Everyday Spirituality

Ministry and the Measuring Stick

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As we get closer to Holy Week, we will soon hear the beautiful Scripture story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. Afterwards he says to them: “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15)

By His example, we are all called to minister to God’s kingdom. How are we to do that? Living up to the example of Jesus can sometimes feel overwhelming or intimidating. It’s easy to compare ourselves to others and feel that they are doing it “better.” Not wanting to fall short, we try and mimic the way that others minister, even when it doesn’t feel right for us—like trying on a pair of shoes that don’t quite fit.

The measuring stick we use to compare ourselves to others is a very common way of missing the point of what God may be calling us to do. We see the work of others and think: “I could never do that.” By focusing on that person, we are looking at only one way of answering the call of God, assigning holy characteristics to that person. Feeling like we can’t measure up, we give up entirely.

Let’s look at an example. Jesus instructs us to feed the hungry. At first glance, what does that look like? Perhaps you call to mind those incredibly generous people who spend hours every week working at soup kitchens, shopping and cooking for the needy, or running food drives and suppers for the homeless. Once again, the measuring stick comes out.

When this happens, I encourage you to do things:

Do Small Thing With Great Love

Keep in mind that this is not an “all or nothing” endeavor. Maybe you work full time or you have family obligations that prevent you from having lots of hours for volunteer work. Or you live on a budget and can just barely manage your own grocery bill. That’s ok. Find a smaller way to live out this call. Choose one or two items each week to give to the local food pantry. Or donate just a few dollars if that’s all you have to give. 

Keep in mind the words of Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” There may come a time when the circumstances in your life change, and you’re able to do and give more. If you’ve been faithful to Jesus’ call to feed the hungry in whatever way you can right now, it will be an easy thing to expand what you’re already doing.

Examine Your Gifts

Look for creative ways to live out the words of Jesus—ones that are in line with your God-given gifts. Let’s take our same example of feeding the hungry. Are there other ways you can do this?

  • Be on the lookout for someone who’s hungry for your time and attention.  If God gave you the gift of being a good listener, then this one’s for you!
  • Be on the lookout for someone who’s hungry for peace. If you’re gifted at helping people resolve conflict, then you are doing God’s work!
  • Be on the lookout for someone who’s hungry for an encouraging word. If you have a knack for making people feel good about themselves, then you are most certainly answering God’s call to minister to the Kingdom!

The important thing is to continuously look outward. When you seek out those who may be in need—not just for food, but in need of anything—you’ll discover how you may be particularly suited to help them in various ways.

There are different kinds of gifts. But they are all given to believers by the same Spirit. There are different ways to serve. But they all come from the same Lord. There are different ways the Spirit works. But the same God is working in all these ways and in all people. The Holy Spirit is given to each of us in a special way. That is for the good of all.
 (1 Corinthians 12: 4-7)

If you open up to the many different ways we can all minister to God’s kingdom, you’ll find yourself putting away the measuring stick, and truly following the example of Jesus in exactly the way you were meant to.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Roadblocks to the Spirit

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Decorative image; road closed sign

Last year, during a particularly bad New England storm, my nephew was trying to get home to visit his parents. The main road in his neighborhood was blocked by a downed wire. He turned around and tried another route, only to find that road was blocked by a tree that had fallen across it. Roadblock after roadblock…it took him almost an hour of circling around town before he could find a way to get home.

Does your spiritual life ever feel like this? Like there’s some obstacle blocking you from getting home to God? This can be a frustrating and lonely experience, but it’s important to remember that these roadblocks are never put there by God! God wants to be in relationship with us. We put up our own barriers, or we let the outside world do it for us.

I have found that there are three types of roadblocks that typically get in the way of a rich and loving relationship with our Creator.

DISTRACTION
Our lives are full of distractions. We’re constantly pulled in so many different directions. I’ve worked in retreat ministry for many years, and the most common reason women resist going away for a retreat is a lack of time. It’s so easy to let other things fill up our lives and crowd out our spiritual growth.

The obstacle of distraction requires us to examine our outer lives. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate some of our priorities. Making room for God in our lives will give the Holy Spirit plenty of space to dwell in our hearts. Try to take one thing off your plate that isn’t truly serving you or filling you up on your journey of faith.

DOUBT
There are a lot of names for this roadblock. Doubt. Fear. Anxiety. All of these feelings are rooted in a lack of trust. God’s plans don’t always line up with our own plans, and this can leave us feeling shaken and lost. But despite our own doubts, we can be absolutely certain of God’s faithfulness. This belief provides us tremendous comfort as we move through life. The Lord will never abandon us!

The obstacle of doubt requires us to examine our own need to be “in charge.” To surrender to God’s plans and follow where that call may lead. To trust that God is working in our lives. This can be quite challenging for people used to being in control of our lives – but we can overcome that challenge if we believe that God is in control.

GUILT
All too often, I see people holding themselves back from our loving Creator due to a feeling of unworthiness, shame, or guilt. This roadblock is the most heartbreaking, because it’s the most self-inflicted, and it could not be further from the truth. We were created to be loved by God! There’s nothing we can ever do that will separate us from the love of God. As much as we measure our own worth, God doesn’t measure us. Like the prodigal father, God loves us and accepts us exactly the way that we are.

The obstacle of guilt requires us to spend some time really feeling God’s unconditional love and letting it transform us. This can be done by taking a long, loving look at ourselves through the eyes of our Creator. By reflecting on the wonder of our own creation and the unshakeable knowledge that we are God’s beloved.

During this season of Lent, I encourage you to examine anything that might be getting in the way of your relationship with God. See if you can name it. Remind yourself that these roadblocks can be removed through prayer, reflection, and some small changes to your thoughts and actions.

As you grow closer to God over the next 40 days, I offer you this Lenten prayer:

Loving God,
Examine my heart
and help me uncover anything that pulls me away from you.
What obstacles am I stuck behind, hiding behind, or clinging to?
Search my heart.
Help me remove distractions, doubts, and feelings of unworthiness
So that I might live in your love,
follow your call, and grow ever closer to you.
Amen.

Image by Al Seeger from Pixabay

How to Know an Unknowable God

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Our journey of faith begins with a paradox: We worship an unknowable God. St. Thomas Aquinas described it perfectly when he wrote: “This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.”  When God spoke to Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb, Moses responded saying, if my people ask me the name of who it is that sent me, what should I tell them?  God answered: “I am who I am.”  And again he simply repeated: “I am.”  Meaning: I am all that is.  All that was and all that will be.  A great – if somewhat cryptic – answer describing something so vast that our human minds don’t really have the capacity to fully grasp it.  

But it’s in our human nature to want to know things. To solve puzzles, to uncover mysteries, to constantly be discovering things. With the internet and search engines like Google, the time between not knowing something and knowing something is non-existent. 

We’re going to do whatever it takes to know this vast and unknowable God, all the while humbly acknowledging that we can never really truly know all that God is.  

Because we’re human, we can only try to define God in human terms.  We assign human attributes to God. To describe him the way we would describe a human person. It’s ironic because we know that we were created in God’s image – to be like God– but we spend our lives trying to conform God into our image – in other words, to explain ways that God is like us.  This is perfectly ok to do; in fact, it’s all we really can do (and in fact, it’s something we see Jesus do every time he told a parable).  But this attempt comes with two precautions.

  1. We don’t want to get stuck with one particular way of seeing God.  For example, if you only see God as a loving father, you’ll miss the opportunity to get to know God as a healer, teacher, friend, or savior.  We don’t want to limit ourselves to just one image.
  1. Sometimes our images of God – described in human terms – can be distorted or just plain wrong.  

When I was little, I pictured God as an old man.  Long flowing white hair and beard. He was rarely smiling and he lived high up in the clouds.  Why might this be problematic?

  • God was remote and distant
  • God was very separate from my lived experience (“up there”)
  • God was extremely lofty and intimidating
  • God was a man, which for me as a young girl, put another kind of distance, even if I wasn’t consciously aware of it

This early image of God shaped my view for many years.  And probably lingered until I was 21 years old and attended my first spiritual retreat on the shores of Rhode Island.  Here I came to know a God so very different from the distant old man with the long, flowing beard.  

Jesus was both human and divine.  These two seemingly incompatible ways of being are brought to perfect union in Jesus.  It’s almost a circular story.  God created us in his image, but because of our human limitations, we have difficulty wrapping our minds around that image. So God becomes human to show us how to become more like God.  In the words of St. Athanasius: “He became what we are that we might become what he is.”

Jesus had an amazing way of using human stories, human nature, human relationships, and in fact, his very own humanity to teach us about God.  He used metaphors and examples from everyday life. Things that the people of that time would easily know and understand…and we can still understand today with a little interpretation and study.

You could almost make a picture book out of the parables and teachings of Jesus.  A woman searching for a lost coin.  A mustard seed.  A fisherman casting his net.  A compassionate father waiting for his son to come home.  Through the prayer of imagination, these are scenes that we can picture in our minds.  Jesus knew the power of imagery, so he used these vivid stories and images to speak to our hearts and to help us know God.

So much in Scripture can be used in helping us embrace new images of God and continue to discover God in new ways:  The Bible (both Old and New Testaments) contains hundreds of images depicting the nature of God.  Yet no single image fully captures who God is.  These different metaphors are like puzzle pieces.  Each one beautiful in its own right, but as we piece them together, we get a more and more complete image of our God. It’s a puzzle meant to be worked on over a lifetime, not quickly solved and put away.

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

Falling Into God

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Last summer I attended a family reunion in the mountains of northern Maine. One day a group of my nieces and nephews journeyed out to a swimming hole that you could only reach by jumping off a high rock wall. Everyone tried it, including my youngest niece who was only eleven years old! She later admitted that it wasn’t her favorite experience. She didn’t like the feeling of her stomach dropping as she fell. I knew exactly what she meant. I hate that feeling. It’s why I don’t ride roller coasters or jump off high diving boards. The disorienting, out-of-control feeling of falling is not something I would ever do on purpose.

Similarly, the phrase “taking a leap of faith” has never really resonated with me. To me it sounds like the exact same feeling as falling, and I’m not interested! So many other ways we talk about our faith journey evoke this same feeling: falling in faith, surrendering. For people who like to play it safe, this can be a roadblock.

Can we look at this another way? Falling in faith doesn’t have to be an out-of-control free fall with no idea what waits at the bottom. Consider these images:

  • Falling into bed at night letting the soft sheets and fluffy pillows comfort us.
  • Falling in love with a future spouse, a newborn baby, or a special place.
  • Softly falling rain that quenches the earth.
  • Falling to our knees in prayer and gratitude.

Each kind of falling involves a type of surrender – but oftentimes a gentle one. We surrender to sleep – or the deep rest of unburdening that only God can provide. We surrender to the loving arms of God. We surrender our pain and our burdens in prayer. 

These acts of surrender may not be as splashy as the bold leaps of faith we witness in others, but they can bring us just as close to God. And I would encourage you to see that when we do these things, we actually aren’t playing it safe! Trusting that God will meet our needs takes strength and rock-solid faith. The further we allow ourselves to fall, the higher God will lift us up.

Spend some time this week thinking about the ways you allow yourself to fall into your faith. Share your thoughts in the comments section!

Practicing Gratitude

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Ask any group of small children what they are thankful for, and you’ll likely get the same responses: my family, my friends, my pet, my home. You may get one or two kids who have interesting things to add, like my brother-in-law who once famously told his whole 3rd grade class that he was thankful for Kermit the Frog!  But for the most part, the answers will be pretty standard. It’s easy to be thankful for the good things in our lives.

But can we be thankful for things that are difficult?

Gratitude is more than just ticking off the checkboxes of good things in our lives. It can be a daily practice of looking for good in all things, especially those things which don’t appear to be that good on the surface. 

I work at a university, and when we returned from the pandemic lockdown, our campus post office stopped delivering mail to our offices every day, sticking to once a week. There were a lot of valid reasons for this decision, but it meant that on the other days, I had to walk across campus to pick up the mail myself.

Here was my initial reaction to this new situation:

This stinks! This is NOT in my job description. At my age I have to schlep all the way across campus and lug the mail back all by myself? This isn’t fair! What if the packages are heavy? I shouldn’t have to carry them!

After a few weeks, I realized that my grumpy attitude was not serving me, and was in fact seeping into other areas of my work. I had to figure out a way to be ok with this new situation. And I found the answer in the practice of gratitude. Each time I made a trip to the campus post office, I challenged myself to find something to be grateful for in the experience, and to write it down when I returned to my office. Here were some things that made it onto my list:

The pretty blossoms on the flowering trees
Running into a co-worker I hadn’t seen in a long time
The fresh air and warm gentle breezes
Getting to know the mailroom staff a little better each time I visited
The chance to stretch my legs after sitting at my desk for so long  

The list kept getting longer and longer and it changed my whole attitude toward this aspect of my job. Being grateful for things that are difficult doesn’t come naturally. But if you work at it, practicing a little bit each day, it will become an automatic response.

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, I challenge you to think of something that really bugs you. It can be something small and silly, or something bigger. Try to find some way to be grateful for that thing, and see how that act of gratitude changes your perspective in a way you might not have thought possible.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Keep Your Eyes Fixed on God

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Multitasking is a valuable skill.  It helps us in our jobs, in managing a household, and in taking care of loved ones. Being able to do many things at once keeps the wheels of life in motion. However, when it comes to negative emotions, multitasking has the opposite effect. Letting our thoughts bounce between worries, stressors, regrets, and pressures keeps us frozen in place. We find we are so overwhelmed by these emotions that we can’t move forward at all. The wheels will either get stuck in place or run off the road entirely.

So how can we avoid this kind of unhealthy mental multitasking? A fun example I’d like to share is playing Mario Kart with my sons. I should start by confessing that I’m pretty bad at video games. I was amazing at Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Frogger back in the 1980s, but my skills got pretty rusty after that. So I almost never win a race in Mario Kart. In fact, just staying on the track is usually all I can manage. 

These video games have a lot of sensory overload. Colorful animated tracks, a fun and lively musical soundtrack, and many characters crowding the track. And there’s a lot you can do on the way. You can pick up items and use them to sabotage other players or give yourself extra powers. You can take shortcuts. You can peek at the screens of the other players to see what they might be planning. Experience has taught me that if I try to do any of those extra tasks, I’m sure to crash, run off the road, or occasionally start driving in the wrong direction without even realizing it! For that reason, my strategy is simple – just drive. I keep my eyes fixed on the road and keep moving around the track, ignoring all the distractions along the way.

During times of stress or emotional overload, this is how I like to keep my eyes fixed on God. I ignore all the distractions around me and just try to focus on God’s presence before me. It doesn’t make the roadblocks or pitfalls go away, but it keeps me moving past them.

Author Steven Covey once wrote: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” For me, the “main thing” is my belief in a loving God who guides my journey every step of the way. Keeping my eyes fixed on that has been my best defense against mental multitasking.

Keeping your eyes fixed on God requires faith—a belief that God has a plan for your life and is working in your life for good.  It requires prayer—a relationship with God that is active and alive. And it requires practice. Negative emotions are going to always be there to distract you and pull you further away from God, but with time and practice you can get better at not giving those emotions so much of your attention.

So the next time the race track in your mind is swirling with activity, remember to keep your eyes on the road and just drive.

Practicing Stillness

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“Be still and know that I am God”
Psalm 46:10

I love writing about stillness. On the surface it seems like a very simple practice, but in reality it can be difficult to achieve. Our world doesn’t make it easy to be still! Yet I believe it’s a critically worthwhile endeavor…for being still in the present moment is the best way to experience God.  

In a busy world and a sometimes chaotic society, roadblocks to stillness often come from the outside world. But just as often, they can come from within—through our own thoughts and habits. In my experience there are three ways that we tend to leave the present moment in our lives.

Focusing on doing instead of being

How often do you find yourself doing one thing, but your mind is spinning with other things you know you need to do? You might be eating lunch at your desk, but you’re not thinking about what your sandwich tastes like, instead you’re thinking about what you’re going to say at that meeting after lunch or the errands you need to run when you get home from work. Multitasking isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and sometimes it’s what we need to do. (If I’m being totally honest, I’m eating my lunch as I write this post!) But it’s important to realize that when we do this, we are taken out of the present moment.

Focusing on our worries about the future

When something is making you feel anxious, how much time do you spend running the scenarios? Thinking about everything that can go wrong and coming up with a plan for every possible outcome. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is incredibly common, and I know very few people who can resist doing this. It’s important to be aware of how often our minds dwell in the future and to recognize that when they do, we’re not here in the present.

Focusing on regrets of the past. 

It’s so easy to focus on things that we missed, things that we couldn’t do or lost out on. How much time do you spend thinking back on things that have already happened that you can’t do anything about? In this case I’m not talking about pleasant memories of the past, but rather regrets. Lost opportunities, harsh words, uncomfortable interactions. There are lots of ways to become lost in regret and every time we do, again, we aren’t really here.

All of these things have the same result of taking us out of the present moment. It’s the fastest way to get pulled off that path on our journey to spiritual wholeness. When we leave the present moment, we lose sight of God. We lose our sense of purpose. And we’re less able to focus on what’s really important.

In her book Mystical Hope, Cynthia Bourgeault writes: “The spiritual life can only be lived in the present moment, in the now. All the great religious traditions insist upon this simple but difficult truth. When we go rushing ahead into the future or shrinking back into the past, we miss the hand of God, which can only touch us in the now.”

The key to practicing stillness is to stay here with God in the present moment. Think of your mind as a busy airport. Your thoughts are like planes constantly taking off and landing. Backing up at the gates or circling the airspace waiting to land. Or maybe they’re like the crowded terminals jam-packed with worries and distractions. You need to take time on a regular basis to let those planes land. To empty out the terminals. To be still. When you let your mind settle, all past and future thoughts fade away, and you make room for God in the here and now.

May you find some time this week to experience stillness, where you can encounter the hand of God touching your life. Amen! 

Picking Crab Apples

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One day this fall, a student asked me for a spare paper bag so he could pick some crab apples from the tree outside my campus office building. I was puzzled by his request because I never knew crab apples were good for anything (besides dropping on the sidewalk and smushing up under my shoes!) The student surprised me by telling me he was going to use them to make jam.

He explained that the crab apple is just a smaller apple. No one thinks to eat them because we like things that are big and pretty. What a wonderful new insight! I thought the tree outside my building was just ornamental, only meant to be enjoyed for the pretty pink blossoms in the spring. I have since learned that crab apples can be eaten and have the exact same nutritional value as regular apples, just in a smaller package.

How can this old adage, “good things come in small packages” apply to our faith lives? What immediately comes to mind is the parable of the mustard seed:

“He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)

A podcast on Contemplative At Home calls this “a tiny parable about a tiny thing.” Jesus wants us to see that small beginnings can lead to powerful results. Things that start small can grow and spread. We often discount these tiny movements in our hearts, because we live in a world that celebrates everything that is big and bold and extravagant. It’s easy to feel that the way we express our faith is “not enough.” This parable reveals that the seed holds so much hope and possibility. Even the smallest amount of faith can be enough to set you off on your journey towards God. A journey that will blossom and grow, with branches that intertwine with those you encounter along the way.

Equally important as our small bits of faith are our small actions. My encounter with this student picking crab apples also reminded me of the famous quote by Mother Theresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” The world is filled with huge problems and inconceivable amounts of human suffering. It’s hard to believe anything we could do would actually make a difference. Where could we even begin? Well…we begin by doing something small. It may feel insignificant, or woefully inadequate. But the love that accompanies each small act will magnify and warm the hearts of whoever may be receiving the act of kindness. And that’s how it begins to spread. 

The Caterpillar and the Bear

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The story of the butterfly is a beautiful metaphor for spiritual transformation. The humble caterpillar spins itself a silky cocoon or chrysalis, undergoes metamorphosis, and emerges a glorious butterfly, taking flight and fulfilling its purpose taking nectar from flowers to pollinate plants. We think of the butterfly when we long for transformation or self improvement.

As inspiring as the butterfly story is…are there ever days when you wish you could go back into the cocoon? The butterfly has already experienced its miracle. There is no more transforming to be done. The work is finished. The excitement of the metamorphosis is over and you are left with a sense that the butterfly is “done” or “finished” growing. This thought leaves me feeling wistful and maybe a little bit sad.

Spiritual growth is not linear. We don’t move along a straight path our entire lives. We grow in spurts. We move forward. We retreat. We stall out. We leap forward. Sometimes we long to be the safe caterpillar resting deeply in its chrysalis. And other times we glory in floating like a butterfly.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to compare our spiritual lives to a hibernating bear. There are times throughout our lives that we need to turn inward. To rest, to contemplate, to remove ourselves from the busy outerworld. A bear knows it’s time to hibernate when it senses shortages in food and colder temperatures. If we know ourselves well enough, we can recognize our own signs that it’s time to hibernate. We are running low on energy or hope or even faith. Those are the times we need to draw inward. To let God nourish us and take care of us. Retreating is a critical step in the process of spiritual growth.

But there has never been a bear who stays in hibernation forever. They come out when the season calls for it, to fulfill their purpose as bears. Our own time of retreat can refresh us, restore us, and yes—even transform us. But the work is never really finished. A time will come again to rest and contemplate, followed by new spiritual awakenings each and every season. Our transformation may not come in a glorious burst of brightly-colored butterfly wings, but instead a slower and more gentle process.

This week I encourage you to look back over your seasons of hibernation and awakening. How do you feel when you emerge from a time of rest? What new insights did you learn about yourself? Are you good at recognizing when you need to draw inward and be held by a loving and miraculous God?

Created, Chosen, and Called

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Women of faith tend to put people on pedestals. Biblical figures and saints become images of idealized perfection, in a category all to their own – so high up, we could never reach them.  Even our contemporaries can be raised up to this status.

We compare ourselves to these individuals and come up short. Our acts of faith aren’t dramatic enough. Our pain isn’t severe enough. We’re always going to be “not enough”, because we aren’t seeing ourselves through the loving eyes of God. Our measuring stick always gets in the way. We create these categories in our minds. This group is special and worthy because of their acts of goodness or their noble suffering. They are set apart and I am not a part of that group. I don’t belong there.

It’s so important to see how this pedestal mentality—this super-sized admiration—affects our relationship with God. How it colors how we see ourselves in God’s plan and design. Or more accurately, where we see ourselves in God’s plan. 

Are there times we don’t see ourselves anywhere at all? 

The measuring stick comes out again. We measure the idealized perfection of these saintly figures against “whatever we are.” If you found your way to this blog post today, I want you to believe that you matter! That what you do matters. And the reason I can be so confident in saying this is because of what I call the three c’s.  

God CREATED you.
God CHOSE you.
God CALLED you.

God CREATED you:

The best way to make this shift in our thinking is to begin with pondering our own creation. God created us from the dust and breathed life into us. Genesis 2:7 says “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Isn’t that beautiful? Take a moment to picture the God of Love breathing Spirit into you at the moment of your creation. How could anyone feel small or ordinary or inadequate knowing that? 

We also know that God created us in His own image. Genesis 1:27 says “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  That is no small thing! Our very existence is an intimate act of union with our Creator.

God CHOSE you:

St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4) God chose us. How beautiful! About 20 years ago I attended a retreat (and I’m sorry to say that I no longer remember the name of the speaker,) but she said something that hit me like a bolt of lightning because it had truly never occured to me: “God has a plan and a purpose for you. And He made you exactly the way He needs you to be.” I have never forgotten this quote and I try to incorporate it into almost every retreat I give, particularly to women and young girls.  

“God has a plan and a purpose for you. 
And He made you exactly the way He needs you to be.”

It all but destroys the measuring stick. God’s love doesn’t measure.  It doesn’t tally results or put us in a pecking order. God’s love has no conditions. The rules about who is loveable and who is not are erased. Our God does not compare, but instead offers us a love that is perfect and selfless. It isn’t something we receive only if we deserve it. It’s a gift freely given.

God CALLED you:

What are we being called to do? Who are we being called to be? These aren’t easy questions to answer! A good place to start is by recognizing your gifts. Remember: God made you exactly the way He needs you to be!

In my experience, most women are not good at recognizing our gifts. In fact, some of us could earn an Olympic medal in pointing out our own flaws. But when it comes to knowing what we’re good at…our tongues get tied. Our minds draw a blank. The measuring stick comes out again.  

And so I challenge you today to answer the question: What am I good at? I promise you it’s not arrogance or vanity to ponder this question. It’s a simple acknowledgment of how you’ve been gifted by God. You can express it with a sense of gratitude. If you’re really struggling answering this question, I would suggest that you ask someone you love to answer it.  What am I good at?  You might be surprised at what they tell you.

So the next time you think about the women you have put up on a pedestal, look in the mirror instead, and see yourself with the eyes of God. Repeat these words:

God created ME.
God chose ME.
God called ME.

Background photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash