S8 E44: What Is Wrong With Her?

The calendar, as well as the cooler temperatures this week, remind me that spring is yet to come. And I know many of you live in places where me even making that statement makes you laugh because you actually had snow in the last few days.

But even if that is the case for you, and you're tired of having to grab a heavy jacket before leaving the house, I would love to remind you as I remind myself, let's choose to be present in the season that we are in, taking in all that it has for us because we can long for a change of seasons in our lives and still be present for the growth and the shaping that our present season is offering.

I'm making references to the natural season of winter, but what does that look like when we are walking through a winter season in our personal life or even as a collective because it's all connected and how we choose to live our life as individuals, it has a ripple effect into the world.

And this really hit home with me a few years ago when the conversation around AI was popping up more and more. And I'll be honest, for months, I really didn't understand what people were talking about and what artificial intelligence even meant or what it was. And I remember hearing one person talking about it one day in a way that I had never heard before, which honestly was kind of freaky.

But what the woman was explaining for me personally that day, it shifted how I felt about it. About our devices and being online and on social media. And I think for a lot of us that are on social media and we use our phones and devices for a lot of our life and connection, we can sometimes have the urge to completely unplug.

Because as much as it can be a beautiful thing and a blessing and helps us stay connected to those that we love and want to communicate with, it could also be a lot for us to take in all that it offers us day in and day out.

You know, there's just no way to healthily process all the information that we have access to at all times.

So I will admit that I set my device aside for periods of time.

I don't want the noise of images and opinions to be louder than God's voice in my life and even my own voice. And that might sound weird to some of you, but I hope at some point it doesn't because your creator designed you to be you and to think and to feel the way that you do. And it's so easy for us to take in everything that we see and hear around us.

But I want the one who purposed me to be the loudest voice in my heart and in my mind. And God's opinion is the opinion that I want to live from. And as much as at times I want to totally walk away from it all.

After coming to understand that we as humanity are basically the ones that are creating AI in our image, as a follower of Christ, I felt a responsibility, a responsibility to speak the love and the goodness of God into the world, to image God through everything that I say and do in the images that I make and share in the captions that I write in all the texts that I send to people.

It matters. And you might be like, I don't get what you're saying, or I don't even know that I believe what you're saying right now. And several years ago, I wasn't so sure that I believed it either.

You know, it kind of sounded like a scene from a sci-fi movie and your girl is not into sci-fi. But I have seen all of the things that sounded so crazy and hard to believe to me start to become normal things in our world. And the way that I feel and felt responsibility that day is not how I assume that you might feel responsible.

That's for you to discern. However, I will say that we all are responsible for what we are bringing forth into the world. And that has nothing to do with social media or how visible we are in the world.

Each of our actions matters and they make a difference in the world, whether that is acknowledged by anyone. Your thoughts matter. Your actions matter. Your life matters. And I think that we get that twisted in a world where things can look so flashy and so out there and so applauded in some ways.

We can get that twisted and sometimes we can only feel that something matters when someone says that that it matters. And that is just not the case. It matters because it matters. I heard someone say something on social recently, and I can't remember exactly how they said it, but I do remember what I wrote later that day in my journal.

And I wrote, I'm not trying to be different. I'm just trying to be me. And I think that that thought resonated with me because I've had that said about me. You're just trying to be different. You just got to be different. And at times I've even felt that desire within myself.

You know, from day one, I've never had the “fall in line” type of personality. I mean, that's my older siblings who have the evidence of stories of having to drag my limp body to do something that I didn't want to do.

I will admit that I felt different growing up in my family and the fact that my brother often told me I was adopted because my three sisters were all blondes and I was a brunette. And although he had red hair, that argument just really never made much sense.

But it felt different because my parents both, to me, my perception was they both seemed to thrive within structures. And they were just very solid and steady people in every way. They were the best and they are the best. And my parents loved me deeply.

Yet there were many times that it was obvious that my parents were looking at me, not understanding me, and thinking like, what are you doing? And there's this one example that still just cracks me up when I think about it.

I was in college and I was home for the summer. And my sister who is a few years younger than me was graduating from high school. So side note, my father's position and the denomination that we were a part of had our family moving to St. Louis from Tennessee at the exact time that I was leaving for college a few years before that. The school I went to was in Tennessee. So basically, it was my parents and younger sister who made the move to St. Louis originally.

So in the summers, I would be home from college and would live there. And so this particular year, when I was already home for my summer break, I believe, she was graduating from high school, and other families from Tennessee were in town. And we all went to the graduation.

We were all sitting through this long and huge graduating class that we knew no one in, which made it seem even longer, I'm sure. So as the ceremony seemed to just continue and drag on, I guess I just felt this need to entertain myself.

So I began to just wildly, randomly cheer for random names being called out. And I was sitting on the road directly behind my mom and dad. And I remember a random name being called out for their diploma. And I just started yelling and screaming like I was this person's biggest fan.

And I remember seeing my dad look at my mother and say, what is wrong with her? And I lost it. And to this day, I can still picture my dad mouthing that to my mom with this just look of bewilderment on his face as he asked her that. And I just smile and laugh all over again because it was just such a funny moment to me, the look on his face asking in such sincerity, what is wrong with her? Like he could not grasp why I was just yelling out and being crazy.

But I did... Joke at times with my mom and dad and say, well, I had to get it from one of you. So where did it come from? But good times, good times. But I bring this example up, which I'm pretty sure is much more funny to me than it is to you.

But I bring it up to point out that we all have our stories that shaped us from our families of origin to all of the experiences we have of walking through life that has us adjusting and conforming, you know, trying to fit in and get approval and do what is deemed right in the eyes of those around us and those that are authority figures in our life, those that we love and want to honor.

And this might mean that over time, our personality is being formed in ways that might not exactly reflect our true self. And this isn't a negative thing. It's how we grow and grow up and how we learn. But unfortunately, life can keep us going at a certain pace and we don't typically take the time to process and maybe come to understand some of those areas in our life where we are feeling tension.

And sometimes life is so full that we don't even recognize these places of tension. We don't slow down enough to even notice and feel the feelings. But more often than not, I think most people feel the tension in their life and they don't understand why. And a lot of times they think it's something that they aren't doing well enough that is causing this tension in their life.

Now, I'm not implying that if we are all living our most authentic lives, there is no tension in life. Absolutely not.

I mean, daily life gives us opportunities for stress and for worry and lots of tension. I'm speaking to areas of life that could represent as many different things as how many different people are listening to this podcast episode, where you have oftentimes unknowingly walked yourself into a way of living and being in the world that has been shaped by something or someone else that brings attention or a dull ache to your life because you aren't living life in a way that is life-giving to you.

And before you think that sounds selfish or self-centered, Hear me out on this. For most of my life, I felt like to focus on myself at all was ungodly.

To be self-focused was the opposite of being God-focused. And so basically, it felt like I was being in opposition to God. So obviously, that was not something I wanted to do.

And so I attempted to push down my feelings, which was no small task. I tried to push down my desires because I felt that they couldn't be trusted and that they would lead me astray. All of the feelings and the desires, they were distractions that would take away my focus from and off God.

And interestingly, I have found the opposite to be true. The more that I have grown in my relationship with God, the more I have grown in my relationship with myself, the more I have learned about and experienced God, the more I've learned about myself, the more I have learned about myself, the more deeply I have connected and experienced God, my creator, which has led me to believe more deeply that me bearing the image of the God that created me in the way that he uniquely designed and created me for his purposes and plans is a beautiful and needed thing from the beginning.

I see that we were invited to co-create with our God, with our creator, which might have me appearing to live life differently, which as the thought I shared earlier said, I'm not trying to be different. I'm just trying to be me. And I've had the thought many times, what would the world look like if we each freely and confidently showed up as God intended us to?

Instead of comparing ourselves with each other and copying what we admire in someone else, what if we ask the question, what is the world missing? Because you aren't bringing forth and imaging what God deposited in you.

Don't believe the lie that you don't have what you need. It's a lie as old as time. We see evidence of this in the first few chapters of scripture. God created humanity and he called it good. He gave us an assignment to carry out. And what happened?

Another created being in rebellion deceived humanity in order to thwart the assignment. Now, obviously, God is over and above all and had a plan from the start, but we can still see how this deceiver is effective in taking ground from us when we believe lies instead of the truth of God, our creator. creator.

This deceiver, an enemy of your soul, wants you to believe that your winter season will never end. That everything that has fallen away in your life and is barren will never show life again. And that is simply not true, friend.

Our God is light in the darkness and life in the midst of things that are dead. I love how John 1 verses three through five say it.

"'Everything was created through him.

"'Nothing, not one thing, came into being without him.

"'What came into existence was life, "'and the life was light to live by.

"'The life light blazed out of the darkness.

"'The darkness couldn't put it out.

The darkness that a winter season can bring into each of our lives ultimately cannot put out the light and life that God breathed into us.

As a matter of fact, the circumstances and the wounds that were an attempt to break and to silence us, instead awaken and they give birth to all that was placed and planted inside of us from the start.

You have not been left alone in your season of winter that might be one of the lies that you need to replace that God's spirit is there to bring you comfort and strength and direction when you stay in the season and allow the work that God is doing in your life to be complete it might not be tomorrow or next week but walking through and out of a winter season season will take us from barren to beautiful.

It's just what God does.

I love you guys.

And we'll talk soon.