by Nicole | Oct 14, 2020 | Stories From My Friends
I have shared my story with you before, but to make a long story shorter: I had a picture perfect childhood. My first marriage was anything but perfect. Because of years of verbal and mental abuse, I suffer from a mental illness: I have bipolar depression. I am in the process of writing my own book and there have been many “downs” in my life and a few manic times as well. Without the Lord in my life, and the support of my loving second husband and family, I wouldn’t be here today. I was suicidal a few times in my life but praise the Lord, I feel free of that and I’m pretty much on the other side. I have my days of deep depression, but I am balanced mostly with finding a good neurologist, therapy and medication. I have 3 amazing kids and 3 beautiful grandkids who are my joy! I feel l that I am a Soldier Girl because I too have scars, but I am battling every day to overcome and live for my Lord!
by Nicole | Sep 29, 2020 | Brokenness
A friend just texted me a few minutes ago. She was wrestling with the fact that she just told her story and is now paranoid that her story is going to ruin her reputation.
Quick rabbit trail: Your story is your story. Own it! Just as Paul owned and shared about his thorn in the flesh, so should you when God says it’s time!!! Your thorn, your story, is the dark backdrop that illuminates the scandalous grace of Jesus! Preach it!
Here was my response:
You will always feel a little exposed. Even now when I talk about [my story] at times, I feel exposed because mental illness [or whatever your story is — mine just so happens to include mental illness] is just so personal. And that’s why no one talks about it. There will always be a stigma. So whenever you share, you will either free people up or cause people to look at you funny. You just have to decide which is more important to you: Their freedom or your reputation. But no one can take your character, and these struggles are what are making you into the wonderful woman that you are! So own them! But also remember that there is no rush to share everything at once. Go at your own pace. Share as much as you are ready to share. But you are NOT crazy. You are brave and courageous for facing these struggles and you are going to be FREE! You will learn through this whole process that the only opinion that matters is God’s. That sounds so cliche — but it’s true! And He has already declared you HIS — you are LOVED, ACCEPTED, WORTHY, SECURE. There is a verse in Psalms that says HE is the lifter of our heads. I love that verse!!! You can live with your head lifted high because HE is your HEALER! We all have a lot of crazy, but we want to mask it. It’s the difference between living free and living in bondage. The most free people are those who don’t hide their depravity and as a result can celebrate the absolute and extravagant goodness of the Gospel. And that right there triggers my angst: The people who cannot (will not) face their own depravity, their own failures, their own shortcomings, because I truly believe they will fall to pieces. Their perceived “good” reputation is the glue that is holding them together emotionally and if that glue ever disintegrates, they won’t know who they are anymore.
I just read this in Grace for the Good Girl by Emily P. Freeman: “Good [people] can depend on their good reputation to meet their desperate need for love.”
Dang.
Our good reputations are our identities. It’s what we are known for…good parenting, good kids, good disciplines, good behavior, good grades, good choices, good marriage, good clothes, good ministry, good church, good house, good job, good car, good vacations, good college, good work ethic, good friends, good ____________. We are good. And if we cease to be “good,” we cease to be us. So when our “goodness” is challenged, it can NEVER be our fault because then we are no longer good. Yikes. Do you see how dangerous this is? Scripture screams at us in Romans 3 that “there’s nobody living right, not even one” (MSG). And we say we believe that. But when was the last time you were brutally, uncomfortably, irrationally, absolutely nothing-to-lose honest? When?
Y’all, your “good” reputation is going to keep you living in bondage. It will isolate you. You will never be able to be fully and completely known because you won’t want anyone getting too close and potentially seeing that you aren’t good. But NO ONE IS GOOD.
If you are getting nervous thinking I am saying to flaunt your sin, then you are who this blog post is written to (read Romans 6, 7 and 8 — I guess Paul and I share the same angst). Yes yo
u, my love. And bless your heart. Be free! Own your freakin train wreck of a life because then and only then can you be healed and free and then and only then can you love like Jesus loved! And then and only then can you live the life He calls us to live!
See, if you are obsessed with goodness, then that’s all you are going to expect from yourself and from other people. And instead of sin and failure pushing you to the cross, it is going to push yo
u further away because you will feel the pressure to “fix it” yourself. You are a Gospel nightmare. Jeremiah 17:9 says we are incapable of being good. You will live an uptight, fear-driven life because of the fact that you have never experienced the scandalous love, acceptance, grace and forgiveness of Jesus even though you claim to have.
If we could only see ourselves as Christ does. Then we could live as Christ lived. But we can’t. And so we don’t. And we perpetuate that sad cycle of living to the next generation. And people are leaving the church faster than they are coming. And I don’t blame them.
Oh, that is my angst. That we would embrace honesty. Vulnerability. Gospel-preaching, grace-living, help-me-Jesus-screaming lives. ’Cause that’s what He expects. Not my goodness. No. Never that. But my utter and complete brokenness smothered in His perfect life. Only that. ’Cause only when I can stop hiding behind my goodness can He live His goodness through me.
But You, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. Psalm 3:3 (ESV)
by Nicole | Sep 29, 2020 | Motherhood, Parenting
I wrote this several years ago when Brooke was 3, Ryder was 1, and I was pregnant with Braxton. However, this whole 24 hours was so epic, I had to share it. Who doesn’t need a good laugh? So enjoy. Solidarity, Momma. Solidarity.
My day started last night. But seriously. We have two kids: Brooke (3) and Ryder (1). I realize now that the “terrible twos” are a myth. Either that or we somehow zoomed right past two and catapulted into THREE. I wish there was a scary font for THREE. Or a sound effect of imminent doom. THREE. Don’t get me wrong, three started out like any other number. But in the last few weeks, I feel like spelling three “H-E-L-L.” My sweet, loving girl has started saying things like, “I won’t” and “Don’t do that” and “You won’t.” My usually submissive child throws herself on the floor when she doesn’t get her way. I spend most of my day disciplining. And crying. Lots of tears. Lots and lots of tears.
We have also entered the “scared of ERRRRRRthang” stage. Thursday morning we went to the doctor’s for a well visit, and Brooke basically had a nervous breakdown. We had several nurses and doctors in the room just to help me manage the situation. It was a blast. By the time we got home, I was crying. “Mommy, are you crying, too?” “Yes, baby. Mommy is crying.”
Yesterday at church, Brooke (and Ryder, he was guilty of this too) spent most of the day avoiding EVERYONE. And not just avoiding…recoiling anytime anyone would get within a few feet’s distance. I understand. I really do. Being a pastor’s kid is no joke, and I want to protect them from expectations and from being smothered. But I think my sensitivity gave way to all-out snobbery. We cannot have kids avoiding people at all costs. And hence my predicament.
So last night, I just lay awake trying to come up with some solutions. Because, friend, we ain’t gonna keep livin’ this way (all the ways). Am I right? I mean, I am four months pregnant (yes, I now agree with you that we are one fry short of a Happy Meal). We have got to get our act together! I came up with the brilliant idea of getting the kids involved in some free activities in the area that will get them out of their comfort zones and around others their ages. So we started with story time at the library. Or we thought we would. …
Because on my way home from dropping Bryant off at work, I ran out of gas. I won’t go into all of the details because he and I tell the story differently (hahaha), but it was great. So that happened. By the time we got that situated, we rushed home, threw on some clothes, and jumped in the car. We rolled into story time just as the first session was ending and the second was beginning. And you know what? It went fairly well. Except the part when I asked if my kids wanted a snack, only to see NO ONE else had snacks, which led to kids asking moms for their snacks, which led to me getting several dirty looks and attempting to secretly slip my children pieces of banana. To my defense, at the last story time we went to at another location, moms brought full-on meals for their kids. So there.
After story time, we headed home for naps. Thank God for naps. Amen?! When I went to get Brooke up from her nap, I came to the realization that she had been abnormally quiet. And as I walked past her room, I also noticed she was busy doing something. Upon further investigation, she was coloring. With a marker. On my Kindle. So that was nice. After another “We only color on paper” chat, we got up to play.
While Ryder and Brooke were playing upstairs, I snuck downstairs to start on dinner. After several minutes, I heard Brooke: “Mommy! Mommy! I have something on my foot!” I told her to come down so I could see. On her way, I asked, “What is it?” Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. She answered, “I think it’s poop!” And it was. Yes, it was poop. Which was no longer on her foot. It was now all down the stairs and across the bottom floor. As I picked her up, I said, “Okay, no one panic!” and I rushed upstairs to figure out what in the wonderful world happened. Well, it didn’t take me long because at the top of the stairs stood, very proudly mind you, my very naked son. And then it dawned on me. I had put a pull-up on him right before nap time because the extra diapers were downstairs and I just couldn’t muster the energy to get them. A pull-up would do. But it obviously didn’t do. It must have bothered him ‘cause when he got up, he was acting very annoyed with it. I figured it would pass. Oh, it did. He just figured he could go without. And that he did. I traced the poopy footprints to the scene of the crime, and I will just spare you the details. I grabbed both kids, covered, and rushed them to the changing table to stop the bleeding so to speak. Then, I threw them in the tub and commenced cleaning up “Poop Mageddon 2016.” Somehow, I was able to see the humor in it all. But only because Jesus loves me and helped me find it funny. Or I was high on the smell. Who really knows.
You know what, though? I learned some things about myself today. I learned that I too quickly tie my kids’ behavior to my identity. I want them to be good so I look good. I want them to be good so my life is easy. It’s sad but true. And, I take myself and life too seriously. I want everything perfect. Everyone dressed in new clothes, eating well-balanced meals, in a clean house, with lots of activities and toys, and no TV (because that’s for the lazy parent — she wrote sarcastically). But that’s not real life. More often than not, we are in faded play clothes, eating cheese sticks and Captain Crunch, watching Doc McStuffins and Frozen amidst piles of laundry. And that’s okay.
Parenting isn’t perfect. But it should be intentional. And that’s what I’m learning. I try to live out my walk with Jesus so that my kids come into it naturally. And instead of getting exasperated the moment they start acting out (like kids), I try to take a deep breath and choose to see it as an opportunity to teach them the correct response. I have found it’s all in the approach. The mindset. But I have to be determined. Or I can slip into self-pity and frustration and forget my littles are people whose hearts need shaped by the Savior.
The Scriptures say children are “a blessing and a heritage from the Lord”; “they are arrows in the hands of a mighty warrior.” And I agree with Andy Stanley that my greatest contribution is not something I do, but the someones I raise. THEY are my legacy. So I’m grabbing hold of this mother thing with both hands and diving in headfirst. Because “the days are long, but the years are short” (thank you, Sandra Stanley) and someday “I’m gonna miss this” (gotta love that country song).
So here’s to crazy, poopy, wild, insane days when we cry more than laugh and fall into bed exhausted. May we be reminded that we have to lean into our Savior. May we glimpse visions of Him through our parenting. May we love on our kids’ hearts, shaping them to see their Jesus in the everyday moments. May we live in the moment.
Cheers to you, sweet Momma! Keep on keepin’ on!
by Nicole | Sep 29, 2020 | Mental Health, Stress
We all know that “stressed spelled backwards is desserts,” am I right? But I think deep in our hearts, we believe that stressed spelled backwards is deserted.
When you are feeling stressed, you think everything and everyone depends on you and you are one mistake away from being deserted. If you think that’s a tad dramatic, then take some personal inventory.
If you are feeling stressed right now, get to the bottom of it. Ask yourself why. Now, some of us have legitimate stresses in our lives. But others of us, not so much. Our stress is self-induced out of our futile attempts to find our identity in everything and everyone but Jesus Christ. We don’t want to disappoint ourselves or other people. Mainly because we are terrified that we are going to come up short and be rejected. And nobody wants to be abandoned.
Currently, I am stressed. And I will tell you why, but you have to promise not to look down on me. It’s embarrassing. So here it goes.
I have two pretty big events in the beginning of November. And I have to find an outfit. And I’m stressed. Like, I-lay-awake-for-a-while-at-night-stressed.
Let the judgment commence.
But seriously. This whole outfit thing is really throwing me for a loop here. And why? Well, on my morning run God had a little heart-to-heart with me. He made it very clear that my insecurity is getting the best of me and so finding the perfect outfit is a way to mask it with some self-imposed confidence. Ouch. He went on to let me know that most of my stress recently has been directly connected to my attempting to control everyone and everything around me so that I feel better about myself. I am not allowing Jesus Christ to define me. I am defining myself through my accomplishments, my appearance, and my relationships. When I get terrified of failure, I know I am moving further away from who I am in Christ and closer and closer to my own definitions of who I am. And that stresses me out.
So, let me ask you…why are you really stressed today? If something doesn’t go exactly your way, will you feel like a failure? Less of a person? Are you afraid you are going to be left in the dust if you don’t prove yourself? If so, you are finding your identity in what you do and in what other people think of you. And it’s exhausting. Recalibrate. Remind yourself that you don’t have anything to prove to anyone. God loves you because of Jesus Christ. When He looks at you, He sees Jesus Christ’s perfect record. Rest.
(Read Ephesians 1 if you need a good dose of who you are in Christ.)
by Nicole | Sep 29, 2020 | Mental Health, Stress
Negative self-talk. It’s such a weird phenomenon. We all do it, though. Seriously. You’ve done it probably more than you know.
I’ll never forget Kevin (my counselor of 10 years — you’ll get to know him on a first-name basis, trust) interrupting me in the middle of one of our sessions and asking me if I knew how I had just repeatedly referred to myself. I had no clue. Then he told me I had called myself an “idiot” several times in just a few minutes. I was shocked. From that moment on, I started paying attention and was so surprised by my propensity to call myself an idiot over the dumbest things. But you guys, that’s how I truly felt inside. I just didn’t like myself. I was so embarrassed about how my life had spiraled and where I was emotionally, physically (I had gained so much weight), mentally and spiritually. This was not the straight A, role model, “it girl” I had always been. I was falling apart at the seams. And so even the simplest mishaps were self-fulfilling prophecies. As the Scriptures say, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
What about you? What names do you call yourself? When do you most often berate yourself? You may not be “Mean Girls” mean; it may just be little slights you make here and there. But it’s dangerous! And you know what? It’s even more high stakes when we have little ears walking around hearing how we are talking to ourselves (I’m referring to our children).
So how do we stop this negative self-talk? Two things: We need to reflect and to reframe. How very Christian of me to alliterate, #amiright? I wrote what I wrote: Reflect and reframe.
Reflect:
First, you need to figure out why you are speaking so poorly to yourself. Why are you beating yourself up? Why do you not love yourself?
The Church (as a whole) has always put such negative connotations around the idea of loving ourselves. But I’m here to tell you, it’s so Biblical. In Matthew 22:37 and 39, Jesus gives us the two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…. The second is like it…” and before I give it to you, make sure you are ready to read it nice and slowww: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (NIV). Did you catch that? “Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF”. If you aren’t loving yourself, how will you love your neighbor? If you aren’t forgiving yourself, if you are angry with yourself, you won’t have the emotional margin you need to love others well. You can’t spend energy hating yourself and think you’re going to have energy left over to love someone the way Jesus is calling you to love. Nope. Won’t happen.
So you have to determine why you don’t love yourself. Did someone make you feel worthless? Like a screwup? Did someone take something from you? I don’t mean literally (although that may be the case). What I mean is did someone take a season, first marriage, your innocence, your dad, your mom, your career…from you? Are you left feeling unlovable, unworthy and insecure? When we are living out of our hurt (whether self-inflicted or not), we are unable to see past the hurt. And this leads us to the next point…reframe.
Reframe:
We see our entire lives through the lens of our greatest pain. Some of you view every situation and circumstance and relationship through the lens of the affair, the breakup, the divorce, the addiction, the move, the financial crisis, the firing, the betrayal, the abandonment and the trauma. You aren’t able to separate yourself from the pain because you haven’t done the hard work of owning your pain.
This is crucial: You have to own the fact that something did happen to you that was extremely painful. Harder still, you can’t reverse what happened. That trauma is now in the past. So you have to make a choice to see the pain, to get help to heal the pain, and then to own the pain. That wound, that scar, it’s yours. It’s not anyone else’s. And you get the chance to allow Jesus to heal it and to use it and therefore to redeem it. I mean, do you have the chills right now?
Remember that one time you broke your arm doing something epic but stupid? You had to have surgery and get pins and the whole nine yards. You were in a cast for weeks and weeks. But then the cast came off, and you saw your scar for the first time and you realize now that you have the BEST story ever!
This is what happens with our emotional and mental scars if we let God do His work of healing through the process of forgiveness. It’s so hard, fam. I promise you, though, it’s worth it.
So reflect and reframe.
One last thing: Negative self-talk is an indicator that there is some crap in our lives we haven’t yet dealt with. Healthy people don’t speak hurtfully to themselves. They are secure in love, acceptance and worth. So the next time you and I hear ourselves being mean to ourselves, we need to take a minute and be excited…yes, I said excited…because we get the chance to reflect and to reframe and to take one more step toward whole, healthy lives! Let’s get after it!
“Do the work and show up for your life, because you are the only one who can live, and the rest of us need you.” — Jen Hatmaker
Recent Comments