Laugh, Cry, Connect

So much is expected of us in this culture that we live in. There is a lot of pressure put on us to be strong yet tender, nurturing yet independent, adventurous yet grounded. We are mothers, caretakers and hostesses, but also students, professionals and contributing members of society. We find time to work, play, feed families and ourselves, take care of ourselves physically and emotionally and at the same time look out for the well being of our loved ones. Who better to understand all that we’re balancing than other women who are doing the same thing?

We have this tendency to stand in opposition to one another—to fight and compare and tear one another down. Our culture seems to breed this kind of behavior towards other women with a constant barrage of images and expectations. But let me tell you, I have seen some powerful things happen when groups of women put all negativity aside to be there for one another, unite and live in harmony with their fellow females. We have a responsibility to look out for each other, because we are in this together.

There is so much freedom in the presence of other women. We can laugh, cry, connect, converse and empathize. We can teach and mentor one another. We can be moved to action, or we can just rest among one another. We can offer each other comfort and a sense of being understood in ways that our male counterparts (try as they might) will never fully be able to grasp.

Today I encourage you to think about the women in your life. Be amazed by them. Allow them to be amazed by you. Encourage and empower them. Strengthen each other. Love each other. Celebrate each other! Cherish and fiercely protect your female relationships, for in the midst of all that our culture demands of us women, it is in those relationships that you have the potential to find a special kind of healing, compassion and acceptance.

Tis the season.. Weddings, Bridesmaids, and Sacrifice

The Art Of Being A Gracious Bridesmaid

She just popped the question…she’s asked you to be her bridesmaid. Maybe it’s your first time standing in the lineup or maybe it’s your 16th time. Whether you are a rookie or a veteran, the bridesmaid plays a crucial role before and during the big day. The way we act, the words we speak, the emotion we show can color the bride’s day without us realizing the impact we may have on how the bride feels during this special season of her life. Here are some tips in mastering the art of being a gracious bridesmaid.

Get Excited
From the shoes, to the dress, to your hairdo…be excited about what the bride has chosen for you to wear on her special day. Unless there are legitimate concerns that the bride might not be aware of and would want to know about such as see-through fabric or timeline concerns, personal opinions are best kept to yourself. Complaints from you will not change the bride’s taste and will only create stress and worry when she becomes painfully aware that she can’t accommodate her friend’s varying tastes.

Offer Your Opinion (When Asked)
One benefit of having a group of your closest friends participate in your wedding, is having some extra helping hands in the wedding planning and designing process when needed. If your bride asks for your opinion specifically, feel free to share your honest opinion about pros and cons of each option in her dilemma. However, if she is confident in her choice and has not solicited your support on the issue, it is best to happily comply with what she has decided without offering your own commentary.

Your Turn Will Come (Or Has Passed)
Whether you are single or married, there is often a tendency among women to compare. Weddings can be an easy opportunity to share what we did for our wedding or what we would do for our wedding. Whether you are sharing personal experience or desires that are alike or different from the current wedding celebration, this isn’t your day, it’s her day and the focus of the conversation should be on the bride and affirming the beautiful celebration she has put together. Whether you have had your turn or are awaiting your turn, your friend’s wedding is not the time to plan or reminisce about your own special day. When it’s your turn, she will be there to support you in your milestone moment.

Get Along
If you are one of several bridesmaids, chances are there are few girls you haven’t met before. Your bride has probably selected friends from different walks of life to stand beside her as she says, “I do.” While the other girls may not be your lifelong friends when the wedding is over, it is important that we do our best to get along as a group. Making an effort toward other bridesmaids that you don’t know well reduces the probability of tension and prevents the bride from feeling like she has to care-take and entertain everyone.

Be Sacrificial
“Who can take the 7am hair and makeup slot in the morning?” This type of question is not unusual for the big day and your hand should shoot right up! One way for you to bless the bride on her special day is to look for opportunities to serve and sacrifice…even if it means waking up at the crack of dawn and sitting stiff as a board until the wedding. So instead of being concerned with your own agenda and schedule, take that early appointment, help the other girls get ready while you wait, offer to carry a few of the those finishing-touch Etsy purchases to the wedding…look for opportunities to serve.

Being a bridesmaid is not only an honor, but also an opportunity. You have likely been chosen as a bridesmaid because of the special friendship that you share with the bride. Rather than being concerned about your own appearance and life plans, try viewing your role as an opportunity to show your friend how much you appreciate the person that she is and the friendship you have shared. There is no gift more precious than the gift of being the treasured

Getting a Little Lost and Finding the Unknown

The first time I remember getting lost was in the woods at a local park when I was about seven years old. The park was large enough for me to remember it as a forest, and as a child I spent a lot of my time wandering with a freedom that happened to be measured by park boundaries. One afternoon, on a bolder day than most, I left the known perimeter of my mother's watch. I was pulled towards what I thought was the calling of my name from the trees, or perhaps, because I was prone to rebel against house rules.
As I entered an unknown area, I had a mild sense of panic, but curiosity overcame fear. Before I knew it, the park opening in the woods was far behind me. It was the size of my hand and I couldn’t do anything but move forward, in search for something I had no idea of what. I was lost but I was content.

Today as a young adult, that same allure of getting lost calls me by name. Though I am usually the planner of the group, or the organized traveler who is caught preparing my trips via detailed Excel spreadsheets, I’m faithful to a powerful tendency: my craving for discovery and adventure.

Planning is pleasurable, but it’s necessary to leave some space for spontaneity, shrugged shoulders and getting lost. What can be found might just be worth the initial unknown.


Though the word “lost” carries negative connotations, there is light in such a darkened word.
These are reasons why it’s a good thing to roam aimlessly—whether it be exploring a backyard forest or traveling in a new city to figuring out your vocational calling or 5-year life plan:

• Getting lost extracts characteristics that are nameless to us prior. It’s neat to see that you might be more quick-witted, patient or braver than you realized.

• It magnifies the things we may actually need to change about ourselves. Though it can be painful, it’s ultimately humbling to see that you can work on becoming less impatient, anxious or obsessive, thus becoming a more balanced and centered person.

• It initiates independence of self, because sometimes we define what “lost” personally means. Only we can untangle the tension or situation we find ourselves in.

• It sparks our imagination. Being lost creates a space for the overwhelming “what-ifs.” Countless possibilities arise from imagination and creativity.

• Most importantly, getting lost instills perseverance in the spirit. The faith built on the countless trials you’ve had, or the trials you will experience can muster up the kind of confidence we all need in a life, especially when we find ourselves at frequent standstills and question marks.

Author and missionary Jim Elliot ties up these thoughts with a plain and profound thought: “Wherever you are, be all there."

It takes a lot to accept ourselves fully when we are not at our best; when we don’t know the answers, and when we don’t know whether to go right or left. But if we are fully present and aware of the things around us, there is an adamant invitation of honesty, authenticity and deep appreciation for where we are—for our present. If we are lost, it doesn’t mean we have lost. And if we are present, we can be capable of all things.

Whether you are at a standstill in your life, or if you crave to see the world, do not fear getting lost.

Though traveling is more intimidating than leaving your backyard, boundlessness exists: our capacity to discover. Perseverance awaits us.
Sometimes the answers will be right in front of us, just a couple steps ahead. Sometimes our lives will require some dizziness before we can grasp clarity, some boldness before we can attain assurance and some getting lost before the right kinds of things are ready to be found.

Standing By Our Word

When I was little, my mother taught me a valuable lesson: let your yes be yes and your no be no.If a friend invited me to her birthday party and I accepted the invitation, I was committed. Even if a different girl who I liked more invited me to a different party on the very same day, my mom never let me back down on my first commitment. I hated this as a child, but today I realize the purpose behind the lesson. In a very basic way, she was teaching me to be a woman of my word.

It’s something we’re lacking today (I really never would have learned it if my mother wasn’t so diligent) and it’s something that we all need to learn if we want to have healthy relationships, strong marriages and successful careers. Yes should mean yes, and no should mean no. Period. No excuses, no waffling, no swearing on your future child’s grave. Standing by our word is important because it’s an element of our integrity, which takes years to maintain and one minute to erase.

Integrity is a noun that refers to adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness of moral character, and honesty. We lose that when we lie, cheat, gossip, and flake out. Integrity requires consistency. Strong character. Discipline. Commitment. Communication.

While our word should be steady, reliable and trustworthy so that others can trust us to follow through on what we say, life happens sometimes and gets in the way. I know we’ve all been there—made a commitment to something and suddenly been unable to follow through. The key here is how we handle it, and we really have two choices:

1. Choose to let our integrity fly out the window, hoping the person or people who are counting on us will understand and forgive us later.

2. Have the courage to say something.

When something gets in the way of our word, the answer is to communicate. We’ve all had flaky situations in our past, but we always have the opportunity to rebuild our reputation. Let’s leave behind the wavering, unreliable ways of our past and choose to be women of our word. 

Our Best Hours

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

Colossians 3:2

God has entrusted us with the precious gift of time.  Twenty-four hours in every day; seven days in a week; every day significant, every hour important, every moment of value to God.  Yet how many of those moments are truly being used for His glory?  If we are honest, many of us would have to admit that though we profess Jesus Christ to be our highest priority, our lives proclaim something quite different.  

A Christian young woman recently confessed to me, “I spend more time on Facebook than I do in prayer or studying the Word of God.”  

That’s the sad reality most of us (including myself!) are living in. 

It’s easy to think of our time, especially our free time, as belonging to us; that it’s our right to do whatever we feel like doing in those “down” moments of the day.  But when we come to Christ, we are to lay everything at His feet - including our time.  As Leonard Ravenhill said, “What does it mean to be a Christian?  Your life is hid with Christ.  You have no time of your own, no money of your own; Christ must become your complete Master.”

God has continued to challenge me with this statement - down to the very details of how I spend each moment of the day.  And I have discovered that when we lay everything at the feet of Jesus and find our deepest fulfillment, rest, peace, strength, and joy in His presence alone – not dulling our spiritual lives with worldly counterfeits – we are beckoned into the supernatural, superhuman existence in which God designed us to live.  That’s when the presence of God draws near.  That’s when our prayers are heard and answered.  That’s when the life we read about in Scripture actually becomes our reality.

Most of us constantly battle with the fact that God is distant, intimacy with Christ is difficult to obtain, and our prayers don’t seem to be heard.  But God says, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).

We aren’t finding Him because we aren’t searching for Him with all our hearts.  We are too preoccupied with checking our Facebook, watching reality shows, downloading the latest songs on iTunes, and obsessing over Hollywood’s newest production to let our entire beings be poured forth in constant and unreserved devotion in the service of the Lord who died to save us.

Most of us feel that we don’t have enough time for prayer and seeking God.  But we don’t even consider giving up our nightly TV time, our weekend movie fests, or our iTunes fetish in exchange for spending time in His presence.

Whether we spend our best hours socializing on Facebook, texting about trivialities, rushing to the latest Twilight movie, or vegging in front of the newest reality TV show - the majority of our time is being given to things that are not of eternal value; and often, things that are just distracting. Most of us are far more influenced by pop culture than we are by the Word of God.  We can quote our favorite lines from 100 different chick flicks, but the only Scripture we know is John 3:16. 

It’s no wonder that Christ feels distant.

Only when we are willing to give Him the best hours of our day - rather than whatever is left after we’ve wasted most of our time on selfish pleasure - will we truly experience vibrant intimacy with our Heavenly King. 

Her Essence is Confident

After talking to some amazing young women in Christ I realized a few things. One, that even though these young women love Christ more than their own life they still struggle with confidence in Christ. Secondly, that confidence can be almost looked on as a negative quality in a young women. Lastly, I wanted to reassure and encourage some of these young women of their value and confidence in the Lord.

God calls us to a life of faith--- faith that He is God and we are not, and that he offers all we need to be complete and satisfied. It is this confidence that creates a mystery about you that others will notice. However I believe there a difference between self-confidence and God- confidence. Self-confidence scares others off. Before God called me to abide in Him I held all of my confidence upon myself and was overly assertive in my interactions and conversations. But once I made the gradual change from focusing on confidence in myself to focusing on confidence in who God is, I became more comfortable with who I was, more comfortable to be around. I needed to be seen and heard only by my God and not by those around me.

You were made for a very great purpose: to love and serve the Lord of lords. Confidence is being convinced that "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." (Mark 12:30). You must know that the Creator didn't make a mistake when he made you. You may have moments when you think he did things wrong when he got to you, but God never messes up. Everything about you is made divinely in His image. The cut of your nose, the family you were born into, and the longings and hopes and dreams in your heart were all initiated by God himself, and all it takes to make the world see the beauty in you is trust-- not in yourself but in the God who created you. We all have weaknesses and areas in our lives where we are lacking, but God helps us work with those things, bringing them into line with his Word. He promises to burn off the impurities and leave only the finest gold in their place.

All of us as women have something we could choose to be unhappy about when it comes to our bodies, personalities, and life circumstances. But the secret is acceptance of things we can't change which manifests itself in contentment. Contentment is simply a steady knowledge that God is ultimately in control of everything that has been given to us. "Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession" (James 1:17-18). And because you are his prized possession---his love and creation---he knows what is best for you. Acceptance understands this and takes everything that comes as a gift and not a trail. It is this confidence that changes everything about you and your essence within Christ.

Beautiful

I see Your face in every sunrise
The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes
The world awakens in the light of the day
I look up to the sky and say 
You’re beautiful

I see Your power in the moonlit night
Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright
We are amazed in the light of the stars
It’s all proclaiming who You are
You’re beautiful, You're beautiful

I see you there hanging on a tree
You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me
Now you are sitting on Your heavenly throne
Soon we will be coming home
You’re beautiful, you're beautiful

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring 
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful, You're beautiful, You're beautiful

I see Your face, You're beautiful, You're beautiful, You're beautiful
I see Your face, You're beautiful, You're beautiful, You're beautiful
I see Your face, I see Your face
I see Your face, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful, You’re beautiful



Beautiful by Phil Wickham


This is one of my favorite songs to sing at Breakaway (a rather large Texas A&M bible study and worship on Tuesday nights) 


I woke up with the lyrics playing through my mind and heart as I had my quiet time looking out the window into the sky and the colors of the morning. In three days I will be moving out of my dorm and back home for the summer to take some summer classes and work at PINE COVE! However this presents a bittersweet moment for me because I am ending my Freshman year at college where I have learned so much and so much has changed. I am a different person than the girl who moved into this dorm room 9 months ago. God has worked wonders in those around me and in my life. He is doing such great things and it has been amazing to see and experience it all. I am so excited to see what this summer brings and how He will work in the next few months :)