Avoiding a Place of Spiritual Stagnancy by Allowing God to Work on Us (Blessings of Brokenness Book Study)

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THE BLESSINGS OF BROKENNESS (4)

In HGTV’s “Fixer Upper,” married couple Chip and Joanna Gaines take run-down houses and fix them up into beautiful, livable spaces.

In each episode, the Gaines show a client three different properties (generally houses in need of repair) and then remodel the house to the client’s specifications within a specific budget.

The condition of the houses varies depending on the episode; however, I was surprised to see one particular segment where the clients selected a “shotgun house” from the 1920s. After the Gaines discovered that the property was already sold to an investor who was tearing the houses down (but willing to give the dilapidated house away to anyone willing to move it), the buyers still decided to opt for this house and have it moved to another piece of property.

I say “surprised” because the house was in such terrible condition I couldn’t imagine how it would survive a transfer to another location. I made the comment to my husband that the house just needed to be bulldozed down.

However, to the Gaines’ credit, they very carefully moved this old, forgotten house, set it on a new foundation, and went to work bringing new life to the ancient structure. Chip had to evaluate what could stay as far as structure and what had to be added. I was amazed at the care and effort that went into restoring this house that, in my opinion, should have been condemned.

It got me thinking about the fact that God comes in and does the same kind of restoration work in us.

Chapter 7 of Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness reveals just how much effort God is willing to go with each of us in the breaking and rebuilding process. While we may look just as unusable and worn out as the shotgun house in the “Fixer Upper’ episode, God looks at us and sees what we can be made into — not what is already there.

A few things we can keep in mind about the restoration process:

1. There is a plan to the breaking process.

Just as Chip had to survey the shotgun house in its current state and determine what needed to be ripped out and rebuilt, God does the same with us.

However, as Stanley notes in The Blessings of Brokenness, God’s breaking process is controlled (86). What looks to us like total chaos is in the total control of our Maker. He looks at us and knows what elements are rotten and broken — what needs to be stripped away — and what can remain.

Though it may not look initially to us like any progress is being made, as our Master Carpenter rips out old pieces of us, He has an end result in mind. It looks ugly before the renewal and new construction can begin — but the final result will be worth it.

2. Part of the plan is that God “targets the areas” that keep us from relying on Him.

As part of the breaking process, God identifies areas that are not contributing to your growth. As Stanley observes, you may already know the area of your life that God is “drawing a circle around” because it forms a barrier between you and God, and He will destroy and remove that area (90). Just like a house cannot be enhanced by old rotten boards or materials, there are places we have that God needs to rip out so that He can put in fresh, new materials.

We know when something hinders a free flow of the Spirit of God in us. We know when something stops us from witnessing or from having victory in our daily lives. We know when something consumes our attention, disrupts our peace, or magnetizes our thinking. God certainly knows when this happens, and he knows far sooner and more completely than we know it! (The Blessings of Brokenness, 90)

When we know God is targeting an area, what should we do? We should submit to the process and give up our “right” to have a final say as to the outcome. As Stanley suggests, we should ask God, “What would you have me do?” (103). Unfortunately, the rebuilding process for many of us is one that we want but also resist because it is so painful.

As much as we want to be used by God and be built into His perfect masterpiece, we are human. We don’t want the pain. We don’t like the methods God uses, and we want control.

But, as Stanley warns, if we resist, it will not go well for us. The pressure may intensify, and if we resist long enough, we will face a place of stagnancy in our Christian walk. God leaves us in the state we’re in. And there’s nothing worse than an unfinished masterpiece. I know because I lived in a house for years that was unfinished. My dad started the project of building my childhood home but left it undone for many years.

Living with particle board floors, knob-less doors, scaffolding outside the house, and constant construction chaos wore on me. I always longed for a completed house that we could be proud of. There was a sense of closure inside when I saw the house finished my senior year of high school.

Just like the satisfaction I felt when I saw my own house finished, the clients in the “shotgun house” episode of “Fixer Upper” also expressed that same satisfaction when they saw their house finished. The aging wood had been ripped out and replaced. New drywall, plumbing, and electrical had been installed.

The floors had been sanded down, stained and restored to their former glory. New cabinets, paint and fixtures sparkled in every room. It was astounding to see the transformation. Who would have thought such a reformation possible?

The question is, when we feel like God is circling an area of our life for transformation — fear, pride, self-sufficiency, whatever it may be — will we yield to the breaking or resist?

We can be assured that “God makes no mistakes in the breaking process … “ (104). Ultimately, His purpose is not to “destroy us, but to bring us to a position of maximum wholeness, maturity and usefulness in His kingdom” (102).

Questions to Consider: Is there an area of your life God may be drawing a circle around? What is He telling you in regards to this area?

Book Study: This post is part of a five week book study over Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times. We will have a live video chat over chapters 7 & 8 this Tuesday, July 5, @ 9 PM. Please note the date change from our usual Monday night time to Tuesday to account for the July 4 holiday. Click the video chat link to subscribe or watch the replay. To join us for next our last week, read chapters 9, 10 & Epilogue by next Friday, July 8.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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How Obedience Leads to Spiritual Maturity in You and Others (Blessings of Brokenness Book Study)

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THE BLESSINGS OF BROKENNESS (3)

In The Emperor’s New Groove, a Disney animated movie, the selfish Emperor Kuzco is turned into a llama by a former palace advisor. Through a course of twists and turns, he is helped by a kind llama herder, Pacha.

Ironically, Pacha is the same llama herder that the emperor is cruel to at the beginning of the movie. He summons Pacha to his palace to announce that Pacha’s entire village will be wiped out (including Pacha’s home) to make way for his summer residence.

Pacha stands up the emperor and tries to reason with him, but to no avail. Kuzco is determined that Pacha’s village is the most ideal spot for his second residence and cares little about who he steps on in order to make his desires a reality.

However, after Kuzco is turned into a llama, he goes through a series of unfortunate events (including being chased by ferocious jaguars, getting caught in violent storms, and being pursued by the revenge and power-hungry ex-palace employee). Through these string of trials, he loses his arrogance and self-absorption.

He begins to befriend Pacha and become more aware of the needs of the people around him. By the end of the movie, when he is changed from a llama back into his human form, his outer body is not the only thing that has changed. Not only does he alter his plans to bulldoze Pacha’s village, he also becomes a kinder ruler.

The suffering he goes through on his harrowing adventures affects him personally by making him a nicer person but also affects the people in his realm.

Even though the movie is a silly illustration and doesn’t operate from a Christian base, we can take away the obvious implication as Christians in our faith walk and ministry: Ultimately, the work God does in us isn’t just for us. It’s for other people, too.

Abraham and the Israelites: People God Used to Bless Others

In chapter 6 of The Blessings of Brokenness, Charles Stanley uses the example of the Israelites to illustrate this point. The Hebrew people had to go through the desert to get to the Promised Land. They went through the ultimate breaking process: leaving behind the land and customs they knew, going through many trials and hardships in the wilderness, and learning who God was and trusting Him for their resources. But their time in the wilderness, although not fun, helped to bring them to spiritual maturity.

However, as Stanley says, God’s purpose for the Israelites in leaving Egypt wasn’t just for their spiritual maturity and deliverance but to fulfill a promise that God had made to their ancestor Abraham long before — that it was “through his family, all the nations of the world would come to know God. They were to be a ‘light to the nations’ ” (81). Stanley notes further:

[God] set before his [Israelite] people a phenomenal objective. He says, ‘If you do what I tell you to do — if you are totally obedient to me — I will bless you … and make you a blessing.’ God’s purpose for breaking you and bringing you to a place of wholeness and spiritual maturity is so that he might use you as his tool in bringing still others to wholeness and spiritual maturity. He teaches us so that we might teach others. He imparts his insights to us so that we might share them with others. He comforts and encourages us to that we might provide comfort and encouragement to others. He gives us spiritual gifts so that we might use them to help others. He gives us financial prosperity so that we might benefit others and provide the means for the Gospel to reach them. (81, 82)

Whoa! We see in the example of the Israelites that their submission to God’s plan (even with a lot of mistakes and fumbling along the way) not only led them to a better understanding of God and a place of blessing, it was intended to teach others about God as well. And not just a few people. All the nations.

We see then that there is a wonderful correlation not only between the blessing we individually receive when we submit to the process of brokenness, but there is a blessing that people around us receive when we submit to it and share with them what God is doing in our life. God’s plans for us will ultimately affect other people in a positive way as well.

A Flip Side to Obedience: Choosing not to Surrender to Brokenness or God’s Blessings

I can’t help but think as I read Stanley’s words that there is a flip side to this — which is, that if we are resistant or disobedient, not only will that affect our own spiritual walk, it will have an effect on others as well. As Stanley has stated in other places in his book, we have a choice as to how we respond to brokenness. We can grow bitter, resentful, angry or rebellious, or we can surrender to God and trust that He knows what He’s doing.

Obviously, God doesn’t need us to complete His plans, but He chooses to include us. Why wouldn’t we want to be used in His design? Invariably, His version of how we can best be used is going to be way different than ours. But it’s going to be better.

Through the process of the last few years, as I have embarked on my journey to healing, I have felt at certain points that there were people I needed to go to and share my story with. I had no idea why God wanted me to have conversations with these individuals, and I fought it.

I felt that I should wait to speak until I had all of the pieces put together and figured out. I was still so much in process that I felt strange talking to people about what I was going through. I didn’t know or understand what God was doing, and I felt selfish sitting down with various people and telling my story. Why would they want to listen? What could they possibly get out of it?

However, those conversations helped to clarify things for me as I talked more about my experiences, but I believe in looking back that God also used those conversations to impact others. I didn’t get much feedback from individuals after I talked with them, and even though it was confusing to me at the time, I know that God was up to something — that perhaps those people needed to hear a portion of my story for the same reasons I needed to live it.

Remaining Surrendered in Your Christian Walk and Ministry

Unfortunately, the breaking and surrendering isn’t a one-time process; it’s a life-long process. I can survey the mountaintop experiences I’ve had over the past few years and want to camp there and say, “God, look how I surrendered to you!” But there are new things He is doing in my life and fresh ways He wants me to surrender, and I have to make those daily choices of embracing what He wants over what I want.

And it isn’t easy. But as Stanley notes at the end of chapter 6, only when we do so can we live in the exciting purpose God has for us. There’s no better or more fulfilling way to live.

Questions to Consider: What are some ways that your obedience in the past has blessed others? How might God be calling you to use your brokenness to minister to others? What area can you step out in today?

Book Study: This post is part of a five week book study over Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times. We will have a live video chat over chapters 5 & 6 this Monday, June 27, @ 9 p.m. EST. Click the video chat link to subscribe or watch the replay. To join us for next week, read chapters 7 & 8 by next Friday, July 1.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Letting Your Dream Die In Order to See It Live (Blessings of Brokenness Book Study)

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THE BLESSINGS OF BROKENNESS (2)

“Before any of us can fully live as God created us to live, we must first die to our desire to control our own lives or live life according to our plan and will” (The Blessings of Brokenness, 28).

Sometime this past summer, before the air grew crisp and the scents and sights of autumn were in the air, I took my kids outside to let them play in the backyard.

As I sat observing them while they ran around and played, I watched my daughter beat a small tree with a stick. Pretty soon my son joined in with a stick he had found, following his sister’s lead.

“What are you doing?” I asked after a few minutes.

“I want it to be fall,” my daughter said as she continued to beat determinedly at the slender trunk, trying to shake the green leaves off.

“Oh sweetie, you can’t make the leaves come off before they are ready,” I said. As I spoke, I thought of the spiritual lesson that could be taken from my children’s insistence on creating a season that hadn’t yet come. Don’t many of us do the same thing?

A Desire to Be Used in Music Ministry Out of Season

Some time ago, I sat in a church service with an uneasy heart. There was a music opportunity that I wanted to be a part of, but I felt unsettled in my spirit. That very afternoon, I was scheduled to meet with a new worship pastor, and yet I felt a tugging deep inside. A pause.

During the course of the sermon, it began to dawn on me that perhaps I wasn’t to walk into this opportunity. Perhaps I was to say no. The pastor didn’t mention music in his message or say anything about my specific situation.

Instead, he gave a story about his brother having a choice from the school about taking a 7th grade math course over and not wanting to do it, but his parents insisted on it because his math skills were weak. And I knew right then that there was “a 7th grade math” that God wanted me to take. To do so was going to take discipline and was going to be a lot less fun than singing on a stage and writing songs.

There was a training that I was to go to instead and project I was to finish. I was going to try to do all of that and music at the same time, but I began to get the sense that I wasn’t to go that route. I agonized over that decision all afternoon. I even went to the meeting hoping that maybe I heard wrong during the sermon.

But like a bell tolling in my spirit, the ring getting louder and louder throughout the day, I knew that God was telling me “no” in regards to music. And it was the hardest no I have ever had to accept. I didn’t like the idea that God could control my talents. Yes, I wanted to surrender and do all of the things that you hear about in worship songs. But when it came down to it, I only wanted to surrender if it was easy and God didn’t ask for hard things from me.

I wanted to be in a different season than the one I was in.

It wasn’t until later that I remembered a phrase I had heard once in a sermon: sometimes you have to kill something first to make it live.

A Test of Faith: When God Asks You to “Kill” a Talent or a Dream

In Genesis 22, as Charles Stanley notes in The Blessings of Brokenness, Abraham is instructed to sacrifice his only son. Obviously, I am not instructing you to murder anyone and neither is God — and that’s not a discussion we’ll be getting into in this post — but Abraham was asked to step out in faith.

Abraham obeyed and prepared to do what God asked. As he was preparing the altar, his son asked him, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (v. 7). Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (v. 8). Right at the moment when he was going to plunge a knife into Isaac, an angel intervened and offered Abraham a ram. Verses 14-17 tell us:

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘on the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.’ And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.’

Abraham believed the whole time that he was being asked to sacrifice his son that God would provide a lamb. And sure enough, when he presented all he had to God in the ultimate test of faith, God came through for him.

Clearly, God has our good in mind even if what He instructs us to do initially looks like a death of some kind. A death of a dream. A death of our reputation. A death of an opportunity. We can trust that where He leads us, even if it means giving up something precious, will end in good. He will provide when we give up all we have.

In fact, His plans for us will be better than those we come up with ourselves. As Stanley observes:

If we are willing to give up striving [after our own goals] and seeking after them no matter the cost, and instead, turn to God, he will satisfy all of our longings for the future with perfect fulfillment. If we are willing to give up defining our own future, he’ll give us something better than we could ever arrange, manipulate, or create. (34)

… You can never lose in surrendering your all to God. You can never lose in giving yourself away. (41)

But we have to trust even when that means giving up something very promising or attractive that we don’t want to let go of.

Being Obedient to God and Accepting the Season He Has Us in

As of now, I am still not in music. I believe that is yet to come, but let me share with you what did happen as a result of giving up that promising opportunity two years ago:

  • I went to a training that answered the spiritual questions I was battling with at the time. Many of the principles I learned in that training are those I write about here on this blog and share with you on a regular basis.
  • I worked on a project I had started that involved going back to my former school community. During the process of going through that project, God revealed to me the wounds I was struggling with (mainly, an addiction to approval). Identifying those wounds helped me find inner healing and helped me be able to find forgiveness and restoration where there had been guilt and shame in my past.
  • God worked on my pride and my competitive spirit by placing me in a different position in the church. He worked out some of my unfavorable traits week after week by putting me in a position of service to others rather than a position of prominence.
  • God gave me the directive to start a blog to share my journey and story of healing with other women. The time and energy I had to invest to learn the world of blogging was more than I would have been able to invest in if I had been in music.
  • As a result of the school project that I really didn’t want to do, God opened a door I did not expect by orchestrating a job change for my husband and a move for our family to a new community. Although I didn’t know it at the time, we were not meant to stay at the church we were at but instead were intended to move to an entirely different area.

Friend, as Nicki Korzaiz emphasizes in 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit, we need to “accept the season” that God has put us in. Perhaps we are in a season of refinement or hardship, and we don’t like it. But He knows what we are going through, and if we believe that He truly has our best interests in mind and will make more out of us than we can in our own strength, we can submit to the hardship knowing that there is a blessing on the other side.

As Abraham reasoned when he bound his son to the altar in obedience, God can provide a lamb where there is none or bring the dead back to life (Genesis 22:7,8; Hebrews 11:17-19). Therefore, there is no sacrifice too great — not even that which we perceive as the death of a dream or our most precious talent or possession — because God can give to us or resurrect whatever it is He asks us to lay down.

Questions to Consider: Is there something God is asking you to put aside or sacrifice at the moment? Are you questioning His wisdom because it doesn’t make any sense? Leave a comment below.

Book Study: This post is part of a five week book study over Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times. We will have a live video chat over chapters 3 & 4 this Monday, June 20, @ 9 p.m. EST. Click the video chat link to subscribe or watch the replay. To join us for next week, read chapters 5 & 6 by next Friday, June 24.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Confronting Brokenness Rather Than Running From It (Blessings of Brokenness Book Study)

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 THE BLESSINGS OF BROKENNESS (1)

“One of the things I have discovered through being broken … is that after brokenness we can experience God’s greatest blessings … But this blessing comes only if we experience brokenness fully and confront why it is that God has allowed us to be broken. If we allow God to do his complete work in us, blessing will follow brokenness” (The Blessings of Brokenness, 10).

A few years ago, I sat in a small prayer service at my church. While the people around me had upraised hands and cheerful expressions on their faces, I stewed on my pew.

I was angry at God. During the worship and prayer, two continual questions played like a tape recorder in my head, over and over: Why is this happening? Why are you letting me go through this, God? I had never been so confused or doubtful in my Christian walk. Whereas a few months before I had joyfully left my job to follow down a new path at His leading, I had no idea that it would lead to what felt like such chaos and suffering.

Our money had dried up. God hadn’t directed me in a way to replace the income we had lost when I had quit. All of the part-time work I looked into didn’t pay what I needed or would demand too much of my time.

My marriage was hanging by a thread. My husband and I were constantly fighting over finances and this “new direction” I felt I was to go.

My newborn son was difficult and colicky. He cried all the time and added to the tension of our already tension-filled household.

The area I had felt God ask me to step into wasn’t opening up like I wanted. I kept coming up against walls in relationships and opportunities. I made adjustments, worked on my skills, practiced in any spare second I could — but none of that made any difference.

I felt stuck. I knew this was where God wanted me. But why did He want me here? Although I would never admit it out loud to anyone, there was a voice inside that said, This isn’t working. You should give up. I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to follow God anymore if He continued to lead me down this path.

As I wrestled inside with these questions that I am sure everyone around me would find so shocking, there was also part of me that wasn’t completely void of hope. Part of me that knew that I didn’t have any other options. And because I didn’t know what else to do, I walked up at the end of the service to the altar call. There were hardly any people standing at the front of the church. I felt really foolish and silly standing there.

My bad mood hadn’t completely left. I really didn’t think anything would happen in that moment. But as I stood there, I heard the pastor say, “Don’t turn away. Don’t turn away.”

He was on the stage. He wasn’t talking directly to me, but I knew that God had put those words in his head for me. And, who knows?, maybe there was someone else sitting in the congregation — even in the midst of all those people with saintly expressions — who needed to hear that too.

Don’t. Turn. Away.

And that was it. That was enough. I felt the searing heat of God’s presence in my soul. I still didn’t understand what He wanted from me. I didn’t understand why He was letting me walk through such hardship, but I did understand this in that moment: He knew what I was going through, and He wanted me to stay with Him in the process. He wanted me to stick it out.

I didn’t get any other answers in the service that day. God didn’t reveal to me the reasons I was going through what I was — but I got the reassurance that God had me on a journey. And that there was a purpose for me in what felt like utter agony and disorder.

The reality is this. As Charles Stanley notes in The Blessings of Brokenness, “Brokenness is not something to be shunned and avoided at all cost. Rather it is something to be faced with faith” (12).

The Israelites had similar grumblings when God led them to the Red Sea. There had been rejoicing and celebration when they left Egypt. They most likely had dreamed of the new land they were going to, laughed when they considered the slavery they were leaving behind. But all of that was a distant memory when they came up against the mighty sea and heard Pharoah’s army behind them.

They were trapped. They had no way out. And they began murmuring and complaining to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11, NLT). Many of them thought about where they had just come from. Yes, they were slaves in Egypt, but at least they weren’t about to die there. And they wanted to go back. Suddenly this journey they had been so excited about didn’t seem so appealing any longer. Where was God?

And just when they thought they would surely come to an end and be killed by the Egyptians, Moses raised his staff and the waters parted. The people were in awe. Their finite minds had tried to think of all the ways God would deliver them, but all of the options that they were running through most likely were ones that got them out of their situation. They most likely did not include God creating a path through the very body of water that blocked their path.

Perhaps you find yourself in a situation that doesn’t make any sense. All you want is out. You may have made a job change or life change at God’s direction. The change may have been made with excitement and anticipation and then the bottom fell out. Perhaps you encountered relationship difficulties. Perhaps you left behind a supportive staff or department and your new work environment is full of prickly individuals. Perhaps you were once in a situation where you felt applauded and esteemed in your work, but no one is that impressed with your talents at the moment. Perhaps you have health concerns and don’t know what the doctor is going to say next.

And perhaps the questions in your head are the ones I had in the service or the one that the Israelites had when they faced the Red Sea. If so, this study is a great one for you to embark on because I believe God is saying the same thing to you that He said to me a few years ago: Don’t turn away.

That even though everything in you may want to run for the hills — there is a great blessing waiting for you if you persevere and choose not to turn away.

Even though it may not make any sense to us, God’s desire right now may not be for us to get out of our situation but to walk through it.

Questions to Consider: What situation does God possibly want you to confront rather than run away from? What might the blessing be if you stick out whatever hard thing God is asking you to walk through? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. 

Book Study: This post is part of a five week book study over Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times. We will have a live chat over chapters 1 & 2 Monday at 9 p.m. EST. To join us for next week, read chapters 3 & 4 by next Friday.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Dear Woman Who Feels Unwanted: Here’s Hope You Can Cling to

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Dear Woman Who Feels Unwanted_

When I was an unmarried college student, I got a job working at a retail store in the local mall.

People that I knew would frequently come through, but I was surprised one day to see a good looking young man approach me. I recognized him as the brother of a boy I had known in my middle school days.

He smiled at me and struck up a conversation. As he continued talking to me for more than a few minutes, I found his attention flattering but began to wonder why he was lingering around me for so long. Right around the time that I began to assume that he was being flirtatious with me, these words came out of his mouth: “So, tell me about her. Does she have a boyfriend?”

I immediately paused in my shirt folding and looked to see where he was gesturing. My gaze fell on the beautiful young high school student that had just joined our staff. She had long, straight brown hair and a bubbly smile.

I felt a jolt of unpleasantness course through my veins. Though I had no interest in this young man and did not desire to “hook up” with him, I was flattered by the idea that he might be talking to me because he thought I was interesting or attractive. However, his comment underlined the real reason he was acting so friendly in my presence.

The idea made me freeze a little because I had observed flocks of guys around this particular girl on a regular basis, and it was hard not to be feel terribly plain and unnoticed working beside her.

“She has a boyfriend,” I said very evenly as I finished the last of the shirts in my pile.

His face fell and within seconds he mumbled his goodbyes and quickly exited the store. I stood there feeling slightly used and annoyed. Could he not just chat with me a few moments because I grew up near his family, and I had gone to school with his brother? Why was his only intent to use me to get to this other girl?

Although this irritated feeling in this particular incident was one I was able to shrug off within a matter of moments, I suppose that the reason the irritation was there to begin with was because of something deep within me that this situation touched on. A fear that perhaps I didn’t have what other girls had to offer.

A longing to be noticed and admired — even by somebody’s brother whom I wasn’t even interested in.

Leah from the Bible: A Woman Insecure and Unwanted

When I was a young girl, I was familiar with the story of Leah and Rachel, and here was my honest thought concerning God’s placement of it in the Bible: it reinforced my belief that it was important to be more like Rachel than Leah. Males loved Rachels.

I had a few Rachels in my immediate realm who proved this point. They were pretty, popular, sought after. Enough said.

But I never considered that the story in the Bible wasn’t to make insecure girls feel even more insecure. God’s intention in placing it there was most likely to show overlooked-feeling girls such as myself how to find confidence and belonging.

Let’s look at Leah’s story in Genesis 29. Leah was given to Jacob when Jacob didn’t even want her. Rather than the sister he thought he was getting on his wedding night, he got Leah. And when he discovered that his trickster father-in-law had made the switch, he was angry and demanded that he have Rachel. And there was nothing Leah could do to change the situation she found herself in.

She didn’t have a choice when her father, Laban, chose her to dupe Jacob, and she couldn’t get out of a marriage she was bound by covenant into, even though it meant sharing her husband with a sister that was the favored one, the one that Jacob loved.

So, as blogger and Proverbs 31 contributor Lynn Cowell points out in a blog post, Leah did what any desperate woman would do, and she attempted to offer Jacob something that would make him love her. In her society, because a woman’s fertility was valued, she bore him sons. And with each son she birthed, the Bible says that Leah believed that the child would help Jacob feel attached to her. Three times, she did this!

It’s easy to look at poor Leah here and claim that we would never repeatedly engage in the same cycle of approval-seeking (when it clearly isn’t working), but that is exactly some of us have done a thousand times.

We continue to call the man who won’t commit to a serious relationship and make excuses when he never calls us. We continue to kill ourselves out-performing everyone at our job to prove to a hard-to-please male boss that we are a good employee. We think of ways we can dress better, do our hair differently, lose a few pounds to keep the affections of a husband who is distant and unaffectionate. And though our efforts don’t work, we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that if we just do [fill in the blank], we will finally win him.

Leah fell into this trap again and again. You can almost imagine her as she presented her newest newborn to her husband with eager expectation, but he did not waver in his love for Rachel. In fact, the irony is that Rachel was barren for many years when they were first married, but Jacob showed devotion and favoritism towards her even when she had difficulty conceiving.

Have you ever been there?

But as Cowell observes, there is a turning point in the story where Leah had a heart-change. She stopped looking to her husband, and she started looking to God for her love and fulfillment. In verse 35, after the birth of her fourth son, Leah said: “This time I will praise the Lord.” And then Leah stopped bearing children for a time.

Aren’t you just cheering for Leah here? She adjusted her focus to the One who created her.

However, her change of heart may have only been temporary. She began child-bearing again — it doesn’t expressly say that did this to try once again to gain her husband’s attention, but more out of competition with her sister.

Regardless of whether Leah changed her approval-seeking ways with her husband permanently or not, her heart-change (even if only temporary) did not change her circumstances. The Scriptures give no indication that her husband began to love her. In fact, it indicates that she remained unloved. When Jacob was afraid to meet his brother, Esau, later in the story, he sent Leah out in front. Rachel was safely positioned back with him.

But Leah’s best moment was when she found strength in a God who loved her and had a purpose for her when the world was unfair to her. It turns out that Leah was in the lineage of Jesus Christ! And, though the biblical account doesn’t tell us what happened between Jacob and Leah later in life, I’d like to think that perhaps Jacob grew to respect and perhaps even love this wife he initially didn’t want.

What we do know is that Leah outlived Rachel and was buried next to him (an honor not even Rachel had).

If You Feel Unwanted

I know if you are reading this and find yourself feeling left out and unloved like Leah, you might be wondering: Does this mean my circumstances will never change? I can’t answer that. I do know that God wants us to find meaningful connections in our relationships, and I believe that He can restore any relationship.

However, I also know that sometimes God doesn’t change our circumstances the way we want. Instead, He may change us.

The encouragement is that if we find ourselves in a challenging work situation or relationship, we can know that God has a purpose for us, and though we may not be able to change the people in our situation, we can change our own perspective and find contentment and belonging despite how people may view us.

For some of us, God may make it obvious that we do need to move on from the situation we’re in. But for others of us, God may have us stick out a stressful work environment, tough family situation we want to run from, or marriage that isn’t ideal.

The Real Lesson of the Story: You Can Be Loved For Being You

So the real lesson the story isn’t that I should try to be a Rachel if I’m not. The story reminds me not to find my sole value in the desires of a person because I may be sorely disappointed. God gave us male-female relationships for our enjoyment and fulfillment, yes, but if the male is our source, the one we look to for our sense of worth, we will find ourselves on shaky ground. We may find ourselves in an unhealthy cycle of striving, like Leah, to get him to notice us or try to make him love us.

God is the only One who can love you completely in the way that you need to be loved. And He finds delight in you, just the way you are! A better way to live is to be secure in who God made you to be. When we rest in the truth that God loves us, we find the strength and grace to navigate the relationships in our life in a healthy manner — whether the people in our closest realm see the value God sees in us — or not.

Carol’s note: Please understand that my intent in writing this article is not to encourage you to stay in an abusive situation. Please seek out the help of a Christian counselor or pastor if you are being physically or emotionally abused.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Self-Worth: The Question Every Woman Asks

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Dear Woman Who Feels Unwanted_ (2)

The teenage girl stands in front of the vending machine, a frown on her face. She scans the snack selections uncertainly. Several minutes tick by. She is unaware that anyone is behind her. I am a few feet back and notice her thin shoulders.

She has lost a bit of weight in the last year. She has a new boyfriend on her arm. He is not with her now, but even though she smiles when she is with him, I notice something worried in her expression. I see a bit of a desperation in the way she clings to his hand, attaches herself to him in her every spare moment.

She surveys the snacks carefully one last time and selects a bag of chips. I get the impression that she is choosing carefully — that perhaps this one item will be all she eats today. Although what I am thinking is merely conjecture — I see myself in this girl. No, not in the selection of Doritos or the rapid weight loss — but in the fear. The desire written all over her face to be loved. The fear that maybe he’ll find out she’s not enough.

And I know he will — not because she doesn’t have enough to offer — but because she doesn’t believe that she does.

Another Story of Broken Self-Worth

I think back to 18-year-old me. I am excited. Cheeks flushed. I am packing to go on a trip. A trip to see a boy that expressly asked for me. But as I pack, I am also worried. He hasn’t seen me in a few months. Does my hair look all right? Do I look too thin?

I have never flown across the country alone before. I combat my nerves for seven straight hours with each dip of the airplane. I have written dozens of letters to this person, but I have never met his family. I haven’t been alone with him for more than a handful of hours. I want this trip to be amazing. I want everything to be perfect.

When I get off the plane, I look around expectantly, but I don’t see him. After waiting for some time (this is pre-cell phone era, people), I notice that no one is standing around.

I walk in the direction of the other people. I don’t know where I am supposed to meet him. I am not even sure I remember what he looks like. At last, just when I am getting a little panicked, I see him standing by a wall in a sweater I would never pick out. I go up and hug him, but things feel awkward and off right away. He tells me that his mom bought him the sweater. I decide that I don’t like it. I keep my opinion to myself. Tacky sweater or no, this boy is the boy of my dreams. I figure that we just need a little time to warm up to each other again.

But that doesn’t happen. In fact, the whole visit, it feels like he drifts further and further away from me, and I can’t get through to him. He is distracted, busy. He tells me he is going hunting with his friends. He has a doctor’s appointment. He doesn’t want to walk outside in the snow even though I ask. He beats me in checkers every time and laughs at the way I try to lift weights. I feel stupid. Inadequate. In the way.

At the end, when it is time to say good-bye, he hands me a letter. There is no explanation in it — just a “sorry” that is vague. He tells me that he won’t be riding with me to the airport. He is going to sleep in.

I call him twice more — once when I get to the airport and once more when I get home. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk. What did I do wrong? I obsess. Was it the way I dressed? Talked? Acted? When he doesn’t call again, I let him confirm what I was afraid of all along.

Moving On: Finding Self-Worth in the Wrong Places

I start college with high hopes of stepping out as a new person — in leaving behind the past, but I am immediately pursued by a boy I don’t even like. Initially, I go out with him just because I don’t know how to thwart his advances, and I am flattered by his attention.

We enter into a relationship. But he, too, helps to dig my self-esteem further down. He is critical of me. One day when I don on shorts (I was already self-conscious about my skinny legs), he squints and tells me he notices some cellulite forming on my thighs. (I laugh now when I write this because I definitely had nothing like cellulite on my legs at the time. Now might be a different story!)

He flirts openly with other girls on campus, and he discusses different features of attractive girls in my presence. I feel insecure and plain in comparison. I put an end to the relationship. I make the decision right then and there that I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care if I just throw myself away.

Not too long after that, I meet a young marine. He pays attention to me. He is kind. He has money to pay for his bills. He doesn’t talk about other girls in my presence. He never makes fun of me, and I never worry that he wants someone else.

I am not ready for marriage. I am too young, but I say “yes” when he asks. He is going to have to travel a lot, and he wants to move to Georgia when he gets out. I think about how wonderful it would be to run away from my problems and be loved for the rest of my life.

But I quickly find that my problems follow me. After marriage, I find myself homesick and depressed. My husband’s love isn’t enough to convince me of my worth. I keep striving and seeking. I remember getting a break-through one day at the altar when I go forward for prayer. God tells me to forgive the boy who hurt me all those years ago (and I conclude later that that includes the others who have hurt me as well) — and He tells me something else: Carol, it wasn’t your fault.

The Question Every Woman Asks Concerning Her Worth

In Your Captivating Heart: Discover How God’s Love Can Free a Woman’s Soul, Stasi Eldredge asserts that women go through life asking this question: “Am I lovely?” The problem is that they take this question to the wrong people. I took my question to the boy in another state, the boyfriend in college — and I let them answer it for me. And the answer I got back was this: No, you are not. You are defective. You can’t hold a man’s love. Other women have something you don’t. As Eldredge notes:

You see, every girl is asking one fundamental Question, a question that is core to her heart. Little boys have a core Question too. Little boys want to know, Do I have what it takes? All of that rough and tumble, all that daring and superhero dress-up, all of that is a boy seeking to prove that he does have what it takes … Little girls, on the other hand, want to know, Am I lovely? Do you see me? Am I worth fighting for? The twirling skirts, the dress-up, the longing to be pretty and seen — all of that is about seeking an answer to our Question.

What if, instead of taking our question to bosses or fathers or boyfriends, we take our question to God? What if we let Him answer it, and it is from that place of security that we are able to operate out of a stable identity?

Yes, I believe that God designed a woman to want to be noticed and pursued by a man, and it’s not wrong for us to want to be what Eldredge describes as “captivating” to that special person in our life. But what if we decide to see ourselves the way God sees us so it won’t completely derail us when someone doesn’t treat us the way we should be treated or offers an opinion about us that doesn’t line up with God’s?

As Eldredge asks in a book she co-wrote with her husband, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul, what if the truly most unbeautiful parts of me or you aren’t the flaws others have pointed out in us or we have imagined in ourselves, but the belief in us that says we are not enough? What if the way we can be the most beautiful is to be us without trying to morph into a more polished, prettier, smarter version of us?

Because here’s the thing that I wish I had known as a young person, and I wish I could tell the girl at the vending machine and all of us desperate women unhappy with ourselves: that we have to risk sharing our beauty with others knowing that not everyone will affirm it or acknowledge it (Eldredge, Captivating).

But if we are firm in our identity and beauty because we are daughters of God, even if another person rejects us, they can’t convince us that we don’t possess beauty or worth. Because we are too convinced (based on the fact that One bigger and more important has already convinced us) — that we do.

 

 

 

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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Upcoming Book Study: The Blessings of Brokenness

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THE BLESSINGS OF BROKENNESS (5)Ever wonder why God has allowed hard times to come into your life? Even though you may not have enjoyed the trials or may be walking through them now, have you considered that God has a great blessing for you in the midst or aftermath of your brokenness?

Friends, I would like to tell you about a book study opportunity that will run for five weeks June 10 through July 8 over Charles Stanley’s The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times. I stumbled across this book in the library a few months ago, and I loved how simply it delved into the very hard questions that all of us ask at one point or another: God, why is this happening? Why did you allow this?

As I have shared in other places of my blog, I have had to confront the truth in my own life that God allows brokenness at times in my life for a specific reason. In a simple, eye-opening way, Stanley unpacks the possible reasons for hardship and brokenness in our lives in his book — and then shows us how we can confront that brokenness and find blessing in it, rather than just suffering.

There are several ways you can participate with us in the book study. I have written five posts that correspond with the chapters in the book, and we will also have some live chats on the weekly reading with other writers on the blog. You can receive the posts and links to the chats by following us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ (if you are not already following us).

I would highly encourage you to get the book and read it along with the study. However, it is also possible to join us in the study without purchasing the book, and you can get something from the study just by reading the weekly posts. (Click here if you would like to preview or buy the book.)

To get a sample of the format of the study, I’ve included a preview of my first post for chapters 1 & 2. I encourage you to read it and look at the book study schedule below! Blessings!

Sample Book Study Post: Response to Chapters 1 & 2

A few years ago, I sat in a small prayer service at my church. While the people around me had upraised hands and cheerful expressions on their faces, I stewed on my pew.

I was angry at God. During the worship and prayer, two continual questions played like a tape recorder in my head, over and over: Why is this happening? Why are you letting me go through this, God? I had never been so confused or doubtful in my Christian walk. Whereas a few months before I had joyfully left my job to follow down a new path at His leading, I had no idea that it would lead to what felt like such chaos and suffering.

Our money had dried up. God hadn’t directed me to a way to replace the income we had lost when I had quit. All of the part-time work I looked into didn’t pay what I needed or would demand too much of my time.

My marriage was hanging by a thread. My husband and I were constantly fighting over finances and this “new direction” I felt I was to go.

My newborn son was difficult and colicky. He cried all the time and added to the tension of our already tension-filled household.

The area I had felt God ask me to step into wasn’t opening up like I wanted. I kept coming up against walls in relationships and opportunities. I made adjustments, worked on my skills, practiced in any spare second I could — but none of that made any difference.

I felt stuck. I knew this was where God wanted me. But why did He want me here? Although I would never admit it out loud to anyone, there was a voice inside that said, “This isn’t working. You should give up.” I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to follow God anymore if He continued to lead me  down this path.

As I wrestled inside with these questions that I am sure everyone around me would find so shocking, there was also part of me that wasn’t completely void of hope. Part of me that knew that I didn’t have any other options. And because I didn’t know what else to do, I walked up at the end of the service to the altar call. There were hardly any people standing at the front of the church. I felt really foolish and silly standing there.

My bad mood hadn’t completely left. I really didn’t think anything would happen in that moment. But as I stood there, I heard the pastor say, “Don’t turn away. Don’t turn away.”

He was on the stage. He wasn’t talking directly to me, but I knew that God had put those words in his head for me. And, who knows?, maybe there was someone else sitting in the congregation — even in the midst of all those people with saintly expressions — who needed to hear that too.

Don’t. Turn. Away.

And that was it. That was enough. I felt the searing heat of God’s presence in my soul. I still didn’t understand what He wanted from me. I didn’t understand why He was letting me walk through such hardship, but I did understand this in that moment: He knew what I was going through, and He wanted me to stay with Him in the process. He wanted me to stick it out.

I didn’t get any other answers in the service that day. God didn’t reveal to me the reasons I was going through what I was — but I got the reassurance that God had me on a journey. And that there was a purpose for me in what felt like utter agony and disorder.

The reality is this. As Charles Stanley notes in The Blessings of Brokenness, “Brokenness is not something to be shunned and avoided at all cost. Rather it is something to be faced with faith” (12).

To be continued … read the rest of my post starting June 10.

Here’s How You Can Join in:

1. Read two chapters a week, starting June 10 and ending July 8. (Again, reading the book is optional but will help to bring clarity to the weekly posts.)

2. Read the weekly posts starting June 10 and write comments underneath in response to what I wrote and add your own reflections and insights. You can write comments in response to just my post (if you haven’t read the chapters), or you can write comments based on what you are reading in the book.

3. Each Monday starting June 13 (with the exception of the week of July 4), writers here on the site will lead a Blab chat on the two chapters for that week. You can look for the link for the chat on Facebook, Twitter or Google + and submit questions or comments in response to the chats — or listen in on them later during the replay if you are unable to make it to the chat.

A Breakdown of the Schedule:

June 10: Chapters 1 & 2

*Blab Chat: June 13 @ 9 p.m. EST

June 17: Chapters 3 & 4

*Blab Chat: June 20 @ 9 p.m. EST

June 24: Chapters 5 & 6

*Blab Chat: June 27 @ 9 p.m. EST

July 1: Chapters 7 & 8

*Blab Chat: July 5 @ 9 p.m. EST (Note, this chat takes place on a Tuesday night to account for the July 4 holiday.)

July 8: Chapters 9, 10 & Epilogue

*Blab Chat: July 11 @ 9 p.m. EST

We hope you will join in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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The Thing That Surprised Me the Most About Having Children

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Beulah Girl April May 2016 (3)

Having kids proved to me that God has a sense of humor.

I had always suspected that He did (after all, He gave us the ability to laugh, and we’re made in His image), but having children confirmed it for me.

Here’s how: nearly every expectation or preconceived notion I had about having children was irrevocably wrong.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was convinced that I was having a boy. Convinced because I thought I wanted a boy. I told my husband that I didn’t even need to go to the ultrasound — I was 100 percent sure I was having a boy. My husband was convinced of the opposite, and he was right.

I was having a girl. And when plans of my “Keegan” boy name and the sports nursery I had already planned in my head were turned upside down with one matter-of-fact announcement from the ultrasound technician, I was horribly upset. But after I got over the shock, I went out and bought the pinkest, frilliest nursery set I could find and embraced the girl thing with open arms.

And you know what? I love having a girl and a first-born girl at that. She is my number-one helper around the house. She is so responsible and pleasant and hilarious. I can’t imagine her not being my child.

Similarly, I had other expectations when I was pregnant with my son. I did think I was having a boy (and was accurate the second time around), but when I got the boy I couldn’t wait to have, I was surprised by just how much of a boy he was. I didn’t anticipate that he would enjoy hanging off the blinds like a trapeze artist (until all of the supports snapped in half), or bring all of the rough-and-tumble and grime of the outdoors in my house. All the time.

And yet — I love my son dearly, and I have learned to let go of my cherished possessions and take it in stride when a lamp (or two or three) breaks.

And I feel pretty sure God laughs. Not in a malicious way, but just at how silly I must appear with my plans and ideas that I am so sure of. Then He unveils His plans and ideas, and they are nothing like mine!

A few other things I have found surprising:

1. My children have pieces of me.

I know this probably seems like an extremely narcissistic way to start this conversation, but I am most amazed by the fact that my children have some of me in them. Sure, I assumed they would somewhat look like me and perhaps display some of my traits, but I didn’t really think about what this would look like in reality.

My daughter has the same taste in movies as me. We love to watch Disney Princess Diaries together, and I have already introduced her to some of my other Disney favorites when I was a child: Parent Trap, Pollyanna, etc. She loves to write stories, and she took off with reading three months into her kindergarten year. Now, as a first grader, she has stacks of chapter books on her nightstand, and I catch her reading every free second she has.

I assumed that my love of all things reading wouldn’t transfer to my son. He didn’t speak in full sentences until he was three, so I thought that he might be slightly delayed with reading or not have an interest in it at all. But I was wrong. He pesters me all day about how to spell words (Mom, how do you spell?) and reads small words on signs and on book covers at the age of four.

Each night he won’t let me leave the room unless the light is on and he has at least 20 children’s tales littering the bottom half of his bed. As I go downstairs to clean the kitchen and tidy up the family room, I hear him reading out loud to himself in his childish voice.

I am reminded of all the nights I read late into the night as a young person, and I am astounded by this love for words that my children share with me. It makes me proud! I bet God looks down and smiles when we display traits of His — and feels that same parental pride.

2. How different my children are from me.

Not only did it surprise me that my children would have some of the same interests as me, I was equally surprised by their uniqueness as individuals. Even though I suspected that they would be different than me, I sometimes feel that these differences are shocking. Sometimes I am not sure if I am dealing with my own children or aliens.

The fact that they have opinions and want their own thing — A LOT — makes it hard for me to always relate to them. My daughter, for instance, is very caring and loves animals. I have never been much of an animal lover, so when she cuddles up to some of the smelly goats and calves at the petting zoo or talks to me about the traits of a particular four-legged friend, I have to feign interest.

It’s a stretch for me when she gets in caring animal mode. It’s just not something I relate to. However, I don’t want to take that away from her because I know how important animals are to her. So we go to farms and zoos and buy kitty fact books and collect stuffed animals from the Five and Below store. I definitely want to be her biggest support, but I have to work at it when that includes orchestrating activities that take me out of my comfort zone.

3. That my children would bring me pain.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I envisioned rosy moments of cradling an infant in my arms — and yes, I had those — but I didn’t realize that infant would also bring me hurt at times. All of those corny things you hear about your children being your hearts walking around are completely true. I feel the hurts that my children feel.

For instance, when my daughter came home and reported a few incidents where a certain girl excluded her in kindergarten, I felt like I had been mortally wounded. I wanted to go and take care of it right then and there (I know, super mature), but I had to instead talk to Elsbeth about her worth and her value whether other people noticed it or not. When she tells me about a girl not being nice to her, I feel like a stake is piercing straight through me. There has been this lurking fear that she will turn out just like me. And I don’t want that for her.

And I have similar pains (for different reasons) when my son throws exhausting fits and makes me wonder if I am doing anything right. Recently, my son went into a phase when we put him into preschool — a hitting Mommy phase — where many afternoons after I picked him up he would throw large-scale tantrums when I didn’t give him the snack he wanted or told him to turn off the video game.

He would come up and give me a defiant punch in the arm or kick in the shin. I know little boys are supposed to be physical, but I figured that would be with other little boys rather than his own mother.

But this little boy whom I rocked to sleep through long nights of colic when he was first born; the same one who wanted only his mother for three straight years (much to the disappointment of his father); the one who bounced into his classroom the first day of preschool holding onto my hand, proud to be sporting a brand-new Mario backpack — yes, this same one also has a temper that rears up against me.

Though he is pulling out of the phase now, there have been moments when I have cringed as I have pulled up in the preschool carpool line — afraid that his teachers will lean in the car and report that my son had gone bezerk during school hours, and they couldn’t control him. But they usually just smile and tell me he was very quiet in school.

Apparently, he reserves this behavior just for me.

No one told me the ache I would feel — loving a child who has such adorable qualities but yet can be so challenging to manage on certain days.

4. That my children would teach me things.

I grew up in the 80s where parents were strict disciplinarians (the ones I observed, anyway). They laid down the law and children were just children. The parents I knew were busy making all of the rules and the kids’ job was to follow them.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t believe kids should call the shots or make the rules in a household, but I have found since having children of my own that I really do learn valuable things from listening to them. They have, in many ways, helped me learn how to parent them and relate to them in more ways than I imagined.

Armed with parenting books when my daughter arrived, I was careful to follow the advice of the experts and psychologists. But I quickly learned that my daughter didn’t need all of the three-step plans for getting her sleeping through the night or weaning her from her pacifier. She was a very easy, compliant baby and needed very little coaxing to do the things we wanted her to.

She never tried to climb out of her crib or escape from her bed when we introduced her to a “big girl bed.” She helped me calm down as a mom, and I realized that she was more resilient than I thought she would be. She had to weather a few of my blunders — like when I washed her bottles for two straight weeks without realizing that I needed to separate the nipple parts to ensure their cleanliness, or tried a boot camp approach to potty-training.

However, she survived both of those mama fails and didn’t seem to notice or care when I finally figured out how to use the bottle dishwasher container I had received at my baby shower and got into a groove with potty-training.

5. That my children would reveal more of God to me.

Although I know and believe my children were made in God’s image, I wasn’t prepared for how much my children would heighten my awareness of who God is and His special plan for each of us — one conceived before we were even born.

With both of my children, I struggled to come up with names because my husband and I had such vastly different ideas concerning names, and nothing sounded right. So I prayed about what to name them, and God delivered.

I dreamed of my daughter’s name, and my son’s name just popped in my head one day when my husband and I were at an impasse as to what to call him. And these names fit both perfectly. I know and see that God knew my children before He formed them.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb … My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all of the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:13-16).

Therefore, the most surprising thing of all, the thing that I wasn’t expecting is that my kids reveal more of God to me: they reveal how much He loves us, how much care He took to create us.

Beulah Girl April May 2016 (4)

Though I laugh at how my children didn’t (and don’t) fit my own ideas of who they would be  — those silly ideas I had revealed how little I understood about what a mother does or who she is.

My job as a mother isn’t to put my children or myself on display through my children — though they share some of my traits. My job is to continually point my children to their Maker, understanding that as my children grow in their walks with Jesus and get to know Him better, the Person that will shine the brightest through them is Him.

That though I already see His creative fingerprints all over them, the noblest task of motherhood is this: to know that the greatest plan for my children is to reflect God’s glory. To encourage them to continue to become, as the writer of Ephesians says, God’s masterpiece or poema — not mine.

 

 

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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2 Strategies for Combatting Fear

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2 Strategies for Combatting Fear

Recently, I read an article written by a mother coping with the grief of her teenage son’s death. The article was a poignant account of how she was having difficulty going in her son’s room now that he was gone and the last moments of his life as a heroin-addicted drug user.

The article included a picture of her handsome son in his hockey uniform. Nothing about his demeanor or face suggested he was anything but a happy, healthy adolescent — yet, the last moments of his life were spent vomiting while his mother screamed helplessly as EMT’s worked to stabilize him. The mother’s words literally bled from the page as she shared her honest struggle navigating life without her boy.

The mother’s words stayed with me in a haunting way after I put her article down. After reading her account, I couldn’t help but think of my own children, and I felt a sense of fear myself. I began to think about how fragile life is. I began to irrationally worry for them. They were heading out for an outing at the swimming pool with my husband, and I could feel a frenzy of anxious thoughts stir. I was worried for their safety in the water that day. For their safety in the van while they were en route to the pool. For their safety every day.

Just as my emotions threatened to reach a fever-pitch, I realized I needed to cleanse these anxious thoughts from my mind. I got alone with God, and I whispered these words: “I am afraid. Help me. I am afraid.”

I told Him what I was tied up in knots about. I prayed for my children and asked Him to help me re-focus my thoughts. I immediately felt a sense of peace wash over me. Later in the day, I opened up a devotional and read these words by author and in(courage) contributor Lisa-Jo Baker: “The older I get the more I battle fear. And I know it’s because the older I get the more scary things I see in the world.”

I exhaled a little more and let the truth of her statement wash over me.

We live in a world where things go terribly wrong. People get hurt. Parents lose children. Relationships get broken. Being a mother, I feel a tremendous sense of love for my children. And with that love comes fear — because I know I can’t protect them from everything.

Scriptural Advice for Combatting Fear

In 2 Timothy 1:7, we see a young minister of the Gospel struggling with timidity not in his role as a parent, but in his role as a minister. Paul exhorts him with these words: “We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (NKJV).

Though these words were given by Paul to strengthen and encourage Timothy in his ministry, as commentator Charles Ellicott states, these words can be taken in a more general sense, as applicable to all Christians.

The verse assures us that we as Christians have been given the exact opposite of fear: “power … love and … a sound mind.” That is — we don’t have to accept fear when it comes because it is not from God, and we have the means with which to resist it and send it packing.

You may be reading this, thinking, “But you don’t understand how strong this fear is. I am literally paralyzed by it. I want it to go, but I am totally overwhelmed by it.”

I understand because I have been in similar positions, as in the scenario I described with the frightening article, and I continue to have bouts of fear. Quite frustratingly, I have dealt with more fear as I’ve pressed into God these past few years — not because God has sent it to me, but because as I’ve become a more potent weapon for his kingdom, the attack against me has become very strong and very real.

There are days when the fear has been so thick that it is palpable, and I feel immobilized.

But Paul assures Timothy and Christians that we don’t have to remain in that place of feeling overcome. The “power” mentioned in the verse that we have at our disposal is the power that rests in us because of the Holy Spirit. This power we are given helps us discern and identify when wrong thoughts or ideas come against us — whether this be through Satan trying to plant these thoughts directly or through Satan working through the actions or words of people.

The “love and sound mind” part of the verse suggests that this counsel we have is such that we can reprove others in love when they offer ideas that counter God’s Word and walk in peace and stability of thinking, not only for our own sake, but the sake of others.

On a practical level, then, here are two ways we can tap into the Holy Spirit’s power and take a stand against fear:

1) Pray.

We make ourselves easy prey when we don’t make time daily to pray and spend time in God’s presence. God assures us that His peace guards our hearts and minds (Philippians 4:7). Sometimes, right in the moment when I pray I feel instantly at peace and my fear dissipates (as in this instance). Other times, when the fear is so strong, I will get a verse later through a friend or family member, a line in a sermon, or by some other means.

That verse will be one that I can cling to that acts as a stabilizing force for my mind. As believers, we should expect that God will come to our aid, and we can call out for this rescue during prayer (Psalm 31:2). In my most recent situation fretting over my children, before I prayed about it, I had this thought: “Praying isn’t going to do anything.” And that was a lie straight from the enemy!

I pressed through and prayed anyway and felt better. And it was just a little later in the day that I came across Baker’s devotional which further encouraged me and helped me get over the anxious thoughts I was having.

2). Take every thought captive.

The power of the Holy Spirit Paul speaks of helps us to take every thought captive that is not of God. We can know when a thought or idea is going to derail us; instead of accepting that idea, we can keep our mind clear and at rest by resisting wrong thoughts.

As 2 Corinthians 10:5 states: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

I love how author and Proverbs 31 contributor Renee Swope describes this process of filtering thoughts in a recent devotional. Her son Andrew was apparently struggling with anxious thoughts about school. To help him, she explained 2 Corinthians 10:5 and advised him to “catch” each anxious thought he was having like a baseball and toss it back into “outfield.”

She concludes her devotion by emphasizing that there is nothing “more powerful than our hearts hearing our lips proclaim our trust in God’s truth” — truth that not only children but adults can find assurance in.

What do you believe about fear?

Both prayer and right thinking help us to meditate on God instead of the scary person or circumstance — but it also boils down to belief. We have to believe that God doesn’t want us to fear and trust that He will help us.

Unfortunately, some of us embrace fear and hold onto those worrisome thoughts that come our way because we don’t believe that there is the power available to us to overcome it. We accept it thinking there is no other choice, but Scripture indicates that God has a better way for us.

In addition, many of us beat ourselves up for having the fear at all. Rather than do any of those things, we must realize that God does not intend for us to cower down to fear or feel down that we are feeling so timid. Instead, He wants us to look to Him and know in the depths of our being that He is bigger than anything we face.

As Swope advocates in a different piece, “Fear goes away when we actively trust God more than what we fear.”

Join us for a live Blab chat Monday, April 11 @9 or watch the replay.

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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If You Feel Lonely This Easter

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IF you Feel Alone This Easter

“I feel so alone,” I told my husband in a recent hormone-induced crying spell.

In my late third trimester of pregnancy, I had been crying quite easily over small things, but this time my tears fell because of a heavy burden of loneliness I felt on me.

We had transitioned to a new house and a new community, and the transition had been fairly smooth, but as I moved into my last weeks of pregnancy, I felt alone.

Alone when I drove my kids to school, and I didn’t know a soul in the building.

Alone when we went to our new church, and I didn’t recognize a single face.

Alone when I went to my new doctor, and I didn’t know any of the medical staff.

Alone when I contemplated the rejections and slights that had seemed to pile up the last year as I did what God asked of me.

Alone.

Jesus knew loneliness in his journey to the cross. However, as relayed in Matthew 26-28, although much attention is often given to those that opposed Him and betrayed Him and the suffering He went through (and rightly so); He was also defended and aided by His heavenly Father.

That though Jesus was mocked by those who didn’t believe His words, there were ways that the truth of His words reached the eyes and ears of those in His community. In re-reading His story recently, I was reminded that perhaps if we find ourselves feeling alone in whatever assignment Jesus has given us, we may be tempted to quit or believe God has forgotten us.

But we can see from the Easter story how God’s plan may lead us to what feels like a solitary path — but in the midst of that path, God is there — at work.

A few takeaways we can get from the Easter story:

1. We should stay fixed on God even when we feel forsaken.

When we observe Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked His disciples to be vigilant and pray with Him. But each time that He asked them and went away to pray, they fell asleep. No one stayed awake with Jesus through the intense moments He experienced before His arrest.

But Jesus remained fixed on God and His Father’s will even when others around Him didn’t understand or were not there for Him when He needed them. The third time when He went away, He came back to find them asleep once again, but He simply said, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” (Matthew 26:45, 46).

Similarly, when Jesus hung on the cross, before He breathed His last breath, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Although many disagree on what happened on the cross and after Jesus died, Jesus felt a separation from the presence of His heavenly Father as He took on the sin of the world.

I find it amazingly comforting that Jesus, the most perfect human being, felt deserted. That whether Jesus was abandoned by His Father or just felt abandoned, the truth was that He experienced this right when He was in the center of God’s plan!

And, if indeed Jesus did endure this separation, one benefit that we have that Jesus did not is that although we may feel that God is not with us, because of what Jesus did, God will leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5, Romans 8:31-39). Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice so that we would never have to be completely alone.

Therefore, if we find ourselves feeling isolated in following Jesus’ plan for us, we may be tempted to give up or assume God has deserted us. We may feel that others have fallen asleep on us — are not near when we have needed them most — but that does not mean that we should fall away from what God wants us to do or assume that God has done the same.

2. God provides for us and is present in our process.

We can see in Jesus’ story how even though God allowed Jesus’ suffering and allowed Jesus to be betrayed and abandoned by those closest to Him, He also provided for Him. Yes, undoubtedly there may have been a momentary separation as Jesus became a propitiation for our sin, but we see that God cared for Jesus’ needs and was very present in the process.

Earlier, before Jesus was arrested, a woman came and washed Jesus’ feet with a jar of expensive alabaster perfume. The disciples objected to this lavish display, saying that the money could be used for the poor. However, Jesus responded by asking, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial” (Matthew 26:7-10).

Later in the passage, a man whom apparently none of the disciples even knew provided a place for Jesus and His disciples to eat the last supper. The Luke account says that an angel came down in the Garden of Gethsemane to strengthen Jesus when his disciples could not be counted on (22:43). After Jesus’ death, a rich man named Joseph, who had become a disciple of Jesus, asked Pilate for Jesus’ body, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed the body in his own tomb that he had just cut out of rock.

Clearly, even as Jesus felt deserted by His closest friends and even God Himself at one point, God provided those who were available to minister and care for Jesus in the midst of carrying out His will.

Likewise, if we look around during the times we feel the most alone or afraid, we will most likely be able to trace God’s hand and see how He gives us supernatural aid or the help of kind people in our journey — people we not know or necessarily solicit help from. But people who step up and offer us the support we need even as we’re facing our darkest hours.

3. If we face opposition doing what God has told us to, He will defend us.

There are times when we should give an answer to those that question us, but there are other times when we don’t need to say anything. God will do it for us.

When Jesus was brought before Pilate, Scriptures tell us that He was silent when accused, and they were amazed that He did not respond to any of the charges they brought against Him. He was mocked by the soldiers, the crowd, the religious priests — who all told Him in various ways that He should save Himself and prove He was the Son of God.

But Jesus did not speak. However, what we can observe is that God’s defense was all around for the observant one taking note. When Pilate questioned Jesus, he received a message from his wife imploring Pilate to let Jesus go as she had had a dream about him that day. Pilate himself knew the religious leaders had a personal agenda. After the message from his wife, he washed his hands in front of the crowd to let them know that he had reservations about their accusations and didn’t want Jesus’ blood on his hands.

Not only was evidence of Jesus’ innocence given through the words and actions of people, the natural world gave further witness. The afternoon that Jesus died, darkness came over the land from noon to three; “the curtain from the temple was torn in two from top to bottom”; and an earthquake shook the earth so that tombs opened, and “the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life” (Matthew 27:45, 51, 52).

As if that were not enough evidence for the unbelieving that Jesus’ had spoken the truth, after Jesus was placed in a tomb, an angel rolled the stone of his tomb away, and Jesus rose from the dead! He then appeared to some women that had come to his tomb, later to His disciples. Clearly, as a current worship song by Elevation Music says: “The evidence is [or in this case, was] all around.”

If people don’t believe us or listen when we do or say what God asks, we needn’t worry or waste our effort trying to convince them. God, in His own way and timing, will make His message abundantly clear to all who are listening. The truth will prevail without unneeded energy wasted on our part.

4. God’s power cannot be contained or minimized.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that Jesus was the Son of God as He claimed, the chief priests and elders in the Jewish community were so threatened by Jesus that they didn’t want to know the truth. They just wanted Him out of the picture. However, they had to do quite a bit of manipulating on their end to have Jesus crucified. They convinced the crowd to ask for Barabbas rather than Jesus when Pilate asked which prisoner they wanted released.

Later, the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate and asked that Jesus’ tomb be made secure until the third day so that the disciples couldn’t come and steal the body and claim that he was raised from the dead. Pilate agreed to have the tomb sealed and even gave them guards to protect the tomb.

Clearly, the religious leaders were doing all they could to make sure that the people did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God — but what they didn’t realize is that they were trying to minimize God’s plan and power. As is apparent in the passage — no man is able to contain His power.

As I touched on in my previous point, just as Jesus had said, three days after He died, He rose again. After a violent earthquake, an angel of the Lord came down and rolled back the stone on the tomb and sat on it. Mary Magdalene and another Mary found the tomb empty and the stone rolled away. The guards that Pilate had sent were afraid and went and told the chief priests what they had seen (yes, the very priests who had mocked Jesus’ claim that He was the Son of God).

The chief priests made the decision to give the guards money to lie about what happened, and a false story was circulated in the Jewish community. But for those paying attention, it was obvious that Jesus was the Son of God and God’s plan was being accomplished despite the resistance of the religious leaders.

We can know that we may be persecuted and opposed as we do what God asks of us — but God is not derailed by human schemes. His plan will be accomplished whether people believe us or not.

If You Feel Alone

Perhaps this Easter, you feel some of the same emotions our Lord did when He was crucified. Perhaps you feel marginalized, misunderstood, or mocked. Perhaps as you have attempted to give the message God wanted you to or walk in the path He has laid out for you, you have faced loneliness, rejection and scorn.

Remember this: His resurrection power cannot be contained. Whatever assignment you are on, however difficult, is one that cannot be thwarted. God’s purposes will be accomplished no matter how bleak the circumstances or how daunting the opposition.

Though we may not hear an immediate response when we cry out “My God, why have you forsaken me?” — we can rest assured that although God may not take away our suffering, there will be victory in the storm.

Hopefully, in reading this, you will be encouraged to keep plugging away at the task God has given you! Leave a comment in the box below if you would like to share what you are going through or you would like us to pray for you.

*Updated June 12, 2021.

Editor’s note: Correction was made to statement about the guards leaving and doing nothing to stop Jesus out of fear. This was a misstatement as the guards were afraid of the angel, but account in Matthew makes it clear that Jesus was already gone (by angel’s words) when the guards saw the angel and stone rolled away.

 

Carol Whitaker

Carol Whitaker is a coach's wife, mom, writer, and singer. She left a career in teaching in 2011 to pursue a different path at God's prompting. While she thought that the path would lead straight to music ministry, God had different plans -- and Carol found herself in a crisis of spirituality and identity. Out of that place, Carol began writing about the lessons God was teaching her in her desert place and how God was teaching her what it meant to be healed from a painful past and find her identity in Him rather than a title, a relationship, a career, or a ministry. These days, Carol spends her time shuttling her little ones back and forth from school, supporting her coach-husband on the sidelines, and writing posts. Carol also continues to love music and hopes to pick up piano playing again. Carol is a self-proclaimed blog junkie and iced-coffee lover. She resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.

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