Blessed Are Those Who Don't Do It All

In past seasons of my life, I filled notebooks with goals, to-do's, strategies and techniques for getting things together. From a fundamental place inside of me came the constant, relentless message: Be Better.

I wanted to be better at everything and somewhere inside I believed that every other woman out there was accomplishing all the things I couldn't manage, an entire lifestyle of doing it all with grace and effortlessness. I saw myself as failing in some level at just about everything, not only everything in my life but everything in the world if you counted all the things I wasn't doing. (And I counted.)

If I spent five hours cleaning the kitchen, I felt bad about the state of the pantry. If the house was neatly picked up, the carpet stains screamed loudly at me every time I walked into the room. If I'd baked a fabulous dessert for my family, I berated myself for the mediocre dinner they were served just prior.

But somewhere along the line, something within me broke and I saw that part of myself from outside eyes, like an out-of-body experience. I learned to be kinder to my heart and treat her like a friend of mine and not just an abused little girl who couldn't live up to anything. This was all unfolded, I'm sure, as my depth of understanding unfolded about grace, about the God who loves so purely and completely that His heart for me cannot be changed by any amount of my goodness or lack thereof.

At some point, I stumbled on peace and self-forgiveness.

I started a Things I Don't Do list in my head and began to check off, one by one, the things that would creep up on me and tell me lies. I thought hard about the things that tormented me and decided whether I really needed to make space for them in my life, whether I really did believe my call was to be better in that area. Sometimes the answer was yes. Sometimes, I added them to the TIDD list, and breathed a little easier.

The Things I Don't Do are mostly good things. They are things that may be sacred and creative and might beautifully enhance another person's life. But for me, they are things that would take the space I have to give the other things in my life, the ones that give me life and joy and serve a higher purpose than to simply be better. As I have let things go, I have learned that with less effort to be everything and more effort to be the uniquely created me, I am a little bit better by proxy, and that is the ironic-flavored icing on the cake.

Here is a portion of my list:

I don't go to the gym. My body is not perfect or even necessarily pretty but it is the body that has bore three children and held tightly to a dozen more. It sags in areas it shouldn't and bulges in places I wish it didn't and has erupted in a terrible case of adult acne, but its scars and stretch marks reflect its purpose. I love to see old Bibles, worn from years of use and tears, notes scribbled in the margins and pages bent back. I'm beginning to see my body in this way too, an open book, a love story, in which my life is written slowly into laugh lines and chipped nails, tan lines and chronic illness and chapped lips and birthmarks, calluses and tattoos and scabbed-over wounds that I am beginning to love. My exercise comes in the form of wrestling t-shirts over squirmy kid heads and games of hide-and-seek, hiking to waterfalls and the thousand leg-lunges I do every single day while picking up Matchbox cars. I don't count calories and I eat more chocolate than is good for me but I've decided I'm basically okay in my size 11 jeans because this body has been awfully good to live in despite its many flaws. 

I don't garden. I grow children well, pets poorly, and I kill most other living things. I admire and respect those who find gardening to be a spiritual experience, but for me it is dirt and thorns and grub worms, and it takes all the beauty and mystery out of nature. If I manage to keep alive a rose bush, I resent it for the creative time lost in its cultivation and therefore, gardening makes the TIDD list.

I'm not on the PTA. I'm not the room mother or the field trip chaperone or the teacher's aide. I care deeply about my children's educational experiences but this is not the outlet for that, for me. I admire that there are others who are so much more patient, more talented, more gifted with teaching children and I give them space to be positive influences in my kids' lives, too.

I don't pair socks. Laundry is serious business around here and I spend way more of my life than I care to in the act of cleaning and putting away clothing. We have a Sexton Sock Basket, and when I fold laundry, all socks go in the bin. When someone needs a pair, they Scuba dive for two that pass for matching, and we all live happily ever after, the end. Most people are seriously horrified by this. What kind of mother doesn't even match their kids' socks? Let me tell you. This kind of mother. The kind that has living room campouts with them for the heck of it and throws unbirthday parties every once in awhile and decorates a living room birthday tree for the special kid of honor. The kind who has decided to make other things a bigger deal than socks and does so without apology.

There are scores of other things I don't do. I don't eat organic or change my refrigerator filter as often as it needs it. I don't do play-dates or mom's group or homeschool (anymore). I don't cloth diaper. I don't vacuum every day or run marathons or cook from scratch or iron or dry clean. I am not against any of these things. They're good. They're great, even. They're just not great for me, right now.

I am not totally guiltless over all of these things yet, but I'm getting there. The Things I Do list (I have one of those too) is getting shorter and shorter in quantity, but fuller and fuller in quality and I'm learning to see that as the better thing.  

You're blessed when you're content with just who you are – no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

(Matthew 5:5 MSG)

What's on your TIDD list?

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Linking to Unwrapping His Promises and Imperfect Prose. Click on links below to join us.

Who You Used to Be

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I used to be a housemom at a children's home in Texas. I used to be a social butterfly. I used to be a cake decorator. I used to homeschool my kids. I used to be blonde.

I used to be short. I used to be a single mother. I used to be divorced. I used to have a cat. I used to be an operations manager for a small airline. I used to be an egg donor.

I used to be the life of the party and I used to be busy, flitting from this activity to that one, laughing with friends all hours of the day until I collapsed, exhausted. 

I used to have dozens of friends. I used to write poetry. I used to drink gin and tonic. I used to work at a church. 

I used to be heartbroken. I used to be lost. I used to be a child.

All these things, I used up. I got over. I moved on. 

I am not these things anymore.

But still, when the day is quiet and I'm feeling purposeless, I'll grab hold of one of these old labels, and though the stick-um is linted and the paper is wrinkled from days of wear, I'll slap that baby back on my chest like a badge, smoothing over it every so often to keep it from falling off. This, after all, is definition.

Purpose.

Identity.

Distinction.

It gives me something to grasp when the day ticks by and it is consumed by shapeless piles of dirty clothes, bland meals, and other aimless wanderings. But it is a trick and it is a lie. Because if I stay standing in who I used to be, I can never grow into what I'm meant to become.

I had a conversation last night with one of our boys in Texas, a boy struggling with his identity in light of who he used to be… not sure how to present himself to the world when the landscape around him has changed. It's a tricky balance, it turns out, between building upon your truths, letting who you've been be the stepping stones for who you're becoming, and abandoning your past entirely for a new future. Sometimes, we only know ourselves in light of the labels we've had stuck upon us. Sometimes we don't recognize our own faces in the mirror when those labels don't stick anymore.

Becoming is tricky business.

What labels do you wear? What do they say about you? Are those labels true? Are you hiding behind labels that lost their stickiness long ago? Are you letting your past stand in the way of your present, or your present stand in the way of your future?

When you were knit together inside your mother, God made a pronouncement upon you. He made you something. He did not pronounce you an alcoholic or a liar or a screw-up. He did not pronounce you a cheerleader or a missionary or a pastor's wife or a mother. He knew those things might be part of your story, but He made you with a depth that goes beyond your doings and your labels. He made you beloved, beautiful, joyful, full of light or laughter or encouragement or nurturing. He made you someone apart from your circumstances. Without the labels, do you know what you are called? Do you know what your name is?

"…to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off." – Isaiah 56:5

Book Review - You're Already Amazing

Hi again friends! I'm still on blog hiatus (until Easter), but am still posting book and product reviews per prior commitments. Miss you all!
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"You don't have to do more, be more, have more."

This is what Holley Gerth suggests on the back cover of her newest book, You're Already Amazing. The subtitle teases me with a glimpse of what I long for, "Embracing Who You Are, Becoming All God Created You to Be."

But how?

How do we embrace our worth in a culture that caves in around us, with the lie that is eternally whispered into the depth of a woman:

You aren't enough. You are too much. You must keep reaching, keep trying, keep striving to be good, to be worthy of love.

You're Already Amazing is a big, soul-hug from a good friend, but it's more than that. It's an instruction manual on personality and purpose, and a mirror held up to reflect us only in light of who God says we are without the lies that blind our vision.

This is an interactive text and Holley gives us the opportunity to work through the truths she presents bite by bite. There is a "Go Deeper Guide" at the end of the book with sections for further study of each chapter.

Holley has a beautiful way of presenting her loving message directly, so it hits right between the eyes. She's never harsh, but helps us look at the whole picture in such a way that we can operate in our strengths and gracefully minimize the impact our weaknesses have on us.

"Love in a biblical sense isn't a touchy feely, vague experience. It's a verb. It's a series of choices and actions in our lives. So the next step in our process is to look again at your life through the lens of love." – Page 131

Perhaps the most insightful aspect of the book (for me) is its focus on pursuing purpose rather than perfection. Feeling like I was able to internalize this in a new way frees me up to connect more deeply with what God has for me in the world, not work to burden me but my heart and soul in action with Christ's leading.

Holley leads us to develop a LIFE statement (LIFE = Love is Faith Expressed) to help us check our actions, activities, and motivations against what we know about our journey. Mine looks like this:

I am created and called to express my faith through love, especially by inspiring, nurturing, and encouraging God's children through honest words, shared experiences, and creative nourishment.

There is a profound power in connecting with your deepest purpose in light of the Kingdom, and Holley's words were a beacon for directing me to embrace all that I am and even what I am not, to make more room for that which belongs in my path.

You're Already Amazing exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds. I expected a pep talk, a sweet reminder to love myself, and an encouraging spur in the right direction. I didn't expect the book to be so chalk full of actual steps on that path. Holley is a woman deeply connected with her purpose, and it shows. I'm happy to have had the opportunity to glean from her wisdom and experience in this area. Ladies, don't miss this great resource.

Get You're Already Amazing through the links on this page. DaySpring has the entire Holley Gerth collection at 25% during the month of March! Woohoo! One of the best ways you can spend a couple bucks, for real.

25% off Holley Gerth Collection with code HOLLEYG25!

It's also the (in)courage Bloom book club selection of the month. Join the conversation!

Holley Gerth - You're Already Amazing

(Disclaimer: I received this book for free from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own.)