Waiting with Intention

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. -Maureen Dowd

I have this creeping feeling that God doesn't wear a watch or even owns a calendar. Maybe He's a fly by the seat of your pants type and He does hold time in his hand so it must seem superfluous to also wear it on His wrist. My  good friend spent this past Christmas Eve with his mother' boyfriend's family. After feasting and opening presents all of the women in the family get together int he same room, pull out their planners and share dates that need to be saved; birthdays, weddings, vacations-that way they are all on the same page. My Friend thought this activity was very charming as well as practical and there was loose talk about doing this in our own circle of friends. Very quickly it was realized that not all of our friends even own a planner and since we are all without spouses and children and of limited funds, there aren't that many dates to save. I wish God and i could do this, sit around drinking coffee and eating sweet treats and coordinate our planners. I would like to dictate the times and dates however. Better yet, maybe i could just have God copy my desires and when i will want them onto His to-do list. But He won't. He has his own plan, His own mental date book for my life and I unfortunately do not get to choose when things are going to happen.
He is not preoccupied with the fact that i want to buy a house in 2012 or that i want a new job yesterday. His ideas are BIGGER and better than mine and will sculpt my life in a way that graduating from college or losing the dreaded last 5 lbs ever could. I know that what He has for me is light years beyond what I could ever want for myself. God's plans are like a gourmet meal cooked by a private chef and mine are a cafeteria lunch in 5th grade, mysterious and somehow always brown. There is no comparison. I feel like the Verruca Salt character in Charlie and the Chocolate factory. Her loving father promises her amazing gifts, among them a party, a pony and of course a golden goose egg. Her response to his promises is "But, I want it now". Like Verruca, I don't struggle with the idea that gifts will be delivered, its the "when" and the "when" I'm focused on is now.
Even when i don't feel like it, i know i must rest in the truth that God's timing is best. He is just better and smarter, He is the alpha and omega after all. God gives us the small things, what we can handle. He lets us set our own wedding dates, but He chooses the moment when we will meet our future spouse and who it will be. We can plan our birthday parties for whenever we like, but God chooses the day we will enter the world.Ultimately, you have to work with what your given. So quickly do we, do I, forget how Gods perfect timing has manifested in my past, how many things came together at exactly the right time at the work of His hand. Have you ever been overwhelmed and drowning in ever area of your life, walked into your college courtyard from the admissions office, seen someone you sort of know who asks you how you are in which case you immediately spill your guts and they let you cry on their shoulder and pray for you on the spot? Well, that is a very, very specific scenario so probably you haven't, but I have and it was perfect and it was God. Anytime you go to class and its cancelled and you get a break, whenever you see an accident that had you been in the intersection 5 seconds earlier you would be involved in, this is perfect timing. Everyone has there own scenario, their own story of God's perfect timing. It is everywhere all of the time.
    Ladies, take joy in the journey. Stop waiting for things to happen and just live and relax knowing it will happen when God wants it too. Waiting without intention breeds desperation and desperation sometimes leads us to settle, whether its a partner or a job, we settle for instant gratification. We settle for "But, I want it now". Keep you eye on the prize! it seems trite and a little lame but it is so legit. What is your prize? Does it involve God's plan?

A Real Day in the Life of an Aspiring Great Woman

Today was a “where are you God” day. Not in the good way, as if there is such a thing. Good meaning in a way that’s meaningful like when you see someone very evil freed from jail way too early or you have to attend the funeral of a child. On those days its more expected and more accepted.  On those days God waits by the phone knowing you’ll call with doubts and questions about his plan and His goodness.  This type of day manifested for me in a much more self-indulgent way.  I am still making no money. In all honesty I don’t need a lot of money..living at home  really decreases your expenses.  But I do need a little more than I’m making and the feeling of having none just sits and waits in my chest, tightening the muscles and causing my heart to race at the thought of buying a coffee. This morning I needed to pick up my boss for work which I don’t mind at all but I woke up naturally..instead of with my alarm and noticed there seems to be way too much light for 6:30 am. This is because it was 7:19am..the time in which I need to be ready to leave the house. Needless to say, I was not. I was in a sea foam green nightgown definitely not appropriate for work. I threw some clothes on and rushed out the door hoping maybe I could take her into work and then go home and get ready. I am truly lucky I had the sense in the midst of my haste to even put a bra on.

 I raced to her house seething behind any slow driver I found myself tailing. It took all the self-control I had in me not to turn and give them the “look” when I eventually did pass them. I made it on time and didn’t go home after we got to work but instead borrowed pants and a shirt and some socks. My face was sans makeup, my teeth brushed by a spare toothbrush in my boss’s bathroom cabinet.  This small incident, some malfunction of a bad app on my phone, keeping my phone alarm from sounding, ruined my entire day. And more than that, I let it. I encouraged it and I wallowed in it. Sometimes I don’t feel like being great, or even normal. I just want to be as sensitive as I feel like being and take things how they could sound and not how I know they mean, I want to feel sorry for myself and listen to lots of very whiny music and feel like my problems are just so, so big and so incapable of being solved.  Why is it so much easier for us to slip into this? To live in the box instead of seeing the big picture beyond the half open flaps, seeing the possibility of better days ahead, sufficient salary’s and long periods of time to get ready for work and phones that function properly.  Why is it so easy to forget the gifts God gave me yesterday and Saturday and last December and every day before this day?  I am enveloped in this stale, seemingly very overwhelming day and over and over in my head I think, “Where are you God? Don’t you see me struggling and falling and ready to give up?”  And I wait for a paycheck to fall from the sky and the events of the morning to be erased from my memory. But nothing falls into my lap and I am still reliving that feeling of knowing you’re not where you should be and you can’t take it back.

     On these days you can feel the tears burning behind your eyes. But they don’t come because that would be relief and relief isn’t really what I’m looking for, just the freedom to drown , to lay in bed and fixate on just how much God has forgotten you and the plan you thought he had for you. Surely this couldn’t be part of it? I can’t wait to look back on this time and understand it. I mean I literally fantasize about talking to my friends one day and mulling over these years and how much we learned and how I understand now why everything had to happen.  There are tons of days, experiences, tragedies that I can reflect on now and thank God for. Thank him that they have brought me to where I am and for teaching me such a valuable lesson, for making me more empathic and more aware. But now sitting in my bed and writing trying to ease this very interesting cocktail of pain, I am just in it. I know that Gods plan remains in action, that this is part of the grand scheme. But I feel like I’m in a snow globe and there is nothing bigger or past this situation, this job, the everyday issues that steal my joy.  I know that everyone has days like this (all 2 of you reading this (: ) I don’t mean to discourage anybody. Being a great woman is still very important. Rather I want to encourage you . you are a human and will have human days, days where you want to keep driving until you reach another state. They are just days, they will pass and you will feel the warmth of the sunshine again. All I can say is, keep on truckin’.

"Sort-of"

Being at church is something I’m going to have to get used to again. It means eating my maple roll with a knife and fork instead of picking off sweet brown pieces, shoveling them into my mouth and licking off any remnants from my fingers. It means I have to make sure that none of my undergarments are showing.  Now, I’m not really a show –your-bra-strap-and-underwear-band-kind of gal anyway. Carrie Bradshaw can pull it off-me not so much.  But, at church, this is even more important. What would Jesus do if he saw lace peaking over the top of my jeans! Mostly though, I am going to have to get used to being uncomfortable again.

The church I grew up in I pretty much stopped attending after high school. There was not a college program in place and I went to a Christian college and therefore attended chapel 3 times a week which I felt more than filled my church bucket. I come back for holidays of course, because my mother continued to attend. My siblings and I dressed up and on our best behavior, appear on Christmas Eve and Easter like Punxsutawney Phil or holiday drinks at Starbucks. You know you will see us again, but possibly not for another year. I should note that I doubt people at the church are as excited to see us as they are to find out whether winter is over or to enjoy an eggnog latte. You know those people you know, sort of, like your best friend’s roommates sister you met once at a baby shower or wedding and chatted with about your majors and shoes. And you see this “sort of” at a restaurant or at the grocery store and you have to silently weigh whether or not to approach them and say hi. You know if they see you and know you have seen them...things can get awkward. “Will they even remember me” you wonder and reason, “I don’t want to bother them” not really wanting to risk the chance of a weird encounter with long pauses and discomfited small talk. So you walk past them with your eyes diligently forward or act suddenly very interested in the selection of powdered milk your market offers. Well, that is the kind of relationship I feel with nearly everyone at this church. My childhood church. But, the catch is, they didn’t used to be “sort of’s”. They used to be very much people I really knew. Throughout junior high and high school I was very involved in the church. I was always up to help out making large amount of salad at a wedding being held their (very interesting method by the way) or spend an hour putting the chairs away in the sanctuary. Beyond that was the expected stuff like being on leadership and the worships team. I loved every minute of it. Though our church is large, because I was there so much I served with a lot of these" sort ofs", I dined with them, counseled their children at camp, built houses alongside them in Mexico and led them in worship. And then, somewhere in that time that I was gone, I became the sort or in their path and it wasn’t at the local Chilis, it was in the hallway at church or in line at the coffee bar there. They almost always –no actually always-choose to take the “I –don’t-see-you” option.  And maybe I’m just sensitive (very possible) and maybe they’re looking at me thinking the exact same things, feeling the same way. But whatever the reason, I am GRATEFUL in this time, in this situation. I am grateful that God teaches me lessons about who I want to be and how I want to treat people, through my own pain. I am grateful that experiencing the downside of situations will build my empathy if I let it.

SO…I have decided that in my pursuit to be great…I don’t want to make anyone, anyone, ever feel like a sort of. I don’t ever want to make someone feel like they aren’t worth the minute it takes for me to stop and say hello, smile and ask how they are and really, really mean it. I want to embrace people like I haven’t seen them in a year because they have been fighting in a very dangerous war and I am so happy to see that they are still alive and well. I desperately want to be someone who makes people feel loved and hopeful and empowered. Because that is how God makes me feel both directly and through the ahhhmazing people he has strategically placed in my path. In the eyes of the Lord, nobody is a sort-of. I have made this mistake tons of times and am only just embarking on this quest, so I’m not judging anyone who has done this...we have ALL done it. But if there is someone on your heart that you have maybe not been encouraging as much as you could or someone you have been avoiding because it would be uncomfortable to approach them, pray that God would make you feel loved and hopeful and empowered enough to make them feel the same.

Training Wheels

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
-- Mary Manin Morrissey

Sitting at work today surrounded by screaming children and tired mothers, I had a simple revelation: being a great woman is uncomfortable. And scary.  And that is why it makes you great and not just “eh”.  I realized this in the midst of another dilemma that I’m sure a lot of people have faced. For the sake of the privacy of anyone involved I’ll just say that there was someone who had hurt me and this person was possibly going to be at a function that I was going to. At first I talked to a friend and sort of said if this person was going to be there I would like to know, because I would not be going then.  For some reason after this statement I needed a lot of validation that I wasn’t just being silly or petty. My friend knowing the situation this person and I had been involved with backed me up, and was likely being sincere and genuine about it. But I knew something wasn’t right, it was that feeling you get when you just know. Not quite guilt but maybe guilt’s second cousin or neighbor. This was last night and on the way to work today  I  finally grasped that It is ridiculous for me to avoid something great because of who is going to be there. I haven’t seen this person since what happened, happened, but I know I can’t let the fear of the discomfort of seeing them rule my life, my schedule, or commitments to other people.

  I knew that God would not be proud of me settling for comfort over growth and progress.  Oddly enough I can remember praying in the last couple of weeks, and at the time really meaning it, that God give me more because I was ready for a challenge, something to shake my foundation. And as soon as it happened I shut down not ready for the unknown and put my training wheels back on. I have always loved the verse Jeremiah 29:11. It’s popular on letterman’s jackets and bumper stickers and the perfect advice for anyone struggling with the doubt that God has their back.   I have read it numerous times and always taken in what it did say. It says that God has a plan and a purpose for me to prosper me and not to harm me. Lovely and warm and fuzzy, the snuggie of verses. I have not however, ever seen in it what it does not say. It does not say God has a comfortable safe plan for you, a plan with no bumps in the road or mountains to climb. Doing things that I don’t want to but should, will prosper me. Its scary stepping outside of my comfort zone and doing things that make me uneasy. But doing them is so empowering.

 I should rest in the promise from God that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me…not just things that feel okay and safe and not too challenging or that I’m really good at, ALL things. I would liken it to working out. There are definitely days when I do not want to work out but I do, thanks in most part to a wonderful musical collection on my iPod.  I go and really give it my all (most days) and sometimes am so sore that I walk weird and have a hard time raising my arm to do my hair. It’s painful. But it is good. I am never regretful that I did something great for my body and even though it hurts temporarily it makes me a healthier, stronger woman. This is how I see doing what God has called me to. It’s hard, it can hurt but it is so good for us and produces growth in our lives. It leaves us with no regrets- I’ve never heard anyone say, “Man I really wish I wouldn’t have done what God has been calling me too” or “being wiser is just lame”. So I encourage you sisters, amazing daughters of an Awesome Lord, take off your training wheels and ride that bike off the smooth pavement and onto rocky roads. I promise you will never even miss them.

Lukewarm Lady

Lukewarm Lady: Exploring the Journey from the Woman I am to the Woman God has Called me to be.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-- Marianne Williamson

I don’t love to write. Its not even one of the things I’m great at that I just happen to not like to do regardless of how good I am at it. I just plain don’t like to sit down and pen my feelings, usually because even at 23 with bachelors in social work, expressing my feeling is still not one of my strong suits. However, I have come to a place in my life where I have a ridiculous abundance of free time..Sometimes an entire 24 hours where I have no commitments aside from brushing my teeth. So I decided that with all this free time, and with the very minimal amount of funds I bring in, it is time I start challenging myself and making these challenges free, at least in terms of money. One of the benefits of my free time has been the to chance to read more. I’ve been getting lost  lately in   Bittersweet and Cold Tangerines, the first and second book from author Shauna Niequist. I Love Shauna Niequist. I love her because she is a real woman and because she is a great woman. I could be wrong, I I mean I have never spoken with her ,but it seems to me she is a woman who believes in God’s grace and his awesome plan for her, she believes in sisterhood and encouraging other women, she believes in the beauty that comes from experience whether it be your own or learning about those of someone else.  I will be 24 in about 5 months and while I am so glad that God has used his awesome mercy and power to restore to make sure that I am definitely not anywhere near the woman I was a year ago, It is still very clear that I am not the woman I was meant to be. I realized that I am probably not as intentional about this as I should be. Being a great woman apparently doesn’t just happen to you. You have to work your way into it, like a really good pair of jeans.  I’m hoping that in watching me explore this road, you will find yourself inspired to do the same  as there are just not enough women striving to be great anymore, at least not for the sake of glorifying God and stirring up the same goal up in others. We live in a sometimes sad reality where most women are just waiting to become a Mrs. and are usually trading their Ms. for someone who does not deserve them. It’s my desire that more and more women will find contentedness with God and learn to love the awesome women he has created them to be. I realize  23 year-olds not are all the same but on the other hand, being in yours twenties seems to be for most about making choices and recovering from them, figuring out the  allusive “who are you” question and just a lot of introspection and meeting with friends at Starbucks to talk about all of this. I’ve made most of the mistakes women in their 20s have made: I’ve dated my fair number of fixer uppers, paid way too much attention to my weight and whether or not I should start using wrinkle cream. I have indulged way too much, needed certain relationships way, way, way too much, been unemployed and unhappily employed. I’ve lost and started friendships, left childhood churches, questioned Gods power and plans, held grudges and spent much more money that I had. My credit is such a great representation of the fact that I am a women in my 20’s..searching…desperately to figure out where to go from here and how to incorporate the sometimes seemingly ancient word of God into this plan.  Im terrified, but willing, to explore who God is calling me to be.