Blog Archives

"I Was Afraid"

4/24/2019

Good morning ladies. It's a new day. How are you all doing? We had a mild evening and woke up to a beautiful sunrise! And what a great day yesterday as well! Lovin' this springtime! Everything is starting to look green and there are buds on our trees. The birds are singing, and before long, we will be seeing flowers. What are your plans for the day? I got some shopping done yesterday, but I still have a little bit to do today, and I have a few orders of crochet to work on. Just let me know if anyone has something we can pray for.

Devotion

As the author writes about becoming a new creation in Christ and not depending on our own strength and image of who we are, I, too, can relate to her story of anxiety and fear. I learned this lesson the hard way too unfortunately, but God restored me and I know that He works in us continually to draw us closer to Him. Have a Wonderful Wednesday ladies!

“I Was Afraid”

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)

"I thought you were a ‘Super Mom’ that I could never measure up to ... I'm relieved to know that you don't have it all together."

A friend and fellow mother of twins spoke those words to me after I experienced a nervous breakdown when my children were very young.

The image I’d portrayed to the world was that I had it all together and could keep a lot of plates spinning: supporting my husband as he launched a small business, helping my sister through a difficult divorce, making gourmet meals and homemade baby food, completing house projects, leading Bible study and much more. All while caring for three children under 2 years old.

Those spinning plates came crashing down on me in a matter of days when I suffered a nervous breakdown — insomnia that led to extreme anxiety. I felt like someone had stuck an electric current into my brain. There was no way to turn off the jumble of irrational thoughts and fears constantly running through my head.

I went from high-functioning to barely functioning, and I couldn’t hide my breakdown from friends, family and neighbors. Everyone knew that something was wrong with me. And that shiny "Super Mom" image went up in smoke.

Thanks to my amazingly patient husband, my mom who moved in with us for a period of time, dear friends, deep Christian counseling, prayer and medication, God brought me healing over the course of several months.

Despite my faith in Jesus, before my breakdown I behaved as a “human doing” rather than a “human being.” My primary identity was based on what I accomplished as a wife, mother, believer, volunteer and employee.

But I’ve learned this was oh-so-wrong!

I’ve learned that in Christ, I’m a completely new creation, and if you know Jesus personally, so are you! “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As believers in Jesus, our primary identity is that we are each a uniquely created image-bearer of God. As image-bearers, we reflect Christ to a hurting world by allowing Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, to flow through our lives and help people experience His love.

When we focus on portraying an image based on our performance (or a million other things), our lives leave others feeling inadequate instead of loved and accepted.

Today, I’m grateful to lead a ministry dedicated to supporting courageous women overcoming trafficking, addiction, incarceration, poverty and persecution through part-time employment making jewelry. We help women find their new identity in Christ and watch God work in their lives.

I was afraid. But because of Him, I am free to be who He created me to be.

Father God, thank You for the gift of new creation. Help me reflect Christ to a hurting world by allowing the Holy Spirit to flow through me. Guide me as I seek to empower people to experience Your love. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Proverbs 31 Ministries
Michele Dudley

TRUTH FOR TODAY

Psalm 139:13-14, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (NIV)

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (ESV)

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"What I Want Most"

4/22/2019

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Good morning ladies! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Other than not being with family, we did have a great day with our church family and friends. Christ is risen! We had a great service, which included three baptisms. Following this, we had a continental breakfast, and then wrapped everything up with a church/community egg hunt. The weather cooperated beautifully for everything. It was even almost summer-like. How was your weekend?

Today, I have a bit of catching up to do with the laundry, grocery list, and a few other things.

Devotion

Do you have a phone addiction? I know that I struggle with this and I don't like it at all. Things have changed so much since the phone has become a mini computer with just about everything on it. And we carry them around all day. Ugh. What happened to reading actual books, doing hobbies, and talking with family without the phone in our hand? Today's devotion is a great reminder to think about this. I hope to try a few of these applications today. How about you? Have a Marvelous Monday ladies!

“What I Want Most”

“Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house.” Proverbs 5:8 (ESV)

I sat on the edge of my unmade bed, searching Pinterest for home ideas with half of my brain. The other half tried to decipher if the shouts and banging in the living room were worth getting up to check. Was that happy or argumentative shouting? Playful or destructive banging? It was hard to tell. Did I really want to know? If it was a relatively harmless argument, shouldn’t I let the kids work it out themselves?

The pull was strong to keep my Pinterest search alive, and the urge to investigate what might be going on in no-man’s-land was virtually nonexistent. There was bound to be something I needed to address — a behavior that needed modifying — but I just didn’t think I had it in me. The apps on my phone seemed like a much happier place to spend these minutes. I could scroll and tap my way to a flawless imaginary home, or I could go out there and grow my very own tension headache. Hmm … tough choice.

Except it actually was a tough choice, because parenting was calling. Was I going to let it go to voicemail even though I’m perfectly capable (and responsible) to answer the call? Why was this so hard?

When did my desire to attentively involve myself and counsel my kids fall behind my desire to do what I want, when I want? I don’t know when the switch happened, but once I realized it, I despised it and everything about it. My phone and other tools-turned-interruptions had become enemies, not the friends I thought they’d been.

The draw to temporarily escape the realities of life seems to plague me most when I need to do something important, like sleep, make dinner, work or look my kids in the eye. Interacting with the apps on my phone at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons serves as only a temporary high, leaving me frustrated with myself.

I’m guessing you might know exactly what I’m talking about. I know many of us struggle to stay focused. I also know many of us have a hard time sticking with the good and worthy pursuits right in front of us, things such as:

Building our relationship with God.
Studying the Bible alone or in a group.
Investing in our most important people.
Giving mindful attention to our work, from home or elsewhere.
Keeping our home tidy and functioning.
Making meals.
Having friends.
Helping others.

If our priorities are of utmost importance, how can we keep them in their proper place?

Proverbs 5:8 says, “Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house.” This proverb warns us to avoid an adulteress and the places she dwells if we’re tempted, but I believe it applies here as well. Anything that tempts us to fall into sinful patterns should be avoided. In our case, true distractions could be the “her” in this verse.

What might it look like for us to heed this warning in Proverbs? Let’s use phones and the internet as our example. Avoiding temptation might look like:

Placing our device(s) in a room other than the one where we’re spending time with our family.
Looking up and putting distractions aside when someone speaks to us.
Setting timers for internet-related tasks to help bring us back to reality.
Taking a weekly day off from all apps and websites.

Discipline is a learned skill, one we must practice to improve. It’s imperative we find a way around what hijacks our minds, because what we want most is waiting.

Father, we love You. We want to honor You above all else. We come before You, hands open, asking You to help us live an undistracted life. May we bring You glory as we walk toward living a focused and intentional life for Your kingdom’s sake. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Proverbs 31 Ministries
Amanda Bacon

TRUTH FOR TODAY

Proverbs 4:23, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” (NLT)

Ephesians 6:7, “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people.” (NIV)

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Notes from a Recovering "Right-aholic"

4/15/2019

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Good morning ladies. I've missed you! How are you doing today? You probably already figured it out, but I didn't send out any devotions to you while we were on vacation. We were just sipping coffee and talking with our friends every morning on their patio, out in the warm Arizona sun. It was so beautiful there and we had a wonderful time! I think it's probably my favorite season there. The weather was between 75-80 degrees except for a couple of days that it got into the high 90's, and those days we were further north where it was about 20 degrees cooler. We couldn't have planned it any better for timing. We spent time north of Flagstaff in Page, where we saw the Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon, two things I've wanted to see for some time now. We saw such beautiful parts of God's creation! It was an amazing time away! And we were also able to see some other friends and even some of PK's family that live there. So, tell me what you've been up to this past week.

Devotion

Do you often have the need to be "right?" I think it's in every one of us. But, today's devotion tells us that sometimes it's better to be more interested in being right with others, that is, in our relationship with them, rather than needing to be right in our perspective and opinions. Have a great day ladies, and let's remember to put our focus on Jesus as we celebrate this Holy Week and His sacrifice for us. Have a Magnificent Monday!

Notes from a Recovering “Right-aholic”

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Romans 12:18 (NIV)

Over the course of a 15-year career in broadcasting, my muscles for preparing a perspective on a topic refined my arguing skills and needed a lot of workouts to maintain the 10-year debate I found myself in at The View. I could call myself, and have called myself, a recovering “right-aholic.”

I needed and loved and thrived on being right for a very long time. In my personal life, training to be “right” started early — right answers on tests, right study habits, right decisions after school, the right course selection to get into the right college to follow the right path. I even played right field. That’s how much I wanted to be right!

Professionally, I spent a decade and a half needing to be right Monday through Friday each week on live television. Being right was what I was trained to do and what I needed to do. But all that emphasis on being right came with a cost, because people have value. We can be very right about an issue and very wrong with a person.

When we hold on to being right, it looks like two cars on a single-lane road, face-to-face and in gridlock.

Whoopi Goldberg and I started this way at The View. In fact, I’m pretty sure that our first few words to each other only had four letters in them. But at some point, we decided that being right with each other would require being a little more wrong — wrong enough to give someone the right-of-way.

When we did that and backed up the cars, we experienced the joy and freedom of not having to think the same way while still being able to love the same way. And we decided that being right about an issue was less important than being right with one another, because you can be very right and yet very alone.

I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to enter into the gates of heaven with God saying, “Child, I am so proud of you. Look at how right you were.” I am more confident that God desires we experience the joy of being right with one another, not more right than another. I am confident He asks that where we stand on issues becomes much less important and sacred than the God we stand under together.

God desires for us to make peace with those around us. As we see in today’s key verse, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).

Think about that person you are “less right with” because you’ve been so right about a position, an issue or something else that matters a lot less than another human being.

Being right does not guarantee we feel joy. I think we can all be honest and say we wish we had been a little more wrong — wrong enough to make things right with a sister, a brother, a friend, a husband, a daughter or a son.

What would it look like to be less right about whatever the issue was and be more right with the other person? Find a teacher who points you to being right with people, then implement a strategy for doing so. Bob Goff has taught me a lot about this just by how he lives. Jesus Christ is the best Teacher of being right with others! Over the past decade, I’ve learned that working hard at making a point is way less fulfilling than pointing to the Maker.

Heavenly Father, make me wrong enough so that I can be right with others. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Proverbs 31 Ministries
Elisabeth Hasselbeck

TRUTH FOR TODAY

Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (NIV)

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