Smiling At the Future

I’ve had a few comments/emails about the post I asked Desiree if I could use here on human trafficking.  The comments go something along the lines of “if we’re supposed to smile at the future, isn’t that sort of depressing”?

Well yes.  It is.  Human trafficking is depressing.  Poverty is depressing.  The fact that nearly one billion people around the world don’t have access to clean water is depressing.

But here’s the thing.

It’s only depressing if we resign ourselves to the belief that there is nothing we can do about it.  Some, when faced with problems such as these become despondent, think ‘there’s nothing we can do’ and give up.  And yes.  That is depressing.

But others become inspired.  Others become motivated.  Others look for opportunities and other people to work together to put even a small dent in the problem.  Those people, rather than give up, become inspired….and determined…and have hope.

Besides, we have a future we can smile at.  And once you find that out for yourself, once you truly smile at your own future…..there’s a next step.

I believe that once we know that we have a future we can smile at, it is our responsibility to show others that they have one as well.  I also know (and come on, you know this too, this isn’t new)….I also know that there is plenty of instructions throughout the Bible, not to mention Christ’s example as we’re to become Christ-like, about helping the poor, the sick, the needy, the widows and orphans, etc etc and so on.

Right?

Find Your Niche

For me, I’ve always been a ‘global issues’ kind of girl.  I have friends who do most of their work on their block and down the street.  That’s okay.  We are each given different types of strengths, talents, and gifts that we’re meant to put to use.  And we’re also each given different ‘desires of the heart’, different things speak to each of us.  That’s because there’s enough to be done out there in the world that no one person can do it , so we need people to work in different areas and on different issues.

And faith?  Faith requires action.  Faith requires works.

What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works?  Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food and one of you says to them “Go in peace be warmed and filled” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?”  Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself – James 2 14-17

I believe we have a responsibility to those who can’t help themselves, to those who don’t have a voice. I believe we have a responsibility to future generations.   I believe we have a responsibility to those who don’t smile at the future to help them be able to do that.

Besides, one of the best ways to find a future you can smile at is to get your mind off yourself and to serve others.  So it works all the way around.

I may talk from time to time here about specific issues.   The intention behind that is not just to bring awareness and hopefully, as this grows, begin to be able to do more and more work in those areas.

The intention behind it is to encourage you to find where you can use your talents to help others in whatever way you can.  If the most you can do today truly is to pray — then do that.  Do something.  It will help you — and it will help give them a future they can smile at as well.

Since we’re talking about this today, I saw this brief, one-minute video from Not For Sale on Twitter yesterday.  It just gave me a little hope and a little smile to see people in Cape Town, SA praying for those trapped in slavery today.  And yes, it’s people praying.  But that’s powerful.  It’s powerful indeed.

What can you do?  Where can you help?  How can you share the way to a bright future with others today?

Love,

deb

Over at WorkHerWay.com, Carolyn posed the question ‘what do we need to be doing to raise girls for success?’ that led to a few of us bandying about the other question:  what do we wish we could tell our younger selves?

I’m pretty lucky.  I had parents who placed my value and worth in who I was, and encouraged me to be myself.   Still, if I’m completely honest, I think my parents always believed more in my talents and abilities than I did.  Actually, if I’m completely honest, it’s possible that they still do.  On the talent front alone, dad is convinced I’m a better singer than I actually am — and mom is convinced I’m a better writer than I actually am.  Well, in my mind anyway. 

And that would be my first bit of advice to my younger self:

Give Up Perfection

Give it up.  It’s not going to happen and isn’t possible anyway.  You won’t look perfect, compared to those women in the magazines – you know, the women who don’t actually look like that anyway (thanks to photographing with lighting, angles, etc – adding in airbrushing and the other wonders of Photoshop, trying to live up to an ideal that doesn’t exist to begin with can get exhausting)

You also won’t be Cartier-Bresson the moment you pick up a camera or Hemingway the moment you start to write, but that’s okay.  You aren’t meant to be like them anyway.  You’re meant to develop your own unique combination of strengths, talents, and gifts.  You’re meant to forge your own path, be true to yourself, to your calling and your journey.

And you know?

You’re ‘Better’ Than You Think You Are

I heard an interview with Carrie Fisher once where she talked about how much she hated how she looked when she was in Star Wars because she thought she was fat.   But now, she looks back at photos from that time and thinks she was prettier (and thinner) than she thought at the time.  So she realizes that 20 years from now she’ll look at pictures of herself now and think the same thing.

I’d tell that ‘younger me’ that she’s smarter than she thinks she is, more talented than she thinks she is, more capable than she thinks she is, prettier than she thinks she is.  I’d tell her that she just needs to know that, and run with it.   Again, I’d tell her that she has strengths and gifts that are uniquely hers, combined with a personality and a voice that only she can bring to the world in her own unique way.  I’d tell her ‘there’s only one you and only ever will be one ‘you’, embrace that and fulfill that as much as you possibly can.’

Of course, the thing that got in the way of that more than anything back then came down to one thing — boys.  Well, boys and the roles I thought had to be played.  Between the boys and the bosses who repeatedly told me to be small, to keep silent, to hold back my truth, to be less than I am, I wish my younger self would have known:

Be All of Who You Are & Find People Who Can Take It

Rather than playing small for others, realize that them asking you to do that says more about their feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.  Don’t play small for them, find others who play as big a game as you do.  They’re out there, you know.  You might have to do some work to find people who can let you be as strong, as powerful, as confident, as talented, as smart as you are…..but they’re out there.

Compromise, an argument many of those people will make to convince you to change for them, is necessary in relationships, but being less than you are isn’t compromise — it’s self-destruction.  It’s destroying parts of you just to make someone else comfortable and not only is that not healthy for either party — it won’t last anyway.  You won’t be able to maintain it, living small.  Find the real friends.  Hold out for the real deal.

And mostly, I’d tell my younger self, you won’t get any of that until you find God.

Goodbye Insecurity, Hello True Value & Worth

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…. Jeremiah 1:5

Find God, and in Him, find yourself.  Make Him the center of your life.  Let Him make you into who He designed you to be, and bring the opportunities and destiny He has planned for you.  (Find out for yourself who God says you are.  Don’t let man tell you who he thinks God says you are.)

Delight yourself also in the Lord,  And He shall give you the desires of your heart.  Psalms 37:4

Find the desires of your heart that He has given you, and the talents and strengths He’s given you to fulfill those desires.  Find the ways you can contribute, be of service to the world, and make a difference.  Make THAT your mission.

And then:

Forgive Yourself Because You’re Going to Mess it Up

I’d tell that younger version of me a few other things too.  Things like…..the thing you think is the end of the world right now really isn’t.  In fact, some of the biggest ‘tragedies’ of your life will eventually look like mere blips on the radar screen of your life.  And you’re going to mess some things up.  You can only know what you know.  You’ll do the best you can given what you know and the circumstances you’re in — and as Maya Angelou says, when you know better, you’ll do better.  So cut yourself some slack.  Stop worrying so much, enjoy it all more.  Contribute.  Serve.  Use your talents and abilities to make a difference.  Let God handle the rest.

What would you tell your younger self?  What advice would you give future generations?

Love,

deb

(Photo credit:  No idea really, but that’s me about age 5; ironically since I wrote about Carrie Fisher, it’s complete with Princess Leia hair!  ;-))

A while back, over at the old blog, I wrote a post called “Well-Behaved Can Make History.”  (The full piece is still up on my ‘expert contributor’s page’ at www.workherway.com  here.)

In it, I largely spoke about women’s roles in culture and in the workplace, and how they’d evolved from the Mad-Men-like stay-at-home moms and steno-pool girls to clawing our way to the top while behaving more and more like men in the process.  We clawed our way into the boardrooms, but when we got there we got so used to having the claws out that we forgot to put them back in.

And so I ended the piece with this:

Bright Future Ahead

….

But I see us continuing to head this direction. To continue forging our own paths – together. And I think that’s the best way to go from here.

We can be well-behaved if we want to.  After all, our deepest power doesn’t come when we’re breaking down doors.  It comes when we speak our truth with dignity and grace, having finally given ourselves permission to own who we are and to own our truth.

I have to admit it.  One thing that kept me out of and away from church for quite some time was that I didn’t see women like me there a whole lot.  I found it difficult to be a strong, confident, smart woman amongst a seeming sea of voices telling me I must be weak.  The message that I heard a great deal was ‘be quiet, needy, codependent….don’t think, don’t speak, just bake, and sew and be as amenable and cute and as sweet as possible….be the weaker vessel.”

The message I got was that I couldn’t be ‘me’, the way God made me, with the gifts and talents that He bestowed me with.  I had to be what other people wanted me to be and fit in.  And that didn’t work for me.

And to be honest?  I hated Proverbs 31.  No.  Seriously.  Hated it.  Mostly because you have no idea how often that passage was thrown in my face as evidence of me not being a ‘good enough woman’.  But then I took another look.  And man!  That woman is busy!  She gets a lot of stuff done!  And she does stuff all on her own, like ‘she considers a field and buys it.’

And it turns out that many of those who told me that being cute and quiet and people-pleasing really did get it wrong.  Verse 30 tells us “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain”

As I looked again, I saw things in Proverbs 31 like:

She girds herself with strength And makes her arms strong….

Strength and dignity are her clothing and she smiles at the future

She opens her mouth with wisdom……

I have many female friends who struggle with these things within the church as well.  And many of us left, or are leaving.  And yet, they also all struggle with what that means — the loss of a sisterhood, and the effect that has on their faith.  It’s tough.

Fight The Good Fight

At the same time, I had to admit that I become disappointed when I see good people give up the good fight.  A political example:  Evan Bayh.  I’ve liked Evan Bayh for years and anticipated (and hoped for) a future Presidential bid from him.  Then suddenly, he announced he would not run for another term and would  longer be serving in the Senate.  Why?  Because, he said, Congress is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, partisan, and not doing ‘the work of the people’.

My reaction?  Disappointment.  Disappointment rooted mostly in wondering what will be left if the good guys ‘give up and go home’.  Disappointment that he wouldn’t stay and ‘fight the good fight’ and stand up for ‘doing the work of the people.’

Be The Change You Want to See In the World

That is honestly one of my favorite quotes — ever.

And as I began to think through these things, it occurred to me:

What about the next generation?  The girls who are coming behind us on those paths we’ve forged now?  What about the other women who are also searching?  Why not stay?  Why not stay and be the example?  Why not stay and begin to talk about these things, with dignity and with grace?  Why not find and form a strong sisterhood that serves to stay and ‘be the change.’

What do you think?  Is it possible to ‘stay’ and to be the change?  In what ways can we do this?  How would that work in your world?

Love,

deb

I have been engaged in a great deal of reflection the past couple of days, as many around the world are. As I reread the different accounts of the crucifixion today, something struck me.  Here’s the way Mark tells it:

“And those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Ha!  You who were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!”  In the same way, the chief priests along with the scribes were also mocking Him among themselves and saying, “He saved others, He cannot save Himself.  Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down that we may see and believe.”

That was it.  That was all they asked for.  ”Get yourself down off that cross, and we will believe”

God had something bigger in mind.  God had something bigger planned.

How often do we do that in our own lives?  I know I do.  I’ll have some problem, some thing that I turn into a crisis in my head.  (Oh yeah.  Try living in my head.  It’s fun sometimes!  ;-))

And I’ll pray.  I’ll ask.  I’ll ask for something small.

Or I’ll look to the future and hope — for something small.  For just enough.  For just enough to get by, for just enough to subsist, for just enough to maintain.  I’ll hope for just enough joy to not be unhappy.  I’ll hope for just enough love to not feel alone.  I’ll hope for just enough…..whatever.

But I wonder.

Maybe God has something bigger in mind.  Maybe God has something bigger in mind for you than you’ve been expecting too.

How about you?  Are you just looking for what you think you deserve or could comprehend as being ‘big’?  Are you just looking for a ‘coming off the cross’ moment?  Or are you ready for the real deal?  The whole deal?  Are you ready for the bigger things that God has planned?

Love,

deb

We struggle.  We try.  We fail.  We beat ourselves up when it doesn’t work.  We determine we’ll do better.  We try again.  We do well for a while.  We get rid of it.  We keep it off.  We put it back on.  We blame our circumstances and the temptations we couldn’t avoid.  We put more back on than we had before.  We find another program and think we’ve got it handled this time.  And so we try again, more determined than the last and the cycle starts again.

We understand that it’s connected somehow to our past.  It’s connected to our emotions.  It has to do with the way we think.  But still, we can’t seem to get rid of it for good.

What is ‘it’?  It’s the pain.  It’s the hurt of rejection.  It’s what they did to us, what they said to us.  It’s how we reacted, how we behaved, the things we’ve done and said to others.  It’s the fear.  It’s the anger.

And we’ve tried everything.  We’ve tried seminars and self-help books.  We’ve tried talking to our friends about the problem over and over again.  We’ve tried it all.  And somehow, we have some tiny bit of faith that there’s an answer out there, that there’s hope.  But we keep trying to think our way out of it.  We keep trying to change our thoughts, change our behaviors, get different results.

But Einstein said it:  We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

And the truth is that if you’ve got all that baggage weighing you down, you can’t think your way out of it on your own.  Your heart is still the same.

If you’re at all like me, while you might realize something is not quite right and you might even be using some of the right tools, until you see how much baggage is really weighing you down, it won’t truly change.  Until your heart changes, all the thinking in the world won’t set you free.

I had what some refer to as a ‘hardened heart.’  I was tough.  I was strong.  And my heart was hard.  I built up walls and defenses.  And from time to time, the anger would come lashing out, usually in the small areas or at the wrong people.

And the truth is that no one wakes up in the morning thinking, “I’m going to be a big anger ball” this morning.  Or “I’m going to be full of stress as I try to keep all the bad stuff out and wall my heart in and not be open and vulnerable ever again.”

Your thinking, your emotions, the ways you’ve dealt with whatever you’re facing?   That’s what got you ‘here’.  It takes something else.  It takes someone else — outside of you.

For me, I was in what has been one of the worst moments of my life.  I was angry.  I was terrified.  I was feeling lost and confused and hurt.  Again.  And yes, I had reason.  Again.  Yes, I have enemies. A former ‘best friend’ (but that’s often how that happens, isn’t it?)

But I was sitting in a class, at church, where I usually put my ‘best face’ on to keep ‘you’ from knowing there was a problem and keep you at a distance.  And ironically (or maybe not so ironically), the lesson that day was on ‘making your mess your message.’  And as people were sharing something they’d been through in their past that they could then use to reach out and help others, something happened.

Rather than do what I usually do, I opened up.  I told these people I barely knew that I was ‘in the middle of that type of situation right this very moment.’  I didn’t give details.  They didn’t need them.  And those people reached out in support.  Small moves, to be sure.  They didn’t try to fix the problem or solve the dilemma.  They just reached out.

And in that moment, the scales fell from my eyes.

And I literally felt my heart break.  Open.  The hard casing, the walls I’d built up, cracked.  And I felt peace.  And I ‘got it’.  I got what grace means.  And I got what forgiveness, of myself and of others, was about.  (Yes.  We are told to forgive, bless, and even love our ‘enemies’.)  I got that it was all going to be okay.

I began asking for help.  I began reaching out.  And I found it.

Do you want to lose that weight and keep it off?

We’re told exactly how in Matt. 11:28-30

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart;  and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”

There’s more to do after that.  But that’s the beginning.  That’s where it starts.  It’s the beginning of a journey that will only grow and expand, that is full of joy and love and peace.  And that journey is a whole lot easier to make and you can go a whole lot more quickly, without all that weight.

What do you need to leave behind?  What do you need to let go of?  What weight can you get rid of for good?

Love,

deb

P.S.  A programming note:  I’ve been lining up other women to write guest posts here, those who are smart, engaged, willing and more than able to help build up our community here.  The first appears tomorrow.  So check back!  ;-)