opinion and that hurts both of you in the end. They are the friends who only tell you what you want to hear. Build your friendship to the level where your friends are able to talk to you. I am not talking aquaintances here, I am talking real friends.

Proverbs 27:9 Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel. 

Instead look for and find friends who have a life of their own and don’t want yours. Find firends who aren’t trying to hurt you and be careful that you aren’t so self-focused that you think everyone wants your life. Believe me when I tell you that when you have contented people in your life, they don’t want to be you and they certainly don’t pity you. They desire a true friendship with you, without conditions. Yes, they are hard to find but when you do find them, keep them! Just as you want those friends in your life, be that friend! What good does it do to agree with a friend going off of a cliff? So get some people in your life that will occasionally pull a Susan Young on you!

Where Did I Leave Him?

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He was here yesterday. I know he has to be around here somewhere. Where can he be? I mean, honestly he was here and then he was gone!

 

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Hmmm, maybe I accidently left him in the kitchen. Maybe in a drawer somewhere? 

 

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Maybe I left him in my closet. I really need to find him. Can you help me? 

 

This seems to be our average thought process when it comes to God. We keep looking for him externally as if he is under a rock somewhere. We turn our lives upside down  trying to find him. We read every book, follow every person who says they know where he is at.

All the while, there is a spot at your core where he can dwell. You only need invite him in. Then you will never have to look for him again because he will be with you always.

  • Matthew 28:20 ………I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

The biggest misunderstanding is that we think God is external. God is internal once we are saved. Once we are dedicated to him, we become one with him, our bodies become living, breathing temples of the Holy Spirit. 

Ah! There he is! 

 

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Coming In Second……..Or Third

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Lisa, 28, asks:

Is it ever okay to get divorced? 

Hi Lisa, 

First off, God hates divorce. I like the way the Message version of the bible describes it as, the violent dismembering of one flesh, because no one gets out of a divorce whole. 

Malachi 2:16“I hate divorce,” says the God of Israel. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says, “I hate the violent dismembering of the ‘one flesh’ of marriage.” So watch yourselves. Don’t let your guard down. Don’t cheat.  

Yet even God acknowledges that infidelity throws forever out the window and allows for divorce. God even allows for remarriage in this case as the couple’s vows have been severed just as in death. 
For me, the question is a bit more complicated. I don’t believe that people have to stay miserably together. I believe that they may choose to live apart. I don’t believe that they can remarry in these cases because my faith and belief in the bible makes this pretty clear. However,  I like Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s rule of  thumb for reasons for divorce. She calls them the 3 A’s. Abuse, Addiction and Adultery. 
For a woman, her number one need is security. We can overlook a lot of flaws if we feel secure in our marriage. Abuse, Adultery and Addictions bring that security to a halt. When a godly woman comes second to God she loves this, she understands this and for her, it’s the completely acceptable. When that same woman comes second or even third to another vice or person she becomes jealous and outraged. At this point, there is no need to waste precious years of her life competing with something that she can’t win. It will only serve to frustrate her. She can’t compete with anger, another woman or an addiction necessarily. 
For a man, his number one need is respect. If he can’t get respect at home from his woman then it leaves doors open for him to find that respect in other areas. Even then, when the 3 A’s enter his relationship, they don’t leave any room for respect. 
Okay, that being said, go the distance at trying to make your marriage work. Get counseling, read, look for help first. Don’t just a quit. A marathon runner didn’t get up one morning and decide to run a race. He trained, he trained, and then he trained some more. He built endurance he ran up hills and down hills, he prepared his body and his mind for the task set before him. So it is with marriage. You can’t just quit because you have to remember that the violent dismembering of one flesh means you will never be the same again. You have exhaust every effort and when you can honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say truthfully that you have done all that you can do, then I believe you can separate. 
Anything other than the 3 A’s is no reason for divorce. You can find a common ground and with help you can restore a marriage. Hope that helps! 

The Cost Of Infidelity

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I’ve read with interest a blog recently about women and infidelity. This blog coming on the heels of an article in Latina Magazine which said that 68% of college aged women cheat on their mate versus 75% of college aged men who cheat, it made for some interesting observations.

The article in Latina quoted Gary Lewandowski Jr. Ph.D who has done extensive research on infidelity. He says women tend to cheat due to dissatisfaction in their relationship. They also tend to cheat early in their marriage, the longer they’ve been married the less likely they are to cheat. When Latina did their own study on 500 readers 69% of them have cheated. Infidelity is not just a male issue anymore, if it ever was, and it seems that the numbers are staggeringly increasing.

My own personal thought on this is to look at the age we are discussing. Women in the college age group who are still finding their own identity. It makes sense to me that they would be the ones most likely to cheat as they would have more personal dissatisfaction in their relationship because they have more dissatisfaction with their life in general. These are not the women of 30 years ago who were prepared for marriage at 18. These women have been brought up with a vastly different perspective to their life. They were not brought up to go to college to find their husband as in generations past. Instead, they were brought up to find themselves. This is not a bad thing, don’t misunderstand, I like this, but mix this prematurely in a marriage and we can see where there can be issues.

What is interesting about infidelity is that once it happens the first time, it becomes easier to do it again. Lines get crossed and whether we like to admit it or not, we become desensitized to the idea. Statistically we find women who cheat live to cheat again. It becomes a vicious cycle of looking for that thrill that you can’t find in a long-term relationship. Mix this with the fact that one in five people have genital herpes and the fastest growing number of HIV/AIDS patients are Hispanics and African American women and we have a lot more issues than a broken heart. The idea that it won’t happen to me, keeps these diseases spreading.

So what is the remedy? We can’t say it’s church because even those in church cheat. We can’t say it’s God because those in church should know God and still it happens. Pastor Doug has told me over and over that those who cheat or find themselves on the brink of cheating are open to the possibility of it. I believe the real answers lie in the questions that are never asked.

What exactly are you looking for in a relationship?

How do you react when the going gets rough?

Are you run by your emotions?

Can you set clear boundaries for yourself?

Are you ready for a committed relationship?

I do the pre-marital counseling in our church. When I ask these questions, often I get the blank stares and the ‘I don’t know’ answers and only because they have never really thought of why they want to get married or if they are ready for marriage. They tend to look at the questions through the rose colored glasses of love rather than the honesty of reality that will smack them in the face quite quickly.

Then, there needs to be a clear understanding of the vows taken. What is a covenant and who did I make that covenant with? You see, that covenant although primarily with your spouse and God affects many others. Children, parents and other family members are affected by these decisions as well. When a covenant is broken those people are also indirectly affected by your decision. Sin may be personal but it is never private it affects many, even the people on the sidelines watching this all go down.

The cost of infidelity is not just the demise of a relationship, it’s the cost of a piece of a soul, the cost of those who look at the damage, the cost to your health and the opening of doors that don’t easily get closed once they are opened. Even when the relationship is saved, there is something that has been chipped away from it. We must learn to consider the cost of our actions.

Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it– 29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 



Authenticity

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What do you think of when you think of “The Church Lady”? Do you think of Dana Carvey doing his SNL skits? Do you think of your grandma? Do you think of your fanatic friend at work? Whenever I think of her, I think of a person who is real but not authentic. A cubic zircona is real but it’s still a fake diamond. I had very little good examples set before me in the church of authentic women. Most of the ones I met were trying to conform to their ideal of what a church lady looked like.  I think that’s where people get off track and leave church because they are looking for authentic and they don’t see it.

We find plenty of authentic women in the bible. Not perfect women, but authentic women. I read about one recently, whose husband had died before they could have children. In that culture, and at that time, for a woman to not have a child was humiliating. Her father-in-law sent his son to “lay” with her in his brother’s place. The brother being wicked spilled his semen rather than risk her getting pregnant because he knew if she bore a child it would be as though it was his brother’s child and he didn’t want to comply. <em>To some it’s more important to appear obedient than to be obedient. </em> That doesn’t sound like it’s very authentic. So there she sat childless. Her father-in-law promises her that when his youngest son grows up, he will send him to her but time passes and it looks as though he isn’t going to do it. Have you ever gotten to the point where it doesn’t look like things are going to happen so you get a little desperate, okay, a lot desperate? She dresses up as a prostitute and sets herself up on the road and has sex with her father-in-law! He doesn’t know its her! She gets proof of this encounter by asking her father-in-law for some personal items and she gets pregnant. When her father-in-law finds his daughter-in-law pregnant, well you can imagine the hell that breaks loose because now she’s humiliated him. Go figure!  She was pretty thought out though and has proof of who she slept with! Okay, it all sounds creepy but we all know desperate women do desperate things. Let’s not judge but understand that in her world she had little choice. Who was she? Her name was Tamar and she was one of the great-great grandmothers of Jesus. She was authentic. She captured the attention of God because he saw her actions through her heart. We don’t see her nagging, yelling, pouting. There is so much to this story, the story of a deal not fulfilled and the consequence of procrastination, disobedience and the fulfillment of an end result, that I urge you to read it. It shows an aspect of the heart of a woman better than any country song could. You can find the story in Genesis 38. Being authentic requires that we be actually what we claim to be. So often I see us trying to conform to our peer group.

Have you ever noticed the new girl at the office? She comes in looking like herself and slowly but surely she begins to dress like everyone else. You aren’t called to conform. You are called to transform. You are called to leave your mark on your little piece of life. I love talking with the youth group at church. They really have a funny sense of “being themselves”. They say things like, “I don’t want to be like everybody else, I want to be myself.” Problem is, the Goths look like all the other Goths, the Preps look like all the other Preps and the Skaters look like all the other Skaters, seen one Emo, you’ve seen them all, no one is really not like everyone else. So take a deep breath and take a look at your life today. Are you authentic? Are you the Ruby or the lab created Ruby? Both are real. One is authentic.

Behind Every Great Man

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is a great woman or so the saying goes. This is a picture of me and my husband Doug goofing off one day. Relationships tend to transform people. We all have that girlfriend who changes her entire world to be the girl her latest boyfriend wants her to be. We also have that girlfriend who sees “potential” in a guy and begins to try to change him into what she wants him to be. Neither produces a long-term transformation. It’s a fake, for the moment, change and eventually who you really are comes out. So why do we do it? What makes some women utter doormats for a man and others bossy and crowding? In a word, it’s fear. Fear that we will never find another person who will love us, fear that someone already put together will see the flaws in us and not want us. Fear that if we speak up we’ll be rejected. We need to learn to be comfortable with ourselves and to recognize that we are enough. Let that thought sink in for a minute. You are enough.

This is where faith helps. My faith has taught me that God designed me for a purpose and a destiny. With 6 billion people on the planet there is not another single person with my exact design. I am worth being treated with love and respect and so is everyone else. So, single women, be careful about who you get behind. You will be transformed to the level of the man you chose. Your life will rise or fall on that level. Choose wisely. Is the man who you have decided to get behind destined for greatness, or will you always be pushing? So many of us think we can change a person but you can’t. So that fantasy has to die. Look at who he is now and where he is going in his life right now. That place is where you will end up with long-term. Don’t miss the destiny you were given. Don’t miss the warning signs either.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat with women in counseling and they’ve said things like:                              

I knew he’d cheated on his last three girlfriends but he said I was different (you’re not)

He’d get angry for no reason but then he’d bring flowers and apologize (run!)

He’d had a run of bad luck with jobs (uh, huh)

His last girlfriend broke his heart and he said he was over it (then she called him)

He has two kids from his last two relationships (get ready for baby mama drama)

He called his mom three or four times a day and I thought it was sweet (mama’s boy)

He had to cancel lots of our dates because of work (he’ll be absent a lot)

The sad part about these comments is that the women knew these facts going in but they went in anyway. Now they are unhappily ever after. Don’t be a divorce statistic. Choose wisely. Be careful who you get behind. Ask lots of questions and LISTEN to the answers and above all, take your time!

Who Ewe B?

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Or rather, Who B Eye? As I was originally contemplating writing the profile page of this blog, I kept thinking about what it is I want to say about myself. I was looking for something clever, that would catch the eye of the reader. I began to think of how it is we define ourselves.

Men, more often than not, define themselves by their career. I’m a rocket scientist, I am doctor, I am a doorman. Whatever they DO is who they ARE. Women generally define themselves by their emotional attachments. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend. So I went looking at all of my friend’s blog profile pages.

They described themselves as wives, moms, coffee drinkers, etc… So the internal questions began. Was where I was born significant? Doubt it, as my parents lived hours away and I was born there only so that my mom could have a female doctor. I’ve never lived there and have only visited the town once, well twice, if you consider my entry into the world. What else? I am a wife but is that significant? Sort of, I mean it means I have a husband, a partner, a friend and obligations my single friends don’t have. I also have the benefits my single friends don’t have and the liabilities my single friends don’t have.

I am mom but is that whole of my being? I am madly in love with my kids and I remember when they were born, all scrunchy and wrinkled and red, but in them I saw greatness and beauty and my heart was never the same. I am a follower of Christ. It’s the basis for which everything I do all day long flows. Not to say that everything I do edifies Christ, because sometimes I snap at people, and well, to be honest my driving leaves the Christ following thing at home most days, as speeding is breaking a rule and we are not rule breakers so, I have a long road to go there.

My career! I work at our church. My husband is a Pastor. I am a Pastor as well, but well in the world of Christianity there is lots of debate as to whether or not a woman can be a pastor. I love my work. It’s varied and you never know what you are going to do each day. I can’t honestly say that it the sum of who I am though. 

Back to the core question, who am I? When I begin to write my profile I wrote things like, I am a human being, I am tired, I am authentic, I am a geek, which by the way I need to clarify. At one time, I was cool but your kids let you know that those days, well they are gone forever, I am overwhelmed by laundry. These definitions are all in fact true. So who eye b is all of the above, and then some! In my mind though I am so much more than the sum of all of that. Yet, maybe that is just flattering myself and maybe I am slightly delusional. I am a reader. I am a thinker. I am a leader. I am called in this time and space on earth, to a purpose, to which no one else on the planet was called to fulfill. I have yet to reach my full potential but I know it’s coming!

What do you say defines you? What do you say when people ask you to tell them about yourself? What would your profile look like? And in your heart of hearts what would you want to say? Think about it and post a comment, because honestly, you were called to be part of the flock, but not  one of the crowd.