If you’re ever around me in real life for very long you’ll understand two things about me pretty darn quickly:
1) I’ve probably never been considered shy, or a shrinking violet
2) God somehow wired me with a high voltage energy source best plugged into something to burn it off ….for when I am still long enough creative things start to happen….
Growing up in a small town doctor’s home with a counselor for a mom, I was blessed in that both of them were high energy as well and high creative. It didn’t seem unusual for my mom to do many things in lots of arenas….things like being president every year of some social work club like hospital volunteers, or PTA, or United Methodist Women, or Doctor’s wives groups, mentoring other women, being a professional counselor while working with the local college as an adjunct in her spare time. The woman cooked, sewed, kept her own home, and entertained weekly, worked outside the home and volunteered weekly at several venues…I never regarded it possible to fill her big shoes as an adult, she did it all well. It did not seem out of place for my country doctor father to have a full time practice, to rebuild British sports cars, have a tow boat business, a timber business and write for the newspaper daily….we simply have a high energy family….
As an adult I thought everyone lived the kind of zest for living life we did, and had the same expectations to work for the greater good, and change their socks daily. As I went into the real world on my own……I found out….Not so much.
I tried to fit in as a teacher. I loved teaching. I love working with children of all ages 2 to 82…for it matters to me that each person receive a teacher’s personal attention, affirmation, and positive regard. I don’t care what their learning needs are, their situation that makes learning difficult, learning is simply a puzzle to be solved. You study the student, define how they learn, what they are missing, and define what the goals are. Once the research is done, its like writing a piece for an orchestra, you start bringing in the bass, melody lines and filling in with what makes the learning fuller, stronger, blending all the subjects into one piece called thinking. It’s like music, when the notes begin to be played in order, beautiful music comes out of a formerly clunky concert….everyone relaxes and enjoys the learning! I always chose purposefully to teach where the children were considered the worst behaved with the least going for them….and loved every moment of my time in the classroom seeing them succeed. I still work with students, teachers, and school districts as a consultant now, helping teach others how to love what they do and solve riddles when students or schools don’t work.
Then came Mary Kay. Oh how I love that company. They are so much more than a company to me. Personal growth, personal examples and women who not only faced more adversity than I had, they taught others to thrive despite it! Its pretty hard to have a pity party at Mary Kay events, for there are consultants on stage that have so much less than you do to work with, physical handicaps, language barriers, financial hardships, but they have proved if you think you can you can. The marketing and learning I still do today was based in the model for Mary Kay and it works every.single.time. Mary Kay herself was known to gently chastise employees when she asked “How are you?” expecting them to say “Great!” which sometimes got her bad press as a controller, but I believe she knew what all who face adversity have learned, what you tell yourself you are….YOU ARE. I know so many years as a single mom and left behind wife….it was choosing to make the day good that made it happen long before anything to do with the day indicated it would or could be good. So much of our lives is a decision to choose to become or be that which we choose to be, whether its obedient to God, forgiving of others and ourselves, or faithful to put away the laundry….we have to choose to do it and ask God to help us know what to choose….not simply ask God for help on what we choose for ourselves…but ask God what to do!
The Bible tells us that life and death is in the power of the tongue. Have you thought of that lately? What we say truly affects what we do as well as what others do? Are we building people, encouraging them? Are we being positive and truthful about our circumstance? Are we speaking truth to ourselves and others in love? I believe that we all have so much to be thankful for even on the darkest of days. We are so accustomed to the comfort that being an American brings us that we simply have no clue what so ever how blessed we are.
Lately God is doing this new thing in my family and in me. For so many years we have prayed to be in ministry to the family. Being God’s short bus girl, I thought that meant working quietly in our local area. God, however, has indulged me in my love of helping people and has allowed and sent people to be helped. Sometimes we’ve moved them in our home for a few months. Other times we’ve simply mentored and supported folks in transition individually or as couples, other times we have lead groups for a few weeks or days. We thought that was pretty much the extent of our usefulness…but God apparently has a new plan…..and I have had my hands pried to the wheel of “no I won’t go” directions He has been taking us for a few weeks before Christmas. After all, public ministry is uncomfortable, sages on the stages of life with humans watching means often that you are destined to be the next target, I am in no way, shape, or form an administrator, detail girl, yet God is asking me to be one……Jesus promised us there would be adversity…and believe me, people do make sure that is true, Satan so uses us as pawns sometimes, helping encourage us to do or say things we don’t even recognize aren’t of God. We are imperfectly made and that allows for our imperfections to show…..others imperfections allow them to act imperfectly towards you too. I am perhaps the least qualified, least abilitied to do this thing God is asking of Les and I, yet God is God and He has a plan….and I am trying with all my might to learn to pry my fingers off the control wheel of my life……and each time I manage to let go of what happens next, God simply amazes me with how He provides, How he solves dilemmas, How he opens doors, How he makes things work together for good…..
and the thing you know about God after you meet him personally….and learn to trust that He is indeed God….and the God who created you, loves you,and truly deeply desires you in His life?
He can be trusted. His ways are not our ways. His love for you is unfathomably deep and there is nothing He loves more than your faithful allowing Him to love you, direct you, and to love Him back in your service to Him.
and that is true, no matter what thing you managed to do on your own you think made you unloveable….being unloveable is simply a lie from the pits of hades…..for God IS Love and you were made in His image so that He could show His love for you and fellowship with you.
Meanwhile, my fingers may be a bit sore for the next, say, 88 years, for knowing the above does not mean my old flesh doesn’t continually have to knocked down so that I can indeed pry my fingers off the wheel of my life…..and God created Grace for a reason, the step mom from Alabama needs plenty of extra helpings of it!
God is good….anyone have Ben Gay to rub on the sore spots?
