of report cards, evaluations, and personal references from others around me to prove that.
Back when I was six, I must have been very advanced for my age (smile), I recognized I wanted to place my life in the hands of God. In the years to come, I would better understand what that means and see that I had no means within myself to be anything other than self motivating, self promoting, self righteous. I understood that those things would continue to motivate me as a human, and I was destined to feeling like a failure constantly driving myself to be better than the person to my right or left. Often failing. I wanted a chance at something different. I wanted to please God, at that time simply because it was the right thing to do to want to please people. But I did understand God loved me more than I could every love him and that he desperately wanted to save me from myself. I also recognized I couldn't tackle the hate of the world on my own. I couldn't overcome my own tendency to add to the hate of the world. I was a great person, but there wasn't any amount of great that could save me from myself and those things that come from living in a world of chaos. Don't you get tired of this rat race? I needed the forgiveness of God. I was desperately flawed. I needed to trust in His love for me, his plan through Jesus to save me from self with the resulting outcome becoming a better Sally than I could ever be without that devotion to Him. Sally was making Sally watered down. In God I can be the Sally He designed me to be.
Many years later in life, in my thirties, I spent some time reading through Romans and realized I didn't have to please God out of responsibility, the whole world revolves around this to do list and judgement of performance (yuck!), but rather when I loved him more than I loved myself, those things would naturally flow out of me. (Fruit of the spirit.) I threw out my to do list of doing right and focused instead on my relationship with Him and the people around me and all of a sudden, I found I was happy, content, joyful, peaceful and desiring to want that for my own life and those of everyone I came in contact with.
I started seeing the potential in others instead of always focusing on their deficiencies. I wanted them to become everything they could be instead of trying to out do them. Don't get me wrong, my old self of competition and slander and self promotion still comes out at times, often, but i now recognize when it does and am able to fall back in God's mercy and grace to find my love for other people again. I truly do want you to be the best Bobbie Jo you can ever be! And I know that without faith in God's plan for you, that becomes impossible. Bobbie Jo will mess that up in a heart beat! How can you finding your greatness and you wanting the same for me not make life better?!?! There's no pressure to be something I'm not. There's freedom to be who He created me to be. And freedom to recognize how amazing this life is despite the world trying to prove otherwise. I love the Sally God frees me to be. And when I find myself screwing up, I remind myself God's plan for me is better than anything I could ever imagine up for myself. My own plan is the quickest path to miserable.
Ok so why do I mention that here? Well, in case you haven't noticed, there are moments in life when things can just be rather crappy from our perspective. Remember, we live in a world of self promotion. Everyone doing everything to promote self. I must be the 1 out of 10 who gets "excel" in that work eval. I'm better than Susie, right? (For the record, I got "achieves"). I better mention to Pam that brad has been unable to hold down a job. He's flawed (thus making myself appear well kept and together). When will people realize that a team of amazing is a thousand times better than one person of amazing. Brad may have lost his job (we forget downsizing can wipe out even the best), but he is incredible at accounting. I'm horrible at accounting! Your skill supplements mine to make me better. My deficiencies often produce commonality with others around me. My strengths your benefit.
We live in a world where cancer eats joy, jealousy drives ambition, popularity squashes potential, death drives fear. Circumstance dictates emotions. I want cancer to produce advocacy, jealousy to fall prey to encouragement, death to drive belief in something bigger than myself, and circumstance to become inconsequential. Joy can be our outcome! God loves me enough to save me from hate! I love him enough to claim his provision and find joy in the ridiculous around me. And you know what, it's free to anyone who wants to man up enough to see yourself as flawed, admit you are destroying yourself, recognize He desires the absolute best for you even in the awful, claim the saving grace of Jesus, and walk in life with a new perspective. Become someone who desires the best for others in addition to yourself. Become someone eagerly awaiting the next turn. I'm a work in progress. I fail all the stinking time. I continue to be flawed every silly day. Do you recall my desperation and tears of early August? But you know what? I have hope! And hope changes everything. (Open the book of John starting at Chpt 1 and give it a whirl. It will be a life changing read if you allow it to be.)
So why did I spill all of that out on this page? Life can crappy. It's one split minute decision away from chaos. One day you are riding happiness with a new found love, the next day your new found love is with you no longer. One year, you become a trend setter in your corporation, the next year you file bankruptcy. One day you are helping a kid with cancer, the next day you sign yourself up for a mastectomy. Life is brutal! It's unpredictable. It's one big jumbled up ball of what is right around the next corner. And you know what? I love it. I love the mystery of all of that. I love knowing that even in the awful something amazing can result. Maybe not always for me. Sometimes my awful results in amazing for you. I love that I can see a glimpse of God's plan at every stinking turn if I allow myself to. (Remember Sally is the best person to mess up Sally.) Life may be out to "get me", but I'm full of hope that just around the next corner lies something new.
This mastectomy has resulted in all kinds of crazy. It's been painful, it's stripped away some vanity, it's broken my mood on occasion. It created a sucky kind of August. And now September. But I'm not stupid enough to bask in that satan driven focus for long. I want to claim the new friendships, the altered perspective, the experience that will impact the life chaos to come, the strenghtened marriage, the power of encouragement. The ability to overcome. The realization of trivial this really is in the scheme of hurricanes and loss of life.
You see, circumstance is what it is. I battled lymphoma. Now, I have imposter boobs. No amount of good intention or focused control will always prevent choas. This is reality. Famine will happen. Floods will take homes. Cindy will talk bad about Stacey. Cancer will be in a diagnosis. But I can either bask in the awful as so much of the world does every day and allowing myself to slip into sustained depression and defeat while on the outside trying to clamor to the top and appear put together and desirable. OR I can claim God's promise and look for the amazing that is always present in the awful. Amazing might be hidden and disguised under a rock, but God gave me hands didn't he? And I surely know how to move a rock.
Claim that God wants Amazing, even in chaotic circumstance. Find hope and maybe even some humor. It's often life changing.
(And if you want someone to talk to about putting your faith in God through Jesus, contact me!)
Back when I was six, I must have been very advanced for my age (smile), I recognized I wanted to place my life in the hands of God. In the years to come, I would better understand what that means and see that I had no means within myself to be anything other than self motivating, self promoting, self righteous. I understood that those things would continue to motivate me as a human, and I was destined to feeling like a failure constantly driving myself to be better than the person to my right or left. Often failing. I wanted a chance at something different. I wanted to please God, at that time simply because it was the right thing to do to want to please people. But I did understand God loved me more than I could every love him and that he desperately wanted to save me from myself. I also recognized I couldn't tackle the hate of the world on my own. I couldn't overcome my own tendency to add to the hate of the world. I was a great person, but there wasn't any amount of great that could save me from myself and those things that come from living in a world of chaos. Don't you get tired of this rat race? I needed the forgiveness of God. I was desperately flawed. I needed to trust in His love for me, his plan through Jesus to save me from self with the resulting outcome becoming a better Sally than I could ever be without that devotion to Him. Sally was making Sally watered down. In God I can be the Sally He designed me to be.
Many years later in life, in my thirties, I spent some time reading through Romans and realized I didn't have to please God out of responsibility, the whole world revolves around this to do list and judgement of performance (yuck!), but rather when I loved him more than I loved myself, those things would naturally flow out of me. (Fruit of the spirit.) I threw out my to do list of doing right and focused instead on my relationship with Him and the people around me and all of a sudden, I found I was happy, content, joyful, peaceful and desiring to want that for my own life and those of everyone I came in contact with.
I started seeing the potential in others instead of always focusing on their deficiencies. I wanted them to become everything they could be instead of trying to out do them. Don't get me wrong, my old self of competition and slander and self promotion still comes out at times, often, but i now recognize when it does and am able to fall back in God's mercy and grace to find my love for other people again. I truly do want you to be the best Bobbie Jo you can ever be! And I know that without faith in God's plan for you, that becomes impossible. Bobbie Jo will mess that up in a heart beat! How can you finding your greatness and you wanting the same for me not make life better?!?! There's no pressure to be something I'm not. There's freedom to be who He created me to be. And freedom to recognize how amazing this life is despite the world trying to prove otherwise. I love the Sally God frees me to be. And when I find myself screwing up, I remind myself God's plan for me is better than anything I could ever imagine up for myself. My own plan is the quickest path to miserable.
Ok so why do I mention that here? Well, in case you haven't noticed, there are moments in life when things can just be rather crappy from our perspective. Remember, we live in a world of self promotion. Everyone doing everything to promote self. I must be the 1 out of 10 who gets "excel" in that work eval. I'm better than Susie, right? (For the record, I got "achieves"). I better mention to Pam that brad has been unable to hold down a job. He's flawed (thus making myself appear well kept and together). When will people realize that a team of amazing is a thousand times better than one person of amazing. Brad may have lost his job (we forget downsizing can wipe out even the best), but he is incredible at accounting. I'm horrible at accounting! Your skill supplements mine to make me better. My deficiencies often produce commonality with others around me. My strengths your benefit.
We live in a world where cancer eats joy, jealousy drives ambition, popularity squashes potential, death drives fear. Circumstance dictates emotions. I want cancer to produce advocacy, jealousy to fall prey to encouragement, death to drive belief in something bigger than myself, and circumstance to become inconsequential. Joy can be our outcome! God loves me enough to save me from hate! I love him enough to claim his provision and find joy in the ridiculous around me. And you know what, it's free to anyone who wants to man up enough to see yourself as flawed, admit you are destroying yourself, recognize He desires the absolute best for you even in the awful, claim the saving grace of Jesus, and walk in life with a new perspective. Become someone who desires the best for others in addition to yourself. Become someone eagerly awaiting the next turn. I'm a work in progress. I fail all the stinking time. I continue to be flawed every silly day. Do you recall my desperation and tears of early August? But you know what? I have hope! And hope changes everything. (Open the book of John starting at Chpt 1 and give it a whirl. It will be a life changing read if you allow it to be.)
So why did I spill all of that out on this page? Life can crappy. It's one split minute decision away from chaos. One day you are riding happiness with a new found love, the next day your new found love is with you no longer. One year, you become a trend setter in your corporation, the next year you file bankruptcy. One day you are helping a kid with cancer, the next day you sign yourself up for a mastectomy. Life is brutal! It's unpredictable. It's one big jumbled up ball of what is right around the next corner. And you know what? I love it. I love the mystery of all of that. I love knowing that even in the awful something amazing can result. Maybe not always for me. Sometimes my awful results in amazing for you. I love that I can see a glimpse of God's plan at every stinking turn if I allow myself to. (Remember Sally is the best person to mess up Sally.) Life may be out to "get me", but I'm full of hope that just around the next corner lies something new.
This mastectomy has resulted in all kinds of crazy. It's been painful, it's stripped away some vanity, it's broken my mood on occasion. It created a sucky kind of August. And now September. But I'm not stupid enough to bask in that satan driven focus for long. I want to claim the new friendships, the altered perspective, the experience that will impact the life chaos to come, the strenghtened marriage, the power of encouragement. The ability to overcome. The realization of trivial this really is in the scheme of hurricanes and loss of life.
You see, circumstance is what it is. I battled lymphoma. Now, I have imposter boobs. No amount of good intention or focused control will always prevent choas. This is reality. Famine will happen. Floods will take homes. Cindy will talk bad about Stacey. Cancer will be in a diagnosis. But I can either bask in the awful as so much of the world does every day and allowing myself to slip into sustained depression and defeat while on the outside trying to clamor to the top and appear put together and desirable. OR I can claim God's promise and look for the amazing that is always present in the awful. Amazing might be hidden and disguised under a rock, but God gave me hands didn't he? And I surely know how to move a rock.
Claim that God wants Amazing, even in chaotic circumstance. Find hope and maybe even some humor. It's often life changing.
(And if you want someone to talk to about putting your faith in God through Jesus, contact me!)
