At any given time I maintain at least six girl crushes. If you don’t know what a girl crush is, it’s when you seriously admire another woman to the point where you’ve contemplated hanging around their mail box. You know, in hopes that you’ll bump into them and become best friends.  My girl crushes are rocks stars and role models in the areas of faith, fitness, parenting and cooking. Girl crushes are fun and fairly harmless, but it’s more important that our role models are not just celebrities but women in our real and everyday lives. You probably have a few girl- crush worthy rock stars at your church. These women ooze with spiritual discipline and always deeply engage during worship. They’re full of encouraging words and they faithfully pray for you when they tell you they will. Also, at least 72% of their tweets and Facebook updates are bible verses or worship song lyrics. They are truly spiritual rock stars, and the sort of strong, confident women we look up to and perhaps even envy. I’ll be honest, I’m not one of these women right now. I’ve been in a truly difficult season for over a year and I would say that lately, I’ve been more of a puddle than a rock star.

A year ago my mom took her life just as I was rounding my third trimester of pregnancy with our second child. After her death I felt like a shell of a person, just floating through life. After we returned home from our 2000 mile round trip journey to arrange her funeral I was nervous to return to church. I knew that grief and weariness showed on my face and I was somehow running on empty. I was also working in college ministry at the time and I worried about returning to work. I didn’t want my students to see me face down on my desk sobbing, or dragging myself to get another cup of coffee. For weeks after my Mom died I lived under the lie that God couldn’t use me as I was, that I was too weak. I believed it was better that I hide away for a while until I was in more presentable shape spiritually and emotionally. In the middle of my puddle months God taught me a new and valuable lesson. Even though I felt like a puddle on the floor, I was actually a rock star in a unique way. God wanted to use my puddle-ness to model what it meant to be authentic in a gray and difficult season. You see, if we’re only willing to be real when life is easy we leave people to navigate the stormy seasons from scratch, without any previous example of authentic brokenness. This world is a mess and we all experience the deep pain of loss in some form or fashion. If we downplay how much those experiences hurt, we create a community where people don’t feel comfortable being open with their struggles. This isn’t what God wants for us; He created us for close community with Himself and each other.

So, back to my story. I returned to church after my Mom’s death, and to be honest some Sundays I just sat there, buried my face in my hands and cried. When I was approached in the halls between services I was honest about how deeply I was hurting. I felt strongly that God wanted to use that season to show others that grief takes weeks, months and even years to truly heal. Deep hurts leave scars on our lives, but these healed wounds are beautiful monuments to God’s faithfulness, and our pressing need to be close to Him, come what may. I hope today you’re in a season without fresh wounds, healed and whole. If that’s you today, strive to be comfortable with those who are hurting. On the other hand, if today finds you with fresh, open wounds don’t feel guilty about your pain. This world is full of experiences and moments that cut us deeply. It isn’t how God intended it to be, but it’s the world we find ourselves in.

Mind if I offer you a little encouragement to take with you through those messy, painful times?

- Don’t be afraid to be honest and real about your pain, especially with your trustworthy friends.

- Don’t be ashamed to cry in church, you can be a pioneer who changes what we view as a “normal” response to grief and loss.

- Remember that God is resourceful and uses everything, even the messiest seasons for His glory.

- Be authentic about your journey and don’t be ashamed of pain or grief when it’s where your path takes you. Struggling does not mean you lack faith.

- Grab God’s hand and don’t let go, even when His ways are beyond confusing.

- When you’re in a sunnier season, support and encourage authentic healing for those in your community who are in a season of brokenness.

- Remember that the battle against death has already been won. Even on the darkest days, the light of this truth sustains.

This authentic way of living leads to true healing and strong women who God will use to display the whole and beautiful reality of His heaven here on earth. We’ll all walk through the sunny seasons as well as the dark valleys and when we’re brave enough to be puddles, that’s when we’re the true rock stars in disguise.

Well this weekend was my first experience speaking about my story and my message at the “Lies we tell” women’s retreat put on by H2O church in Ardmore, OK.  The theme of my message was the lie that “I have to be perfect” in the way I live my life and that “I have to be perfect” to be used by God.  For the second portion of the talk I leaned heavily on my article “Puddles and Rock Stars” featured here.

To add some comic relief we worked on this video to illustrate the way that social media puts forth the lie that we have to be perfect.  So often we log on to Facebook or twitter and see the best parts of the lives of our friends and family.  No one is posting a video of their most recent marriage knock out fight, but we certainly post hot date pics.  No one posts about failing a class, but a status about straight A’s isn’t rare.  It’s understandable to want to put your best face forward on social media, but the danger lies in believing that what we see on Facebook is a completely accurate picture of people’s real lives.  It’s not, it’s only the best parts, and if you feel like you don’t measure up to what you see in your news feed, remember that measuring your life against other people’s Facebook posts and tweets will always leave you feeling inadequate.  So do what you need to do to stop doing that.

And oh, if you get “the girl from Ipanema” or “The odd Couple Theme” stuck in your head this week, you’re welcome.  Use it to remember that you are uniquely awesome.

Well here I am at the end of my struggle to celebrate Advent in my head and heart instead of my wallet and calendar.  I’ll give it to you straight up, I didn’t find all the depth and peace I was hoping for.  I got distracted and lost, I skipped daily readings and was less-than diligent, but you know what?  It was better than any other year before.  It was a step, a positive, freeing step in the right direction.  It will alter the way I do my future Christmasing and although I am a tad discouraged I need to find contentment with this step closer to the beauty of our Jesus.

As much as I love the classic Christmas hymns and phrases, when I think of the birth of Jesus I use the words “revolution” and a “game-changer” more than “Silent Night”.  Christmas was a turning point for the world and I love this so much that Kel and I named our first baby, a girl, Noelle.  You see, Christmas keeps my hope alive, because even when the world seems dark and totally impossible, light can burst on the scene and change everything, for always.  That is what my first baby girl was for me, she was the beginning of a beautiful new family.  Her birth solidified this hope that all the pain and gray from my past would blossom and grow into a vivid new legacy.  God is the true Redeemer of my life, but he has worked a thousand redemptions through my daughter in just 31 little months.

Christmas for me has always been a beacon of hope and restoration.  No matter how bad a year was there was always a hearty meal of love to be enjoyed at Christmas, even if it was almost drowned out by the noise of those we recently lost and buried.  Noelle is my reminder of that light and my commitment to use my hands, my life and my legacy to bring about God’s bright restoration on this earth.  Her name draws me back to the truth that because of Jesus, all is being restored, redeemed and set right.  All.  All.

Jesus is the game changer from pain to relief, dark to light, questions to answers and despair to hope.  He mends wounds and heals hearts, he fills holes and takes away loneliness.  If you get nothing else out of this day remember that the manger contained more than we could ever wrap our heads around.  Our absolute and total redemption.

Thank you Lord.  Again and again.

Amen

The second week and or candle on the traditional advent calendar is about Mary and Joseph and the preparations that they made to get ready for Jesus, which as I read it mainly involved travel.  If you read the account of the birth of Jesus in the four Gospels, you will notice that Mary travelled a lot for a pregnant lady.  And I can’t imagine donkey travel is comfortable, whether you are pregnant or not.

First she traveled to see her cousin Elizabeth to spend time together excitedly chatting about their babies on the way.  I have totally identified with this lately as I have gotten to sit with cousins and chat about babies.  Although ours are already here, there is really nothing quite like sharing exciting news with someone who has been a close friend since childhood.  There is a bond shared among memories of bikes, camping trips and failed bunny breeding business (yes really) that cannot be copied or replaced.  I totally get why she hopped on a donkey to spend time with Elizabeth.

Then when the time came for Jesus to be born she obediently traveled to Bethlehem, where her main squeeze, Joseph’s family was from.  Last Christmas I was incredibly pregnant and less comfortable than I have ever been in my life so I opted out of traveling for the Holidays, but Mary didn’t really have a choice because:

1) she was under orders from Caesar Augustus and Roman rulers aren’t super  sympathetic to the plight of anyone, let alone women in their third trimester

2) She had a lot of prophecies to fulfill by having her baby boy in Bethlehem, in a manger.

Bonus: After she had Jesus she had to hit the road again to go to Egypt to save her newborn little guy from being killed like all his other would-be peers.  Heartbreaking if you let yourself go there…

I’ve have been traveling a lot these past few days which is why you haven’t heard from me, maybe you’ve been packing bags and traveling too.  It is certainly not uncommon to do that around Christmas.  Travel in a mini van with two little ones is exhausting under the best circumstances.  I can’t imagine traveling on the back of an animal while being super pregnant.  I had to travel 940 miles in a dodge caravan, and it took me about 16 hours (mostly due to one very long breakfast at Cracker Barrel)  Mary and Joseph had to travel 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem and there is a lot of speculation as to how long this would have taken, as Joseph walked and Mary rode on the back of her trusty Donkey but most biblical historians say that it would have been slow going and taken about 5-7 days, which makes my 16 hours in a mini van seem like a pleasure cruise, screaming children aside. I don’t know if this is irreverent or not but… how sore must her butt have been?!

The thing is that with all of my reflection I don’t find myself with any pith insight to share, other than the simple face that I identify with Mary more than I ever have.  Our need for Family, Strength and God hasn’t changed since since 0 AD and I don’t foresee it changing any time soon.  Mary liked to laugh with her cousins, just like I do and Mary drew strength from God in the face of struggle, just like I try am ever trying to do.  We always paint her as this figure from long ago and I am finding that the more I consider her story, the more I can feel her Bethlehem get closer.

We are a week out from Christmas, and I have been writing here about my deep desire to prepare my heart for the coming of Jesus.  I had big plans and goals of reflecting upon and journeying through the Advent season alongside my husband, children and friends.  Guess what?  I lied.  It’s a week out from Christmas and I am so stressed that for the past week I’ve been having mini panic attacks.  I haven’t rested my hands, in fact I may have given myself carpal tunnel.  I haven’t rested my spirit, I am anxious, nervous and exhausted.  I am spread thin, thinner than I have been in a long long time.  I do this almost every year, Christmas approaches with hope and I adopt beautiful and meaningful practices, only to abandon them by getting caught up in Christmas “stuff”.  I shop, I plan, I decorate, I make, I cook, and I serve.  All good things, but when done to excess, they can take your focus off the soon to be filled manger.

But not this year!  Not again, I will not, WILL NOT MISS IT AGAIN THIS YEAR!  I have decided to do something drastic, something new, and I am going to enter into a season I am calling “Express Advent” (yes this is a nod to Phil Dunfee)

I will be blogging about, tweeting about, and facebooking about #expressadvent.  I still have a week to center myself, my heart and my spirit around what it means to long for and then to celebrate the coming of Jesus.  So I’m delving into the 4 weeks of advent, in just one week.  And not just any week, the week before Christmas, often the busiest most stressful week of the year.

Here is my invitation to you, maybe you, like me, have almost missed it too.  Maybe your thoughts are at the mall, the grocery store or the post office instead of in the hills with the shepherds or in Bethlehem awaiting the coming King.  It’s not too late for us, lets not miss the restful, refreshing, revolutionary experience that Christmas is supposed to be.  Want to #expressadvent with me?   There may be a lot of content, so just read what you can and when you can, and if you don’t tweet, you can read the twitter feed on the side of the blog.

Follow along as I forge my way through a week of preparation and exploration.  Lets not let another year go by without “getting it.”

Oh and if you are going to #expressadvent with me, let me know by tweeting, commenting and posting links.  So many of us miss out on the depth of this season, lets unite in refusing to do it in 2011.

Do you ever set overly lofty goals for yourself?  I do.  This is a very common occurrence in my life, I daresay that I am the queen of ridiculous goals.  My current pet goal?  Making all of 2011′s Christmas presents by hand, and by doing do saving tons of money and up cycling found resources such as bottles and old sheets.  Brilliant?  Well, in theory… until you find yourself on December 14 wanting to pull your hair out as you simultaneously take a baseball bat to your sewing machine and start jabbing people with crochet hooks.  You know… Hypothetically speaking.

Who am I kidding, there is no hypothetical here, this is all me, right now, this very night.  And since I am the queen of lofty unreachable goals, I am becoming very good at handling their inevitable failure.  So if this holiday season, or at any point in life you find yourself forced, for your own sanity, to call it quits on a goal that will otherwise kill you, here are a few tips.

1) Grace, If you can’t find space for grace, you’re screwed.  You aren’t a terrible failure across the board, you just bit off more than you can chew, again.  So breathe, and repeat after me: “I don’t suck, I just can’t do it all.”

2) Go to confession:  Ask a friend: “Hey I committed to this_____ but I think it may kill me if I don’t stop, what are your thoughts?”  Chances are they will support you in your need to take a few burdens off your back.

3) Laugh it off, Oops, you did it again, you set a goal that had great intentions but was way above your head.  Have a sense of humor about it.

4) Improvise!  Like tonight, I am making a list, checking it twice, and then letting UPS bring my presents pre made and stress free.

5) Repeat step 1, and maybe have some wine, read a book, and re tackle your problem in the morning.

So I may have mostly wrote that for me, but God has a funny way of using my foibles (dang I love that word) to help others.

And if that doesn’t help, then maybe this quote will:

“Whenever Christmas begins to burden, it’s a sign that I’ve taken on something of the world and not of Christ. Any weight in Christmas has to be of this world.” Ann Voskamp

That has conviction written all over it, especially if Christmas is crushing you tonight.