Home is where you feel most alive, part 2

Home is where we feel we belong.
Where we feel loved and accepted.
Missed. Treasured and valued.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. After our first small group meeting in September I remember walking out feeling like I had just gained 12 more women to travel on this journey with. And yesterday was no exception.

I left feeling, like so many times before, just struck by their beauty.

Struck by His beauty and His grace and His faithfulness.

It just astounded me again as we were discussing or not discussing the chapters from the book, yet laughing here, teasing one another there, crying here, sharing our hearts there...

But what has astounded me the most, week after week, as we've been digging in deep with Beth Moore in this vast land of insecurities we ALL as women face... we have become more secure women.

To see the strength and the growth in not just a few, but every single one of us in there, who came in all in different places and still are learning and growing in different places, yet we are all DIFFERENT women.

I thought it was ironic, but as I was driving around processing as I always do after group time, I started laughing to myself when this hit me...

We walked in as insecure women, ashamed and kind of embarrassed to talk about our insecurities, yet now, when we share our insecurities or how one area we have experienced freedom from our insecurities that week, as we each share real life examples, not from a few weeks or years ago, but from TODAY, or yesterday, or a few hours ago...

Now, we BOLDLY share our insecurities, unashamedly, as SECURE women!! And we're even able to LAUGH at ourselves now as we see more of the triggers and the little things DAILY that can bring on a case of insecurity.

That is only of the Lord because the mountains that have been moved would have never budged in our own strength.

He has met us on this journey, surprised us with the liberty that is released in our hearts when we grow less attached to finding our security, worth, value, identity, in anything else but Him.

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My prayer has become, as more and more each day the Lord is shattering what Search for Significance calls the satanic formula the Enemy so cunningly leads us to believe,

that our self-worth = our performance + the opinions of others...

My prayer each day has been,

Lord, let me find my security, my worth, my value, my strength, my hope, my identity... in You.

This has been my prayer for a few special ladies in my life as well.

I have been blessed to still be connected with my same group of core group (our word for small group) girlies of college girls from our church from last year. They have continued to come over on Sunday mornings for breakfast, as we normally did either at my place or out somewhere last fall, but when I got sick in the spring, and could no longer do core group, the girls still came over to visit, bring me breakfast, help me with wedding things I wasn't able to do, everything from putting together invitations, addressing, stamping, licking envelopes, whatever needed done, dishes, laundry, errands, they blew me away. Especially in a generation that is more and more consumed with self. To see young people serving others, sadly, has become a rarity.

To be served by them in that time still means so much to me today. That when I felt I had nothing to give, they gave me so much without hesitation, but took so much joy in being able to serve me.

Well, when they asked this fall, in some of the times they would come over just to hang out, if we could keep the same core group this year, after thinking and praying about it, and realizing that since I have been able to have different groups of girls or one girl over nearly every Sunday since school started, that it seemed that was one of very few things that I could ACTUALLY commit to. These women have been such a joy in my life and were the highlight of my year last year.

The girls in the group were a mix of a couple girls who were new to the Rock, but not freshman, but then was mostly comprised of freshman girls last year who are now are big and bad sophomores, pretty much running the place now. Each week we have ended with writing a new verse on a lovely piece of scrapbook paper to take home.

The Lord impressed upon my heart one day, as I was thinking and praying for these girls, girls who are full of life, passion and purpose, as I was like, God, what do these girls, what do we all NEED?

And the words, “to be deeply rooted” came to mind. So as I shared with the girls the first time, I told them, you know in the last few months, I have felt a critical need to be more deeply rooted in God and His word. That's my prayer for us as well, ladies.

These girls are nothing short of amazing. They are going places. As I always tell them, they are going to change the world. They are ambitious, spunky, and filled with no fear. The best way I can love and serve these ladies, as God put on my heart, was to give them tools for the journey now and ahead.

It reminds me of an old proverb and something that always reminds me of Breck, a woman who God used and STILL uses, to have a tremendous impact on my life, a woman who mentored me, her and her husband, Brian, in my time in college when they lived here. I was reminded how their lives still speak to me NOW, as we're still close though we live miles away...

Breck and Brian didn't just come into my life and tell me about God, or what to change and try to fix all my problems. No, what sticks out to me the most is that they didn't give me a fish when I was hungry. They taught me HOW to fish, as the old proverb says,

“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day... Teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime...”

I have prayed time and time again.... God, help me to be a part of the work you are already doing in the lives of these young women, and use me to teach them how to fish, how to run this race for a lifetime.

As I was thinking about all of this, instead of needing to know how to do that, all I needed was to go on the conviction that we need to be deeply rooted in Him. No matter the season. For without Him, we can do nothing.

And in the various places and things God has been speaking to me about, this insecurity thing is a big deal. It keeps us from being more fully the women God CREATED us to be. We don't just need security or a little of our dignity back.

As Beth Moore says, we need healing.

A healing only He can bring, as He inch by inch, restores and renews our souls...

to be continued...