2012 September

A Prayer for All God’s Daughters

Sara Evans sings it but the Lord originated the idea and how I pray His daughters believe it’s true: You were born to fly.

But this world can do mean things and tear a girl’s wings by arranging elaborate pranks for the price of a wounded heart. And only our God can take a girl from a prank to a princess because that’s exactly what we all are: Golden daughters of the Glorious God-King. May His girls wallow in Truth not tears as we pray for each other.

A Prayer for All God’s Daughters

Dear Father in Heaven,

Thank you for this daughter. I pray she knows just how desperately she is valued and wanted by her family and You. I pray you whisper truth after truth to every hungry corner of her heart.

May her confidence lie in unwavering Christ and not this wobbly-legged world .

Give her a can-do spirit, not because of who she is but because of the One who is what she isn’t.

Help me treat her as a friend today, since real friends keep the easy and hard truth central. May our hearts stay close now and when she grows. Show us how to relish relationship with one another and may that relationship always be rooted in Christ.

May the only mirror she stares into be the one Jesus holds as He reminds her she is His beautiful,creative, intelligent, fierce, mighty wonder and work of art. May she see her value not overly or underly, but reality.

Help her care more about what You think of her than anyone else, including me. Since You see her days stretched out from beginning to end, You know best what path she should take and when.

May she be willing to trade more comfort for more Christ. Give her a head and a heart willing to hunt down Your will in the big and small. After she has done this, show me how I may encourage as a source of help rather than hindrance.

Give her strength so her fears don’t become the boss of her. She will have fears, but don’t allow fears to have her. May she remember only the perfect love of Jesus drives out fear.

Keep her heart tender to the things that move You, Lord. Childlike faith, joy, zest and even bravery can slip away with age like colors of a sunset. Help her choose You and Your light so darkness hasn’t a moment to settle in.

May she hunger for your Word and never get her fill of the Bread of Life.

Remind her to move onward and upward by recording her gifts because there is never a time to stop giving thanks. You are the giver of every good thing and You never stop being good.

May she know she can’t ever sin further than Your forgiveness, and that You are the God of unlimited do-overs. Help her understand Your ways of grace and love endure beyond her every beyond.

{And all God’s daughters stood and stretched their wings and said,}

Amen!

Download a free printable of this prayer here.

And if you are looking for some excellent resources to encourage the young girls in your life, may I humbly recommend Emily P. Freeman’s Graceful and Annie F. Downs’ Perfectly Unique? Stellar books! And while they are geared towards young women, I am reading them for me as much as my own daughter because it’s never too late for a girl to learn solid truth about who she is as well as who she isn’t.

Moving onward and upward with you, dear sisters! May we fly together towards all He’s created us to be…

September 27, 2012 10 Comments Filed Under: Being a Woman, Parenting, Prayer

The Guaranteed Gift Waiting Will Always Bring You

By Kristen

Just ask any woman swollen with child: The passing of time only makes her bigger.

Just ask any wee-watt waiting on her birthday: The passing days heighten frenzied excitement.

And outside my window, maple trees shimmy in the wind while apple green leaves flush to pinkish red. Every passing day enlarges my expectancy towards full bloom fall.

Without fail, something grows during every waiting time. Sometimes we see it in front of our nose and sometimes we feel it under our skin. But when we don’t see or feel it, we can still be sure God is using the waiting to grow something more beautiful in and around us.

The waiting does not diminish us. It may diminish something we need to get rid of like unbelief or pride or selfish ambition. But we are guaranteed a joyful expectancy in our waiting.

I easily forget but it’s true: The waiting time is a gift, and it’s just one more way believing is seeing.

September 24, 2012 3 Comments Filed Under: Hope, Seasons Tagged With: Fall

When You Don’t Believe You Can Do It

By Kristen

“Set goals so big that unless God helps you, you will be a miserable failure.”

~ Bill Bright

I sit over a keyboard and say the words out loud to myself,

“I just can’t do this.”

It’s the same five words I said yesterday as I cleaned up another epic high altitude baking fail, and the same words I said last night when that mothering moment went awry.

“I just can’t do this.”

I just can’t write. Or bake. Or parent well.

And then my own Daddy’s words from long ago come back to me. He would overhear me lamenting as I bent low over Algebra problems or Tchaikovsky rhythms or the periodic table,

“I just can’t do this.”

He would pull me close and remind me I could indeed do it, and didn’t I remember the story about Grandma Rea? About how her teacher marched her class outside the one room schoolhouse, each boy and girl carrying a small slip of paper with the word “can’t” on it?

I would settle in knowing I would hear the story whether I remembered it or not.

Grandma’s teacher brought her students to a portion of grassy earth and told them all to dig a hole, drop the word inside, then patch the earth back up. When the last student finished stomping her hole flat, teacher matter-of-factly declared that from here on out, there was no such word as can’t because they could do anything and everything they set their minds on.

Grown-up me forgets to bury her own can’t words; I’m too busy building with them instead. I construct thick-walled towers with bricks of can’t, impossible, and no way. The tower stretches so far up I must crane my neck backwards to see, and I’m quite sure I’ll never get up it or over it or around it.

Truth is, I need to break up and bury those words like my grandma did. But I need to cover them with more than dirt.

On this chilly morning, Deuteronomy reminds me how the Lord deals with our I-can’t-do-this battles:

Hear, oh Israel, You are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. The people are strong and tall – Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them, he will subdue them before you. Deuteronomy 9: 1-3

The cities were large. The walls reached the sky. The people were strong and tall. But with God on the side of Israel, none of that amounted to a hill of beans.

I get it now. With God on my side of the battle, I don’t need to believe I can scale walls of can’t or run hurdles over impossible or forge rivers of no way. I just need to believe in the One who goes before me tearing down walls and burying death words so resurrected New Life flourishes.

I just need to believe I can do all things through Christ, the One who fills my gaps and is what I am not.

And this I can do again and again and again.

Because there’s no such word as can’t after all.

September 20, 2012 11 Comments Filed Under: Being a Woman, Faith in Action, Hope

When Loving Well Means Staying Away

By Kristen

I’ve been sauntering down memory lane, and I blame it all on the Dear Me letter to my teenage self. Today I stop and visit a memory from my senior year, one involving a certain girl with thick chestnut hair and her best friend. We share classes, lunches, and secrets. That is until something happens, drama unfolds, and we stop speaking to one another.

It was 20 years ago but I still cringe remembering those months of missing her. For a season, we love each other from afar and let prayers fill the space between. Eventually we do make up and still today enjoy a sweet grown-up friendship.

That was the first time I learned about the hard love, how sometimes love looks like staying away, even if for just a season. Us grown-up girls need to remember this, too.

In my own nature, loving well means holding close, letting people in, praying with my hand on her shoulder. But this isn’t always true or best. Sometimes, loving well means setting a boundary, maintaining distance, and praying alone on my back porch. It asks God to show up in the gap between. It is the tough love but true love. It is no less for her and not against her because it leaves room for the healing power of Jesus.

Have you experienced seasons of hard love in your friendships? How did you graciously maintain distance?

Thanks to all who entered the drawing for Emily’s book Graceful! Using the Random Number Generator, the two winners are:

{Scooper and Pattie, you should have already received an email from me!}