"But there's none like good ole Joshua"

So, one of the very first Bible stories you learn as a kid in Sunday school is about how Joshua fought the battle of Jericho (and the walls came tumblin' down). Sounds like a pretty epic story, and it is. But what I find more amazing is Joshua's story before Jericho.

You'd think that to walk around a city over and over again and then decimate almost every living soul, and then go on to conquer a whole nation, this guy would have to be pretty brave. But when Josh was staring out as Israel's leader, he was told about 30 times to "Be bold and courageous." You'd think someone who was already bold and courageous wouldn't need to be told so many times. But the book of Joshua starts out as a conversation between God and Joshua, mostly with God encouraging Josh over and over again that He will be with him, and to be strong and VERY courageous.

The first time we meet Josh is actually in Exodus (if I'm wrong, please correct me). Moses has been on mount Sinai for forever and has brought down God's life instructions for His people. One of the biggest things God tells Moses is that He wants to be close to his people, and for them to be close to Him. So God has Moses build a tent of meeting, what we would call having church in a tent. And Moses goes in there to meet with God, literally talking to Him "face to face, just as a man speaks with his friend." Amazing verse, filled with tons of sermon potential.
But my favorite part is how that same verse finishes out: "Then Moses would return to the camp, but his assistant , a young man named JOSHUA son of Nun, WOULD NOT LEAVE THE INSIDE OF THE TENT." (Exodus 33:11)

I feel like Joshua most of the time. There is nothing I would rather do than put on some quiet worship music, open up my Bible and journal, and just sit with God. He doesn't have to say anything, and neither do I. It's just enough to sit next to Him. But Joshua was not allowed to stay in the tent. He had to eat, sleep, and even worse-take the lead in all of Israel's battles, and eventually become the main leader of the whole nation after Moses died. No wonder he was told so many times to be courageous!!!

I wonder if he was able to ever go back and visit with God like he used to; or as leader, did he have to get creative with his quiet times (hard to do surrounded by several million people all the time!)?

But I think the thing that gave Josh the most courage was God's promise that He would always be with him. A year and a half ago, I got a tattoo on my left arm. It says (in Welsh, because I'm Celtic at heart): "Courage, Dear Heart." It's a quote from "The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader". Aslan, C.s. Lewis's characterization of Jesus, whispers this into His beloved Lucy's ear during a very frightening ordeal in which she feels all alone, abandoned by the strong men she has relied on thus far. All it took was her remembering Whose she was, and Who loved her more than anyone else in any world (Narnia or England), and she was encouraged. Emboldened might be a better term for it.

We feel the most courageous when we know beyond any doubt that we are loved. And if the Creator of all things is the One loving us, and we truly, truly understood this truth, the things we feared will suddenly seem so much easier to handle. You could even call us brave enough to conquer a whole nation, if the God who calls me "Dear One" said we could.

AM I what I DO, or do I DO who I AM?

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." ~ Batman Begins

I hate that quote. Sometimes, I get so tired of being praised for stuff that I do. It's so easy to look at stuff that people do and assume that it's who they are. Most of the time, it's probably not. If you were to ask random strangers on the street if they put their whole heart and soul into their job or weekly tasks at home/work, a large majority of them will probably say "no." We do our jobs because it pays the bills, it puts food on the table, it helps us save up for that big trip to the Bahamas. But rarely will you find people that truly love going into work on a Monday morning. Those people somehow have been blessed enough to find something to do that mirrors who they truly are.

I feel honored to be one of those people. Granted, sometimes when work is really crazy at the library, all I want to do is snuggle farther down into my comforter and ignore the daylight coming through the window. But most of the time I truly love getting to go to work each day. It's not always been like this. There were several years where all I wanted to do was work anywhere BUT at the library. But no matter how many job interviews I had, God never let me leave.

There was one time when He gave me a second part time job at my church's office. For three years I was part time library clerk, part time church office assistant. I love my church, I love my pastors, and I loved working in the office. But sometimes, I felt appreciated for the wrong things. "Great job on the bulletin, Sara!" "Love the look of the new directory!" "Wow, you figured out how to print out all those labels without having to type each one? That's amazing!" Now, I'm sure all those things were amazing to people whose knowledge of computers extend to email, social media, and solitaire; but for me, it was honestly a little boring. There was little to no creativity on my part: I was doing a task that needed to get done, and I felt almost anyone could've done it, but I was the one getting praised for it.

Think of something that is really easy for you to do, say, blinking, and then imagine someone telling you, "wow, I really love the way you blink your eyes, that's really impressive." That's how I felt about my work at church. I was being praised for something I did without effort and without heart, and it felt like other people were starting to be "define me" by it. The problem was, that's not who I am at all.

Two years ago this month, I stopped doing something that had defined me for 10+ years. When I was in high school, the youth pastor at the time and his wife were really instrumental in seeing the gifts in me that no one else could (mostly because I was shyly hiding in the back), and pulled me into youth leadership. After high school, I tried to leave Metro Youth...that lasted for maybe less than one semester. But when that pastor and his wife suddenly stopped working at church and moved to Texas two weeks later, I made an inner vow to never leave the teens at Metro like that. It hurt a lot of us; many of the kids stopped coming to youth group and even to church because of it. But I stayed on, because somehow between my junior year of high school and my freshman year of college I realized that I love working with teenagers. I love calling them out of their shells to become who God created them to be; I love laughing with them, crying with them, just being with them, really. And so for 10 years, that's what I did.

But three Octobers ago, I was challenged by God (through the voices of people wiser than  me) to take a look at why I was still with Metro Youth. I had been getting restless, with both my jobs, with volunteering at church not just in the high school but in the nursery and on the audio/visual team for worship, with life in general. I broke into tears when a friend said to me, "Maybe you should stop working with Metro Youth." Because I didn't want to...and because I didn't want to admit to myself that he was right. I wrestled (boy did I wrestle!) with God for months, until I finally gave in and gave over my youth group to Him.

It was the most dreadful depressing summer I've had yet. I'd let go of my teens, but there wasn't anything yet to fill the void. I prayed and prayed, and cried when I saw my roommates leaving every Wednesday night for youth group, but I still didn't know why it was that God made me stop what I loved to do. Until a friend and co-worker at the library got a promotion at another branch. She had been our teen programmer, and once she left, they asked if I would fill in for her until they hired a new full-time person to take her place. And a thought I'd never imagined I'd think came into my head...What if I applied for the spot? Had you asked me two years previously, I would have scoffed and said, "yeah right!" But somehow this just made so much sense. I'd never worked a "full" 40 hour work week before; even with two jobs I was still under 35 hours a week. And I most definitely did not want to work full time at the library.

But God told me it was right. So I applied...and I got the job.

The first few months were a little hard, trying to figure out how to budget my time at the branch, figuring out all the duties that were suddenly my responsibility, and most importantly trying to figure out how to get teenagers to come to my programs! But after a while, I realized that I've found my niche. Suddenly, I had coworkers asking where I got my computer class lessons from, and the impressed surprise on their faces when I said I made it up myself was better than any compliment about the bulletins. I had two teens coming regularly to my programs...then three...now five or six, maybe twelve on a good movie night. My crazy ideas for teen programs have gotten noticed not just by other teen programmers at other branches, but by the administrative staff of the whole system (you haven't really lived until you've played life-sized Battleship or Monopoly!) I have moments of combined creativity with other equally brilliant coworkers, powwows that honestly are a little frightening, because the results are getting us noticed by other branches, by headquarters, by other library systems. And it's all so. much. FUN!!!

So, when I say I hate the quote from Batman, what I mean is that I hate it that the two concepts are separated. I do not want to be defined just by who I am "underneath", nor simply by what I "do". I want to be defined as a person who "DOES who she IS." When I finally go Home and get to really be held by my Father in Heaven, I want to be able to hear that from His lips; "Well DONE, My good and faithful servant."

"Make me a servant, humble and meek.
Lord let me lift up those who are weak.
And may the prayer of my heart always be:
Make me a servant, today."

White Knuckles

"Calm me, O Lord, as You stilled the storm.
Still me, O Lord, keep me from harm.
Let all the tumult within me cease.
Enfold me, O Lord, in Your peace."
- from Celtic Daily Prayer Book

I "brought work" home with me this weekend. Usually, I can just leave it all behind and not think about it (unless it's fun and exciting to think about, which is usually the case, as I love my job). But it's not even a full week into May and it's already a stressful month. I just made a list of things that HAVE to get done in the next week or two, and it's roughly at 18 items, and that's not including the normal weekly tasks required of me. One or two are simply emails that have to get sent, but others are much, much larger projects.

Usually, once I've created a list of all the stuff I have to do, I am fine. I know what has to get done first, what can wait till I'm working at the front desk, and what can honestly wait until next week. But the first initial week of this kind of heavy-on-the-crazy season is usually utterly stressful and sends me into a mind-clouding spin. And this last week was a doozy! Meeting up at headquarters, the catalog system changing which means I have to change an entire handout for the computer lesson I teach in two weeks, and then to cap the whole week I ended up having to do MATH...on the spot...in front of teenagers!...for two hours!! (ok, it was kinda fun, we were playing the game of Life, but infinitely more awesome cause it was "life-sized" and took up the whole programming area; but note to self - do not both play the game AND be the banker at the same time my already stressed brain cannot handle it!)

My poor coworkers started noticing how stressed I was when I couldn't string a normal sentence together at the beginning of the week. By Friday, it graduated into dysfunctional paragraphs. Thankfully I only worked for four hours this morning, and tried to avoid speaking unless I absolutely had to, for the sake of my poor coworkers and patrons.

[Bunny Trail: See it's like this in my brain: on a normal, calm, peaceful day, I already have an interesting time of making a complete, understandable sentence. I don't have a stutter or other speech impediment; the problem is I think too fast. By the time I start actually speaking, I'm working on the end of the thought, which in speech would take about 5-10 minutes to explain. So I have to stop mid-thought to remember how the thought began, in order to actually put it into words so that the person I'm talking to can follow along. Sometimes I'll even say phrases or sentences backwards - last night to a friend I literally said: "See you good," instead of: "It was good to see you." My brain was already at the end of the sentence so I said what I was thinking, then had to go back to add in the rest. This usually ends up with slight embarrassment on my part, and leaves me wondering if I have a mental problem (probably leaves other people wondering the same thing sometimes).

Honestly, this is why I don't talk to people a lot. I'm afraid that I'll say something that doesn't make sense. Usually around close friends this isn't a problem; honestly I tend not to actually think before I speak, I just start speaking, and it's most of the time it's ok. But with people I'm not as familiar with, the process goes as follows:

Step 1) think, usually in the form of pictures or ideas
Step 2) think with the intention of putting into words
Step 3) put thought into words.

Sadly, "thinking with intention to speak" takes a lot longer, so by the time I'm actually ready to say what it is I want to say, the moment to speak has passed and the current topic of conversation has nothing to do with what I was thinking.  This is why I love writing. I can take as long as I want to think then think to type then type, and you're not sitting there staring at me waiting for a reply. Which just causes me to stress out, which makes my thoughts more jumbled, which makes my sentences turn backward and my paragraphs into unfollowable gibberish. Speaking of stressing out...I think I was talking about that a few thought processes ago...end Bunny Trail.]

So work is piling up, not just tasks but responsibilities as well. My annoying bosses (slight sarcasm, they know I love 'em) tend to talk me up to other people in the library system, which leads to me being asked to be on special committees or to create brand new programs that other people in the system might use as well. While this is flattering, sometimes it just merely adds to the stress of what is already going on. And I don't really like a lot of recognition, so I get embarrassed and flustered and whoops, there goes my brain into a foggy mist again.

The prayer I wrote at the beginning of this (wow, extremely long) blog is one I always find myself praying when I'm stressed. Sometimes, like today, I can say it over and over again with no change. I've allowed the stress and the worry to completely take priority in my mind and heart, and no amount of rote memorization can alleviate that which I don't want to let go. Most of the time we human beings tend to think that stress takes hold of us and ruins our lives. But now that I think on it, I don't believe that's true. Yes, there are times in our lives that work and family and life can pile up and create a traffic jam of things clamoring for our attention. But we are the ones who grab on with white knuckles and don't let go.

Praying that prayer will only work if I allow myself to realize that I have to stop being the one trying to take control, because frankly, I suck at it. In the grand scheme of my life, I won't remember how stressed I was this week (unless I come back to read this blog in 30 years). In the grand scheme of the universe, no one will ever give a crap that I was mixing my words and sentences in 100 years. I'll be lucky if it was remembered that I existed at all. What does matter is that God's got me, and I am so important to Him that He doesn't want to see me battered by stress that I didn't have to deal with in the first place. So I pray that prayer, make my priority lists, read Isaiah 41:8-10 out loud over and over again, and slowly I find the stress slipping away, and my heart is at peace in His presence.


But you, Israel [Sara], My servant,
Jacob [Sara], whom I have chosen,
descendant of Abraham, My friend—
I brought you from the ends of the earth
and called you from its farthest corners.
I said to you: You are My servant;
I have chosen you and not rejected you.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you; I will help you;
I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand.
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

Climbing and Falling

Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved climbing. He climbed everything, the counters, the tables, the dressers, the bookshelves, even the parents! Then one day, his parents decided to let him find other things to climb and sent him outside to the back yard, and there, the little boy discovered trees. There wasn't a day when he was begging to go outside and climb his trees, even in the rain and freezing cold winter snow. And because his parents loved him so, they bundled him up dryly and tightly and let him climb (if only for a little while, so he wouldn't catch cold).

Then one day, the little boy had a play date with the little girl next door. He decided to show her his favorite climbing tree. He led her to the backyard and started climbing up the tall maple tree. When he looked down, the little girl was still standing at the bottom. "Why aren't you climbing?" the little boy asked. "I'm afraid I'm going to fall!" said she. Falling? The little boy was puzzled. "It's ok, come on up!" So the little girl climbed. But she was not as tall as the little boy and could not reach the branches he could. She gave a little jump...and fell. The little boy was stunned. He had never fallen before, and had never seen his dad or even his mom fall when they climbed with him. But there was the little girl on the ground crying fiercely from her scrapes and bruises.

The next day, the little boy's mom went outside to call the little boy in for lunch. But he wasn't in his favorite tree. He wasn't in any tree. After a few minutes, his mom figured out he wasn't even outside. So she went back inside and found him sitting on the floor next to his bed. "Little One," she said, "why aren't you upside?" (this is what they called playing outside in the trees). The little boy was quiet for a few moments, and then whispered, "because I don't want to fall down."
--------------

From when I was born to roughly 8 years old, my family went to a teeny tiny baptist church just down the street in our teeny tiny town in upstate New York. I loved the pews, and the hymns, and the centuries-old gravestones in the back yard. It was all I knew about church and about God. But my parents grew restless. They didn't feel...alive. It was just the same old routine week after week, no change, no growing, no challenge to it any more. So we moved to another church, farther away, in a bigger "city" (which meant it had traffic lights and the speed limit was over 35).

This church was so completely the opposite of our little baptist church! ("Daddy, what's that?" "It's an electric guitar, Sweet Heart." "Oh...What's that?") We found ourselves in the middle of a charismatic church in the early '90's, which for those of you who are familiar with it was the beginning of the "Toronto Blessing" as some people called it. People would raise their hands, talk in funny baby talk, dance with banners, and stranger yet, fall down on the floor shaking.

Eventually, my younger brother and sister started "giving in" to the weirdness of the church, but being the oldest with the most memories of how things used to be, I didn't like it at all. I wanted to go back to the pews and ole Mrs. Forrey pounding out the hymns on the organ. Eventually, both my siblings got baptized, but I wouldn't even raise my hands in church during worship. I would stand up, because Mom and Dad made me, but I wasn't about to let them see me give in to everything else.

One night, we were having children's church down in the basement while the parents had church upstairs. I'm not sure what went on upstairs, if it was mirroring everything that happened to us or not, but the Holy Spirit came and visited the kids. I don't remember much of what led up to it, but what I vividly remember was sitting next to my brother, who was shaking on the ground with his eyes half closed and muttering under his breath. I was terrified! I thought he was having a seizure or something. Then one of the teachers came over and said, "He's being slain in the Spirit. Isn't it wonderful!" It wasn't wonderful. I was seriously frightened. Not necessarily about Adam's well-being (kids can sense when grown-ups are and aren't concerned), but I was suddenly really, really scared of the Holy Spirit. If He makes your body do all those things in public, I was definitely not going to get close to Him!

Looking back, I have to give my teachers some grace. Hearing other people's accounts of those several years of "revival" that happened all over the U.S., I've come to realize that the adults weren't really sure what was going on either. Everything was new to them too. So they couldn't explain it to us children who saw and were frightened. But the result of that is now a generation of young adults who are still hesitant when it comes to the Holy Spirit. I've been baptized now (although it was several years after we moved from that church and New York out to Kansas City to be a part of Metro Vineyard Fellowship), I've walked on purpose with God for over 15 years, and can not imagine existing in a world where He isn't part of my life. But any time I think about the Spirit aspect of His Person, and I still partially close off my heart and tell Him with trepidation: "Please, no."

The problem is, most of the time - if I'm not thinking about it - I am open to Him and tell Him "Yes!" Because I cannot be myself without Him. He is my genius, my voice, my smile, my joy, my compassion, my  "don't you mess with my friends" fierce loyalty and protection, my hope, my heart, my life. Without the Holy Spirit, I am like the little child whose sole purpose and design in life is to climb...sitting in fear on the floor next to her bed.

So, Spirit, how do we do this? How can I climb again?

"Jesus loves me, this I know - for it's May and there is snow!"

I love snow. Always have. Always will. There's something simply beautiful about the way it falls slowly to the ground, like it wants to take its time and dance on the wind before settling graciously to the ground with its brothers and sisters. I could watch the snow fall for hours, inside or outside (ok, maybe outside for only an hour, there is a limit to what a normal human body can take).

I love the stillness and the quiet it brings. Have you ever noticed how quiet everything gets when it's snowed? Maybe that's just because everybody stays indoors huddled under blankets and no one dares to venture out into the slush, but it seems like more than that sometimes. Like the whole world has hushed itself in awe of the beauty falling from the sky.

My favorite memory of snow is from when I was 10 or 11. It was the year before we moved out to Kansas City, where people freak out and close school for one inch of snow. Back in the Hudson Valley area of New York, they merely put chains on the school bus tires, maybe causing an hour or two delay. Actually canceling school was a rarity. Everyone else on my bus route knew to simply bundle up and make their way down to our house, the nearest bus stop on the main road (even with chains, there was no way our bus was making it up Mount Reservoir Rd). Most of the time, though, it only snowed a foot or two; hardly anything, really.

But 1993/4 was different. That was the year it snowed 4 feet. And when you're a young girl who's 4 ft and a few inches, that's pretty spectacular! Dad had someone come out to plow our tiny little driveway so that us kids could wait for the bus (yes, there was still school). The drifts from the plow were taller than even my dad! My brother and I instantly set out creating caves in which to use as forts and reading nooks (I was a book-a-holic even back then). I remember being wrapped up in my snow suit and multiple layers of hats, gloves, socks, and scarves; curled up in a tiny, surprisingly warm yet bum-soaking snow cavern reading what may have been a Little House on the Prairie book, suddenly finding myself at eye level with the roof of my grandparent's truck as they came for a surprise visit. Then running inside to hang the layers of sopping wet snow clothes on the roaring wood stove to dry, with a cup of the most amazing hot cocoa you'll ever drink waiting for me at the table while Mom chatted with her parents. Perfection.

Now, I'm not a kid anymore, and though we got REALLY lucky with snow this year in Kansas City (over a foot!), I usually have to settle for brief flurries with accumulation of maybe 2 centimeters. So when it randomly snows like this in the beginning of May, it still makes me smile and turn all giddy with a childhood desire for snow caverns and hot chocolate by the wood stove. And then I come home, curl up on the couch to watch the snow dance and swirl and spin, and close my eyes to enjoy the blanket of stillness that has covered the world in a contented comforting embrace.

the Silence

I know, it's a bit crazy. But I'm taking the month of May to cut out the three most important things in my life: books, movies, and music. Why in the world would I do that, you ask? It's simple: because they've become the most important things in my life, and quite honestly they shouldn't be.

Have you ever just sat for hours alone with your own thoughts? I used to love it. For most people, it's terrifying. There's a reason the imagination industry (Hollywood, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Words with Friends) makes billions of dollars each year: people do not want to be alone with themselves with nothing but their thoughts running through their heads. They would rather have someone else's thoughts instead of their own. I'm sadly have been one of these people.

Currently I have 15 library books sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. Sadly, I will have to bring them all back to work tomorrow, because I'm not going to read any of them for a month, and I don't want to get overdue fines. But right now they're just sitting there, taunting me. "Come, Sara, read me! You don't want to just sit there and think about how you feel like your life is just the same-ole-same-old, or how you're turning 30 this year and have never had a boyfriend, or how lonely you get when you sit at home by yourself. Come, we'll be your friends, we'll do the hard work of relationships and give you a happy ending, we'll take you on an adventure and give you the excitement you long for. Just read me." And I've happily complied for the last four months. But it's not enough.

So I'm going to turn off the noise for one month, and simply sit still in silence. I'm going to let my brain run through its gazillion thoughts a minute until I've thought myself out and there is nothing left but a quiet that is so still and peaceful. Because maybe, just maybe in that still silence I can be myself again. And maybe, just possibly I can hear God speaking again. Because when I sit alone in silence, I'm not really alone. Technically I'm never really alone, but I only realize it when I'm truly silent and still. So this next month I will be (hopefully) blogging more than my usual once-a-year, because my gazillion thoughts a minute need somewhere to go, and writing is my favorite method of detox.

Confessions of a Selfish(less?) Beauty

Have you ever seen the movie "I, Robot?" You know that part where the cop is talking to the holograph of the dead doc, asking him questions? Sometimes the holograph answered, sometimes it didn't understand the question. But a few times it would respond, "That is the right question," and shut down, leaving the cop to try to figure out the answer himself.

God's like that sometimes. Oh, not the "leaving us to figure it out ourselves" part. He listens to our questions and answers them, sometimes right away, sometimes not for a while, and sometimes not with the answer we were looking for. But every once in a while, we finally ask the question that He was hoping we'd ask all along, and He says with a glint in His eye, "That is the right question!" and blows you away with the life changing answer.

That happened to me yesterday. I decided to skip church (gasp! heathen!) and just go out to the woods to be alone with Jesus. I had some questions that I've been almost asking, but honestly wanted to be away from any living soul when I did so, cause they were really personal on a deep heart level. It's the same question all women ask, but are afraid to ask out loud, even to God sometimes.

"Am I Beautiful?"

Us good Christian girls know that God's answer is "Yes." But sometimes, it just doesn't feel like enough. It's hard to admit that; it goes against every ounce of my religious training to think that God's answer isn't enough for my heart. It should be, I mean, He's God! He's the one that created me, so I'm pretty sure it's really only up to Him to tell me if I'm beautiful or not.

But truthfully, I want a flesh-and-blood man to tell me so. To date, I've yet to run out of fingers and toes counting the times a single man has told me I'm beautiful, and I've never been asked out by a man my age (sixty year old creepers at the library don't count). There really is power in the spoken word; but the unspoken word also holds a lot of weight, especially to a woman's mind and heart. When no one speaks out the truth, we are slowly led to believe that the opposite is true. It's just simple logic: if no one calls me beautiful, I must not be. (Lord, protect Your daughters from false truths!!)

I'm tired of feeling like this. I'm tired of fighting supposed truths that make me feel less than my spirit says I am. So I went to the woods yesterday to ask God all the ugly questions. I started off asking the usual: Am I beautiful, will a man ever call me beautiful, when will a man call me beautiful and pursue me? And then, I found myself asking: "Why do I feel so desperate to be called beautiful by others?"

That was the right question.

God answered: "Because I do, too."

Last week at the women's Bible study at my church, my friend Amy reminded us that a woman's heart reflects a part of who God is that men just can't express. Men are really great at expressing God's strength and protection and provision; women were created to show God's passion, mercy, gentleness, and yes-beauty. And in this season of my life, my woman's heart is also reflecting the desire of God to be wanted, acknowledged, honored and adored.

I sometimes have a hard time understanding that God wants to be praised. It seems...well, it seems selfish. If I ever admitted that I wanted to be praised, people would call me selfish, self-centered, egotistical. So of course, if I would be called selfish for doing these things, then wouldn't that make God selfish too? (This is where I realize the irony that me thinking that I should compare God to myself, and not the other way 'round, is in itself self-centered and egotistical...). God SHOULD be praised, because out of everything and anything that has ever existed, He is the only one who legitimately deserves it. He is the perfect, uncreated Creator who loves me even though I'm human. The fact that He is good and holy and merciful and righteous and just and true does not change if we don't tell Him; God is not human that He would be insecure about who He Is if no one compliments Him. But that doesn't mean that He doesn't like it when we do praise and honor Him.

Think of the last time you praised someone, for their accomplishment, their beauty, their strength. Did it make them feel honored and loved? Probably. Did it make you feel good to see the person you love feel loved? Also probably. It really benefits both parties involved; and God knows this. He knows how important it is to voice Truth, and how important it is to have Truth spoken over you. But for some reason we have a hard time asking for someone to tell us the Truth. We'll give it out in droves, but the instant someone starts to praise us, we get bashful and embarrassed and try to make ourselves out to be less than we are. I am the worst at this!

I wonder if this is really what false humility is. It's not just pretending to be humble when everyone can tell that you're pompously thinking "well, of course I am!" But it's also when even I think I'm being humble because I'm truly embarrassed to be called out for something great I did. True humility would say, "Thank you. I AM really good at this, but only because God made me so, and it brings both me and Him pleasure when I do it." Who first put it into our modern-day religion that we can't accept praise? Where did I learn it from? No one ever explicitly said, "Sara, if anyone says to you, 'hey, great job with that,' it is a sin if you don't instantly find some way to discredit yourself." But we all think it. And it's just a big ugly lie.

I am beautiful. I also want to be told that I am beautiful. But the difference between me wanting to be told I was beautiful on Saturday to me wanting to be told I am beautiful today is in the heart behind the question. Saturday I wanted a young man to tell me I was beautiful because I truly thought that I wasn't beautiful unless he told me so. I didn't realize how much importance I was giving to this fact (fact, not Truth). I've asked God many, many a time why I'm in my late 20's and have never gone on a date, and His response usually was because He is jealous for me. I thought that meant that He wanted to keep my heart safe from many unnecessary break-ups, or from the heartache of finding out that men really do think I'm unattractive. But Sunday I realized that He was really jealous that I discover my true worth in just knowing that He made me to be me, and that I can't be any more beautiful than the person He truly made when He created Sara Beth Wagner.

Today, I'm still struggling to believe that I'm beautiful without someone telling me so. I'll probably still struggle with it for a long time. But I now have better ammunition to fight against the lies, and believe me, this woman is going to fight! Because I am not just fighting to believe that I am beautiful. I am fighting to represent God's heart in the way that I was created to. I am fighting not just for my honor, but for God's. Because the most beautiful thing I can think of is the twinkle in His eyes when I tell Him, "I love You."