If there is ANYONE on this planet who feels more unequipped to lead a bunch of teenage girls.... let me just be the first to tell you.... IT IS ME!! I teach 7th grade reading, and with that being said, you are correct in assuming that I feel comfortable around those strange creatures known as pre-teens... tweens if you will. But being comfortable around a mixed group of 11-13 year olds in a classroom, where I am required to talk about things like theme, and setting, and summary, or main idea, or why Katniss volunteered for tribute is easy. Leading teenagers to Christ? My knees start to buckle.
So, back in August, I was approached at the beginning of the year by a precious sweet girl. She came in with a flock of friends and asked if The Pure Heart Girls could meet in my classroom after school a few times a month. Before I could even think.... I heard the word "SURE!" come out of my mouth. I then immediately thought..... what have I gotten myself into???? So I tried to find something age appropriate for our first meeting.
How do you minister to tween girls... in a public school??? I wasn't sure of my boundaries. I didn't have any good devotionals or studies we could follow so I turned to an unequipped girls best friend.... google.... um, after praying, of course.
This is one of the first things I found. I must have watched it 5 times before I saved the link to show the girls. It is such a powerful message.
We watched this video the very first meeting that we had. If you have daughters, I would encourage you to watch it. I beg you to watch it... "more than the price tag on their clothes ... or the followers they have on twitter ... regardless of who they think they are ... whether they are on the hot list or the not list ... the reality is that they are powerful, and strong, and capable." When I'm having a really bad hair day, I need to remember to come back and watch this again!
I also had remembered reading about a young group of girls who met at someone's house, and I could not for the LIFE of me remember the website or what they called the girls. And just as I sat down to start searching appropriate devotions... to the glory of God wouldn't you know it... the name just popped in my head. The Balcony Girls! Isn't that awesome how God works like that! It was just another reminder that I had made the right decision to be a part of these sweet young ladies' lives. And I am really so deeply humbled and honored that God chose me to whisper His truth into their hearts. So I used a lot of what The Balcony Girls do to talk about virtues, and girl-type relationship issues for our first few meetings, and it has proven to be a huge hit! I will more than likely buy their e-books... and I will keep blogging about our meetings!
There's always lots of giggling and laughter and games and red punch and oreos and chips and dip and fellowship and it is ALWAYS amazing. They are UUUUUhhhhhh-mazing. We meet for about an hour and talk about what it means to be "A Pure Heart Girl"... saving yourself for your husband, for marriage and I muddle my way through the awkward conversations and gently remind them for the REALLY tough questions that they should probably ask their parents.
We watched the video above, and they sat mesmorized. The next meeting, as the girls came in, they all wrote down questions that they had about God, about The Bible... and for a solid hour, we talked about salvation, people in the bible, families, and hard situations, and before leaving we joined hands in a circle and prayed. Yall. It moved me tears to listen to these girls pray for each other, and our school, and our teachers, and future relationships, and for healing, and a whole array of social issues that flowed out of their hearts to the cross of Jesus.
Just a few of The Pure Heart Girls who collected toiletries for a local women's shelter.
So I really want to do something special for these girls. When I look over all of my regrets in my life, I think that the times that I veered off course is partly due to not having God's word tucked away in my heart. I really want to have The Full Armor of God so that I can take a stand... but more than anything, I want to teach them the importance of knowing God's word. I want for them to be so overwhelmed by God's love for them, that they will know in their darkest hours that he is light. I want them know that when they are stressed out and unsure and pressured, that they can lean on Christ. I never want them to doubt that whatever happens, they can draw from the well of mercy and grace.
Starting this spring semester, The Pure Heart Girls will be creating journals. Not just ordinary journals, but journals where they will hopefully find the beauty of God's word (thank you Ann Voskamp for the mighty inspiration). A journal to keep memory scriptures, and favorite verses, and maybe a few notes from The Balcony Girls Books. I picked out ten scriptures that we are going to memorize. Each week when we meet, we will paste God's word into our journal and have a small devotion about it! I want God's word to be beautiful to these girls... and me. I want them to believe God's word... "What is beautiful in our lives is what actually becomes the most useful in our lives. We are drawn to beauty and Jesus is the Most Beautiful — so hang up His words as art." Ann Voskamp
So by the end of the school year, we will have {hopefully} memorized ten of the most beautiful scriptures in God's Words. Would you like to join us? I'm including the ten verses below as we are using them.
.... I will keep adding these as I make them! Feel free to share them, print them, hang them wherever you need a reminder of the beauty of God's word!
I am choosing to participate in Ann Voskamp's #JoyDare for 2014. She is calling 2014 "The Year to Fly". I could not have poured over her blog pages more only five short days ago as I stood on the cliff of the new year not really feeling able to fly at all. I certainly won't say it was Ann that gave me wings and helped me to get out of a crazy pit that I was in, because it was Christ... but she certainly gave me inspiration on where to look in God's word that strummed on my depressed little heart strings perfectly.
So I will begin counting my blessings. A gratitude list. January:
For getting back on track.
For Whitley's safe dentist appointment.
For wonderful teaching partners who support me when I'm sick!
For sleeping children who let their parents rest.
For a bountiful New Year's Day Dinner - ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, cornbread and black eyed peas.
For my wonderful BLUE workout outfit from my mom that ALMOST inspires me to go run even though it is 40 outside!
For Beth Moore's free books.
For a beautiful bracelet from my husband for Christmas.
For a wonderful Christmas in Austin with my grandmother.
For chocolate!!!!!
something I'm making - thankful for sparkly blue material to make a cape like Elsa's from Frozen for my sweet girls....
For my husband who took such great care of me when I was sick!
A gift held - for my beautiful neice's brand new perfectly perfect little girl
Thankful for returning back to work.... closer to summer!
Thankful today for the health of my father-in-law who came through gallbladder surgery and is just fine!!
one thing in my bag - so thankful for ipads and iphones to enterain my littles on log trips to the store
one thing in my fridge - yummy southern biscuits to make pig-in-a-blankets!
for First Baptist Church, Rockpot and how anxious I am to start a new bible study next week.
Lovely shadow - so thankful for cloud covered rainy days to prepare our garden for some spring planting! It was freezing yesterday, and warm today with constant drizzle!
a yellow gift - for the bright yellow son that was shining today
for driving by a certain place and being able to claim redemption with Romans 8:1-2
1/11/14 - a husband who paints my daughter's nails.
1/11/14 - for laughing and giggling little girls who sleep over and the promise to have people over more often
1/11/14 - a freezer full of deer meet
1/12/14 - the first time at church in 2014... for a great sermon and a little conviction in sunday school
1/12/14 - The gift of a very talented and smart son working on his biology project beside me at the table
1/13/14 - for being organized and getting test grades into the computer
1/13 for being patient with certain students
01/13 for being responsible about getting to meetings on time
2013 has quite honestly beaten me. And while I'm being honest... so did 2012. It's been more than a while since I have written anything, and here I am, taking a risk, about to bare my soul. I feel a fire being rekindled, so I sat down early this morning and started this post that evolved into what I hope will be a turn back to writing, and more importantly, a turn back to God.
Five days into the new year, and here I am, feeling like a little bit of a failure for not setting any "goals" or making any "resolutions". Heck, our family barely made it to the table for New Year's Day dinner. Over this Christmas vacation, I felt the new year rapidly approaching, and I don't know about the rest of you... the whole five who are probably reading this... but I would sit down and to try and examine different areas of my life that I wanted to change... my family, my kids, my health, my marriage, my job... every corner of my life seemed to be SCREAMING for improvement.
If you are struggling, please hold onto this verse!
I felt... I feel very overwhelmed and I would find it easier to shut down and do nothing except sleep late and stay in my pj's and surf the internet, as if hoping to get some idea of where to start on reorganizing and improving my life. And I again find myself at the shiny new start of a new year, and I should be feeling excited at the new possibilities a new year can hold, right???
But instead, I have felt like I have been in the bottom of a very dark pit, reaching for a rope that is just out of reach. And I jump, and I climb, and I claw, but whatever I try to do to grasp it, I fall short. And I got really tired, so I made this pit my home. Oh, I jumped in willingly about a year and a half ago, with some really bad decisions. But the road that led to my pit was camouflaged and ended up with some horribly awful decisions that could have caused destruction to my family the likes of a nuclear bomb. Decisions that came with consequences that I never expected, but choices that I fully take ownership of now.
And yet, still, to this day, I can not explain why I did what I did. Oh sure, I could rationalize it or excuse it away, but I'm not going to. How this bible studying, church going, mission traveling, God loving girl ended up in such a huge pit is really quite a mystery to me. One day, I packed my bags and walked out on my husband. At this point, the day I left, I was completely numb. Indifferent. Detached. To my marriage, and more importantly... to God. I did not anticipate the devastation I was causing... because devastation was not immediate. It came slowly and started long before I found myself driving away from our two story white brick house.
My road to destruction looked like this.
And I didn't even seem to notice.
Devastation seeped in one small moment at a time. I was unknowingly in the driver's seat on a one way trip to destruction-ville. I had my eyes fixed on so many other things other than Christ. I woke up one morning and found myself in the biggest web of a mess I had ever known, and I did the only thing I knew to do. Leave. Get out. So that's what I did.
Months later, somehow and miraculously, my husband offered forgiveness. Not just He fought for me. I saw the devastation in his eyes and through his tears, but yet he fought for me. He fought for our family. And with every letter, with every conversation... I slowly started to come out from under a fog of influence that I can not explain... like going through detox. And the more he fought, the more I breathed in God's grace. Over the course of many months, we reconciled. And once I took in a fresh deep breath of God, a sorrow hit me like none I had ever known before. I can remember the day exactly... March 10th.
We decided to go to a big community event. I spent the evening catching up with old friends, and it really was a very lovely evening. I remember feeling that our marriage was back on track. We were having fun together, after such a long time of feeling that everything was falling apart. The next day, we woke up and my husband said something that caught me off guard. I asked him to repeat it, and the conversation turned me back to a very dark place. My sin had been exposed, and my "friends" were talking about it. I thought I had done my best to cover up my dreadful choices, but not only did people know... they were talking about it...and talking about it to my husband. I felt shame wash over me like a tidal wave. I felt defeated. I felt betrayed. I felt like a failure on so many levels that shame and self-disgust are not even accurate words..
Sorrow over my sin brought upon such a fog
of depression.
Sorrow replaced my ability to function for what seemed like forever. Oh I'm sure I looked ok on the outside, but I was a crumbling weeping mess. Shame mixed with sorrow over my inability to stop comparing my life to others, which led me to my sin that caused me to leave my family and put my husband through such turmoil. Sorrow over how ungrateful I had been. Sorrow over the loss of our home, the near loss of my marriage. Sorrow and shame to an extent I have never known. And it didn't go away. I thought I had started to climb out of the pit that I willingly jumped into, but in one fell swoop, I slid back in. I felt hopeless at overcoming this rock-bottomness. I felt alone. I would periodically pop my family into church, but just overall felt pretty doomed. There was one lingering question that remained... did I feel sorry because I was truly remorseful and repentant for what I had done, or was I just sorry to find out that people really did now about it. This fog seemed to continue for quite a while until....
I came across this post the other day. And then this one, where the writer says this:
But on a spiritual level, I feel pretty slimy. And gross. And in need of a gentle reminder, that there is a tomorrow. There is another day. And that more than the perfect mom, my kid needs to see a mom that falls hard (even after well-intentioned plans) and picks herself up again, by the grace of God.
And oh my heavens, yall. I feel slimy. Spiritually slimy. Today is the first Sunday of the new year, and I had all intentions of waking my family to see to it that we got off to church, but instead found myself fighting with my own two feet like awkward appendages to hit the ground. And Ann's post echoes in my head.... how do I move forward into the new year when I feel like I have failed the year before. And maybe even the year before that.
How in the world do you step hopeful into the next year when you tripped messy through the last year? How do you stand brave with all the smiling rest and ring in the new year when the old year still feels a bit like a millstone around the neck? What if everyone else is making New Year’s resolutions and you just want New You solutions?
And just a few days ago, something miraculous happened. Something that made me realize....
I don't want New Year's resolutions. I want The One that makes all things new. I don't want a plan to have a better year, I want a plan to experience more of His plan. I don't want more inspiration, I want The One who inspires. I don't want more organization, I want to be organized by Him. I don't want to be challenged to save money, I want Him to save me. I don't want to eat healthier, I want for the only words that matter to be my constant diet.
I don't want to compare my life, my past mistakes with anything or anyone other than The One whose opinion matters most. I don't want to feel inadequate, haunted by the sins of the past; I want to exchange those failures for experience. I'm worn out and tired and I want to rest in His arms.
So what was it that turned me around??? Well, after an argument with my husband... he found me in the bathroom sobbing. I just could not shake this sorrow and was so desperate for healing... was so desperate to get back to normal.... even if it was a new normal. He scooped me up, and just hugged me. Through tears, I asked him "how do you not totally hate me??" His answer -
Can you believe I actually live here!
What a gorgeous sunrise over the Rockport Harbor.
Photo credit to Rob Green.
because I promised to love you until I die.
And it hit me like a bomb. I felt like the sun was rising, I felt a heaviness lift. I felt the past melt. I felt warmth. I felt blessed, and the swelling of gratitude for this man was unearthly. Because I promised to love you until I die. And all I could think about was God's mercy and grace and goodness. And how He loved me until He died.
On this, the fifth day of the year... a day that I should have been in church, I am finding peace at 2:42 in the afternoon, still in my pajamas. Because mercy has found me. And where there is mercy, there is love. And what started with my husband's overwhelming ability to forgive me really started with the cross. So please, if you will, please join me in this prayer... pray it for you... pray it for your family, but if The Spirit so leads you... please pray it for me.
Father God, I come running back to you. I come running home. I want to fix my eyes on you and nothing else. Jesus, I lay 2013 at your feet and with it all of the mistakes and bad decisions. I thank you that you make all things new. And as I stand on the brink of 2014, I pray that you will guide my steps. I pray that I come to know you more. That I read your word more, that I commit it to memory so that I can live it out. As my family starts this new year, I thank you for the peace and gratitude that I feel for them. For the relief that I feel that I don't have to try to be perfect. I thank you that you chose to love me so much that you died for me. I pray that I don't grow weary. Help me to remember that you have forgiven me, so that I may forgive myself. Help me to replace anguish over past mistakes with an anguishing desire to know you more. And as I step forward into this new year, help me to let go of my resolutions and hang onto you.
Lord I come, I confess. Bowing here I find my rest.
Without You I fall apart. You're the one that guides my heart.
Lord, I need You, oh I need You. Every hour I need You.
My one defense, my righteousness. Oh God, how I need You.
Where sin runs deep, Your grace is more.
Where grace is found, is where You are.
And where You are, Lord I am free.
Holiness is Christ in me.
Lord, I need You, oh I need You. Every hour I need You.
My one defense, my righteousness. Oh God, how I need You.
So teach my song to rise to You.
When temptation comes my way.
And when I cannot stand I'll fall on You.
Jesus You're my hope and stay.
Lord, I need You, oh I need You. Every hour I need You.
My one defense, my righteousness. Oh God, how I need You.
My one defense, my righteousness. Oh God, how I need You.
We have been planning our trip to Disney World since after Christmas. We have been saving and planning after the girls went to bed, and keeping it a secret for six long months! We have toyed around with the idea of how we were going to tell them... and I was really torn. I wanted to spend time with them watching each big Disney movie right before we went, but I didn't want them to get curious as to why we were watching so many Disney movies all at once. Then I stumbled upon a brilliant idea... Disney family movie nights! And then I stumbled on another great idea... dinners to go with each movie, and that's when I knew that we should tell them that we were going. Yesterday, we let the cat out of the bag. Chris took the girls on some "errands" and I got the house set up for the big reveal. I made a "menu" to go with each night's Disney movie - ten in all. And just used what he had to decorate. I also cut some strips of scrapbook paper so the girls could make a countdown to Disney chain, and blinged out our table with all kinds of Disney princess stuff....
And our entry way...
The plan was to have the girls come in with their eyes closed, and then have them open and read the words across the entry. The moment is priceless:
Like they had just won the lottery! So after the big surprise, we sat down at the table and made our countdown chains...
And then I explained to them that each night we would be watching a Disney movie and having a special dinner to go with the movie. We had already planned on smoking a brisket, so the movie we chose to watch tonight was Lion King. Here was our menu:
Mufas's Magical Meat was the brisket:
Prideland Potatoes... super yummy, and even better... super easy!
Timon & Pumba's Pot o' Grubs = Pinto Beans
Simba's Simmering Surprise = Peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream!
The girls were SUPER pumped about watching Lion King. Whitley even went to put on her Disney jammies! I'm so glad that the cat is out of the bag and that we can spend the next ten days enjoying quality family time....
I had all but abandoned the thought of blogging. In reality, I just don't have the time for it. It has been over a year since I have posted, and I'm totally ok with that. So if anyone out there in blog land happens to stumble over this, please don't think that I blog regularly or even want to jump back into blogging. After coming across this book called "The Plan", my husband and I have agreed to go through it together, and remembering that I had not deleted this dusty old thing, I thought that this might be a good place to journal my results, since any pen and paper journal I buy ends up in the hands of my two young artists with no blank pages left for me to journal.
For those of you who are not familiar with this book, it is called "The Plan" by Lyn-Genet Recitas. You can find her website here and her book here. Here is the amazon summary, in case you don't believe me:
In this revolutionary, New York Times bestselling book, cutting-edge nutrition expert Lyn-Genet Recitas reveals the surprising truth behind what actually makes people pack on the pounds. Carbs and portion sizes, it turns out, are not the problem. Foods that are revered by traditional weight loss programs, such as turkey, eggs, cauliflower, beans, and tomatoes, may be healthy in a vacuum, but when combined with each person's unique chemistry, they can cause a toxic reaction that triggers weight gain, premature aging, inflammation, and a host of health problems including constipation, migraines, joint pain, and depression.
Now this groundbreaking 20-day program helps readers finally unlock the mystery behind what does and does not work for their individual body. With detailed meal plans, recipes, and effective, personalized advice, you will discover how to:
-Lose a half a pound a day while enjoying generous servings of foods you love
-Identify your hidden trigger foods that are causing weight gain and inflammation, among other symptoms
-Build a personalized healthy foods list that promotes rapid weight loss
-Avoid feeling bloated, tired, or unhealthy again!
Feel better, look better, and be empowered by the knowledge of what truly works best for your body!
After having my third baby five years, I was bound and determined to loose all baby weight. I jogged, I ran, I ellipticaled, I yoga-ed, I zumba-ed, I ran some more, I insanity-ed and p90-ed, and nearly starved myself, and nothing was working.
What's worse... I was actually gaining weight. And what's worse than that... I started having very minor health problems!! Some eczema on my left leg, headaches, and some pretty intense menstrual problems. So I all but stopped working out when we moved to Rockport and started working, because number 1, I didn't feel like it. And number 2, with my new job, I told myself that I did not have time.
Anyway... long story short. I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. So when I heard about this book, I grabbed it off of Amazon for my kindle and read through almost all of it in one night. There are testimonies of women who have never felt better... health problems similar to the ones that I described all but gone, and more energy than they have ever had. Where do I sign up? So I made the grocery list, made some trips to multiple stores, and the bigger health food store in Corpus and made the pledge that I was going to commit and change the way I eat and live.
So, I would like to journal each day how things have gone. I will be interested to see if I will loose weight... but remember that weight loss is not really my main goal. Health. So. Wish me luck. We start tomorrow!!
