What Girls Get Wrong

"...Who among us doesn't have sin or discouragement? Who among us doesn't fail? There are a million things we don't want to let anybody know about us, but He knows them all. And He is not discouraged about us..." ~ K.P. Yohannan, founder, Gospel for Asia Confession time: I am an overachiever. And while there are a lot of good things that can be said for having that kind of drive, it can also be a very dangerous thing. Being an overachiever means that, if I fail at something, or if I don't get something done on my to-do-list, I feel like I've failed for that day. It doesn't matter if I got five other things done which were really important. I'm unhappy with myself for not getting that one little thing done. For almost the whole month of July, dipping into August, I've been struggling with some health issues, and looking back on it, I feel like this area of my life is what God was trying to teach me about. There have been so many days these

I cringed writing this title. It just makes my skin crawl, the idea that God can't do something. Isn't that saying He's not all-powerful? But really, it's not a lessening of God's might that He can't/doesn't do these things, but rather a reassurance of the goodness and holiness of His character, and of just how powerful He is. 1. He can't lie "Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began" ~ Titus 1:1-2 NKJV Depending on the translation you use, this verse either says "cannot," doesn't," "can't," or some other variable of the same thing. The idea across them all is the same: lying is not something God does, it's not even in His nature.  Unlike us, who sometimes struggle to tell the truth, who find lying

We can find ourselves in a lot of traps as we're going along, trying to live for Christ and trying to act like one of His. One of the worst is the Self Pity Pit. I confess, I find myself falling into it when I'm really impatient about something in my life or really frustrated. But honestly, there's not much point to it. Instead, self pity is guaranteed to make you even more worse off than you were. And we can find ourselves "indulging" in it over the most ridiculous things. Let me give you a very recent example. After a series of health issues, I started on an elimination diet to see if I could pin point what is making me ill. For those of you who don't know what one is, it's basically where you take certain foods out of your diet for an extended period of time (usually 3-4 weeks). After that, you add one food in at a time for a day or so and see whether it causes a reaction. In other words, it's horrible (whoops, see what I mean? Self

A while ago I was watching a YouTube video, and I heard a saying I'd never heard before. The girl in the video said that when it came to things you learned in life, you had to "eat the fish and spit out the bones," meaning that you had to decide what you would take from something, that you had to pick and choose what you would accept and what you would reject, what worked for you and what didn't. She used this as an example of how she could participate in yoga even though she doesn't believe in Hinduism. And while I agree with her in regards to yoga, and that this idea can be helpful in some situations (during my counseling classes, I had to decide what theories worked best for my personality and pick and choose between techniques), this idea can also be rather dangerous. You can't pick and choose when it come to God's Word. You can't decide to accept the part about the Flood but reject that God created the earth. You can't decide to acce

This is a Bible. A giant book of cats is not. Bible. Virgin. We know what these words mean. The world uses these words in a different way than their definition. And I hate it. Like seriously. There are certain phrases you'll hear thrown around a lot containing these words. You probably can name a handful of them yourself. Like the Cat Bible. Or the popular show, Property Virgins. These terms seem to be becoming more and more popular in our culture. On Amazon, for example, I found more than a dozen cookbooks with "Bible" in their titles. I hate the way these terms are used in these titles/phrases. It cheapens the meaning The Bible isn't just a book of wisdom. It's the infallible, God-breathed, sacred teaching of God Almighty Himself. A virgin doesn't just refer to not having done something before. Rather, it specifically refers to someone who has never known another person sexually. Someone who, instead of falling into the temptations of

Doubtless you've heard of it. Meditation features in almost every TV show/movie that has an eastern flair or character in it. It's a huge part of New Age practices, and abounds in yoga. It's also in the Bible. More on that in a bit. Meditation has gotten a bad rep from the way people practice it, but it has many benefits. For me personally, I notice I am more focused and calmer on days I take the time for it. And unless you think I've totally gone off the deep end of sanity into some miry pit, check out the Psalms. At least a handful of them talk about meditating (especially Psalm 119 ), though not in the way we hear it described today. Rather than the common "empty your mind" nonsense, the Psalms name something specific we are to fill our mind with: God's Word. You see, meditation as described in the Bible is really just a fancy way of saying focus on/think about. Meditating on God's Word is useful. Meditating on nothing and letting any li

Some days are a breeze. Others are hard. Like today. There's a lot of stuff going on in my life right now ("Yeah yeah, Christy, join the club." I know, you all have a lot going on, too). And honestly, sometimes I get drained from it all. Like today. I came home late from work with a bad headache and a bunch of things to get done, only to have some unexpected things pop up. My to-do-list won't be finished today. Days like this, when seemingly nothing goes my way (I admit, hyperbole, but hey, that's what it feels like), I can feel like a failure. Like somehow I messed up this whole life thing (yep, cue drama queen). On those days, and honestly every day, there's a list of things that I need to remember:  1. God loves me. " But God demonstrates His own love toward us,  in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  ~ Romans 5:8 NKJV Isn't it amazing, that our God loved us so much, He was willing to die for us? And He pa

I just finished reading a novel that was really good but extremely sad. In it, the main character and her family were in a horrible car crash, her parents dead on the scene, and her little brother and herself seriously wounded. As the novel plays out, her brother dies as well. As she is in a coma, the novel is told through her eyes first as herself and then as she sees things in her comatose state. Stricken with grief over her family's passing, and in such bad shape herself that she would need quite a few reconstructive surgeries, the girl battles between whether she wants to fight for life anymore, or whether she wants to give up and die. Because according to one nurse, it is the girl's choice whether she lives or dies. While the author did a beautiful job writing the story (except for the swear words, that is), there were a couple of things I disagreed with her on. One of them was this idea, that we get to choose our own destiny. Because although we choose several thing

So today, as I woke up twenty minutes before my alarm went off, I was laying in bed praying, and when I got up, I realized something. I do not know how it had never struck me before, at least not quite in this way, but it was a little shocking at first. I am, by nature, a very ungrateful person. Even though I say thank you a lot. It's super easy for me to forget everything I have in pursuance of my goals. Searching for a full-time school counseling job? I'll forget to be happy I substitute teach for two different districts. Feeling sick and achy one day (like today)? I'll forget that only two years ago I was so sick I wasn't able to work full-time. Frustrated and angry at my five-year-old, slow-running-at-times laptop? I'll forget that there are many people who don't even own desktops (something that would be devastating to me as writer). Yeah, #firstworldproblems anyone? It's so easy for me to forget that, even though I want all these things, I have

Let's talk about someone you've probably heard a lot about. Peter, the apostle, the guy who was ready to chop off an ear for Christ (sorry, van Gogh, guess you didn't think of it first), and then a few hours later was swearing he'd never heard of the Man. Pastors preach a lot about Peter. There's a lot of life lessons we all get to learn from Peter's failures. I feel like he has the greatest number of embarrassing stories told about him in the Bible. Then again, he didn't kill anyone or sleep with anybody who wasn't his wife, so maybe he doesn't quite have that position all by himself. But we hear a lot about him. We hear a lot about his lack of faith. Like that time Jesus walked on the water, and when He came aside their boat, the disciples were all afraid. Then Peter, gathering courage, asks to be allowed to come to Jesus on the water. Jesus lets him come, but Peter sees the waves... We know the rest of the story. His heart quakes wi